The Carpathians - University of British Columbia

and the goddesses as viewed from a matrifocal
perspective, in which they appear
powerful and wise in their own right rather
than petty adjuncts to supreme male
deities.
Since myths and archetypes transmit
"cultural possibilities," the reinterpretation
of the Goddess myths offers to contemporary
culture mytho-religious figures which
present alternatives to patriarchal socialization
and values. "The reemergence of
Goddess spirituality has never been a simple
attempt to reinstate the Goddess religion of
the Neolithic era, about which we have limited
knowledge," she writes. "Rather, the
contemporary movement is based on creative
expressions of continuity with the cultural
presence of the Goddess... regarded as
a potent metaphor for both the immanence
of the divine and the transcendence that is
the larger reality, the sacred whole."
In the "Preface" to a new edition of The
Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in
Native American Traditions, a series of
essays exploring a matrifocal feminine spirituality
in the context of Native American
traditions," Paula Gunn Allen writes that
"as we enter the year that marks five centuries
of European-Native contact, the
recovery of American Indian culture and
tradition proceeds ever more rapidly." With
the resurgence in Native cultural restoration
comes a resounding affirmation of
survival and endurance, an affirmation of
"tribal values, tribal thought, and tribal
understanding." Both Gunn Allen and
Spretnak discern a convergence of
advanced science and cosmology with
ancient understandings. ".. .The new dedication
to restoring the entire planet, and
the new findings of the advanced sciences,
which resemble more and more the old
understandings of the nature of life and the
universe, all these bear witness to something
sacred happening," writes Gunn
Allen. In Sacred Hoop, she describes the
gynocratic, mother-right aspects of traditional
Native culture, linking these with the
primary power of creation, the power to
give life which is the "source and model for
all ritual magic... It is the power of Thought,
or Mind, which gives rise to all things, creating
the hoop of being." Mothering, she
writes, is the power to make, create and
transform.
With European colonization has come a
devaluation of the matrifocal, matrilineal
traditions among contemporary Native
Americans. Gunn Allen discusses the great
differences in world view between tribal
understandings and Western culture,
emphasizing the different purposes, structures,
symbols, time orientation, and
themes of the Native oral tradition's ritual,
ceremonial stories in comparison with
Anglo-European literature. A professor of
English at the University of California, Los
Angeles, she combines a feminist approach
with keen insight into the underlying
mechanisms of both tribal and European
storytelling conventions. Several essays in
this collection explore the time, space, and
motifs of ritual literature and detail the
effects patriarchal themes of violence, conflict
and heroism. Many of the tribes,
including her Keres (Pueblo) people, she
writes, valued balance and harmony, an
orderly transfer of power through "the
peaceful exchange of dominance," mediated
by and through women. The theme of
overlooked gender patterns and possibilities
runs through all three works. As does
Spretnak, Gunn Allen stresses the power of
literature to point to these other possibilities.
The power of literature is its power of
image, its ability to arouse the imagination,
she writes. Through its imaging qualities,
literature has the power to change a people's
fate; the resurgence of Native literature
and writers is evidence that tribal cultures
have survived and endured.
In The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual
Diversity in American Indian Culture,
anthropologist Walter L. Williams explores