This book explores the magic and mystery behind the animal figures or fetishes skillfully carved by artists from the Southwestern Pueblos. Pictures and text highlight the impressive variety of forms, materials, and traditional and contemporary styles available to collectors along with a price guide to current market values. It also discusses the symbolic meanings associated with each one and explains how they are "borrowed" for use by members of non-Native American cultures.

The Zuni have traditionally used small stone carvings of animal figures as power objects and mediators between themselves and the spirit world. Any object that has special meaning can be used as a fetish. In this fascinating, informative, and beautifully illustrated guide to the fetishes of the Zuni people of New Mexico, Hal Zina Bennett explores key principles of Native American spirituality and how early Zuni teachings can benefit us all today. He provides an excellent guide to Zuni traditions and an intriguing picture of their early life, along with detailed instructions for using fetishes for mediation, reflection, and insight in modern life. He describes key fetish figures, including the Guardian of the Six Regions, their legendary meanings, and the personal qualities each figure can support and help its owner develop. In explaining the nature of fetishes and the psychological and spiritual benefits that we can gain from their use, Bennett provides illuminating cross-cultural comparisons, stimulating exercises, and journaling opportunities.

From Beast Gods to Directional Guardian Spirits, this book explores the magic and mystery behind the charismatic, mostly stone, animal figures or fetishes skillfully carved by artists from the Southwestern Pueblos. Hundreds of pictures and insightful text highlight the impressive variety of forms, materials, and traditional and contemporary styles available to collectors. A price guide is included.

Native American fetishes: charming animal carvings, indigenous art, or objects of power? Fetishes have different meanings to different Native peoples. Behind each carving are traditional stories and beliefs. In this new revised edition of Spirit in the Stone, well-known dealer and scholar of Native American art Mark Bahti explores the roles the carvings play, the artists who create them, the history of fetish carvings through the twentieth century, the stories about the animals and other objects, as well as the materials favored by carvers.

The best general reference for collectors.

How Can Fetishes Help Us in our daily lives? What does the bear represent? The frog? The wolf? What powers do they contain? Noted Indian trader Kent McManis explains the different types of fetishes with special emphasis on the two major traditional types: the protective/healing group and the hunting group. He also has included dozens of new carvings to update the latest generation of artists coming into the field. Also provided are family trees for the more prominent families, along with more than two hundred fetishes in full color.