When I showed this photo to a dear friend, this bolt immediately struck him as a Kokopelli.
Widely known now in its commercialized “flute player” form that adorns everything from bumper stickers to yard decorations (ahem, Walter White), the Kokopelli originates from the Southwest’s Native Americans.
However, in what is the cultural appropriation version of a game of “telephone”, the symbol we know as a Kokopelli is not really a Kokopelli.
You see, in the puebloan tribes like the Hopi and Zuni, Kokopelli is a kachina — a trickster deity who tells stories and brings rain to the desert. But the puebloan Kokopelli, while hunchbacked, does not play a flute. The puebloan flute players have names different from Kokopelli.
In the Hopi language in particular, a flute player may be called maahu (the cicada), lelenhoya (flute player), or Lelentiyo (flute boy). In no case does the Hopi Kokopölö play a flute, although he does always have an erect penis — not something that jives with commercial artwork, ha.
However, our familiar hunchbacked-flute-player-sans-phallus does appear in ceramics left behind by the Hokokam civilization.
And while this photo was taken on the Harquahala Plain west of Phoenix — some 200 miles from the heart of the Hopi lands — this location was likely traveled by the ancient Hohokam over 500 years ago.
So while I hesitate to call the electrical figure in the photograph a Kokopelli, it does mimic the figure seen in the Hohokam ceramics, although we don’t actually know what meanings the Hohokam attached to the symbol.
In the end, perhaps it is better to derive our own meanings than continue to misinterpret and misrepresent those of indigenous peoples.
As for this photo, I will call it the Harquahala Lightning Dancer, as the area where I took the photo is named the Harquahala Plain, sitting on the footsteps of the Harquahala Mountains.
Harquahala is a Yavapai word meaning “water up high”, likely referencing the springs high in the Harquahala Mountains — springs fed from a groundwater table relying on rain to recharge. And so this lightning dancer bringing with it rain from the sky to resupply the “water up high”, seems fitting to be called Harquahala.
Glad we got to the bottom of this. And now that I have ruined the commercialized “Kokopelli” for you, Happy Tuesday.
-Jake
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