The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

connect a person with the world work:
But you know, grandson, this world is fragile. The word he
chose to express “fragile” was filled with the intricacies of
a continuing process, and with a strength inherent in spider
webs woven across paths through sand hills where early in
the morning the sun becomes entangled in each filament of
web. It took a long time to explain the fragility and intricacy
because no word exists alone, and the reason for choosing
each word had to be explained with a story about why it
must be said this certain way. (p. 35)
Two of Ceremony’s major themes are the centrality of
environmental integrity and the pacifism that is its necessary
partner, common motifs in American literature in the last quarter
of the twentieth century. Silko develops them entirely out of a
Laguna/Keres perspective, for both themes are fundamental to
the fabric of Keres pueblo life and thought. She also takes up
witchcraft as a central theme, and in turn weaves these strands
into the design laid down in the clan story, which itself is the
prose account or prescription for a ceremony.
Momaday was the first American Indian novelist to take up
the subject of ritual as witchcraft in considering its effect on
Abel and his people in House Made of Dawn. There he
explored the tribal mode of perceiving the conflict between good
and evil as a complementary dialogue and compared it both to
the Christian belief that all pagan ritual is evil and is by nature
opposed to the good and to the contemporary feeling of some
Christians and urban Indians that beliefs in ritual or witchcraft
are primitive and have been culturally inculcated into members
of a cultural system. In Ceremony Silko continues this
exploration, positing a ceremony that will counter the
“witchery.” Like Momaday, she sees ritual as having dual faces,
one evil, one good. Unlike Momaday’s protagonist, Silko’s