Cosmic Jewel

Lucinda sometimes called her beloved mare Jewel her “red dragon horse,” a name that spoke to her strength and grace, her deep connection to the earth, and a mysterious quality that seemed to reach into another realm. After Jewel passed away, I spent time quietly connecting with her spirit as I prepared to create her Soul Essence Portrait.

What arose were some of the most extraordinary visions I have experienced with a horse. I felt Jewel’s consciousness as something vast, extending far beyond physical form. In one vision, our familiar reality seemed to exist within an immense multidimensional space. In another, I saw the experiences of our lives rising like individual trees above the surface of the earth, while beneath the surface their roots were intimately connected. I had the sense that Jewel was showing me something about the way horses know the world, always in relationship, within a greater field of belonging.

As I began imagining her portrait with cosmic themes, I looked at images of the Flying Dragon Nebula in the constellation Cygnus. I could see Jewel there immediately, her red form emerging from fiery clouds of stars and light. That vision became Cosmic Jewel.

Throughout the creation of the portrait, I shared my experiences and visions with Lucinda. It was only when she saw the finished painting that she began to share experiences of Jewel that remarkably echoed my own. Until then, I had never heard them. Our separate encounters with this mare had led us into the same sense of her vastness and connection to something beyond her physical form.

Cosmic Jewel holds for me the mystery Jewel opened during those quiet encounters: that each being can be wholly individual while belonging to something immeasurably larger, and that the horses we love may carry ways of knowing that reach far beyond what we can see.