Navajo Wedding Basket

The Navajo wedding basket is meant to reflect the various values of the traditions of life and is meant to contain the six sacred mountains within the design on the wedding basket. In the middle of the basket is a center that is meant to display the beginning of life. Around the basket center is the mountains that depict earth with black color and water bowls. The top of the basket contains different colors which are meant to display clouds. The white clouds and black clouds represent the start of the rain and the red stands for the rays of the sun.

Symbols

There are other wedding baskets made by the Navajo which interpret other symbols. The other symbol brought out on the Navajo wedding basket combines the black and red and black. The symbol says that those who have the inner black circle represents the underworld where the red represents earth and life.

The outer black stands for the upper world. The center of the basket is interpreted as the beginning of the earth and this is where the Navajo emerged from where as the white surrounding it is earth. The black is still the mountains and the boundaries of the Navajo are formed by the water and rainbows.

Representation

The white on the baskets is all meant to display the dawn of the world while the red brings out the sun’s ray’s. All of the black in the basket is meant to showcase the clouds. The basket is meant to looked at as a map. It is meant to represent the life and stages of the earth. The white is meant to showcase the beginning and the way that people started from the earth. As you travel around the basket, you start to bring out more and more black. When you reach the red layers of the basket, you start to encounter the marriage of man and woman.

You mix your blood together to form a marriage and creating a family together. The red is meant to be pure as there is no darkness. The dark is found once again where it finally comes to light where enlightenment is found. The rest of the light is meant to bring out the spirit world in which there is no darkness. The opening found on the basket is meant to show you that no matter where you stand in life, there is always an opening to the light.