The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

occasion she attempts suicide but finds within herself a fierce
determination to live. She finally uncovers the source of her
despair and isolation and is drawn into the spiritual life of the
women of her people.
Ephanie’s search for psychic unity is founded in ritual
awareness which, in turn, is embedded within the adaptive and
inclusive properties of the oral tradition as well as the ritual of
her Guadalupe people. Ephanie learns to understand how her life
and the lives of her mother and grandmother parallel the tribal
narratives. As she understands this and as she lives out the
implications of that understanding, she is able to accept her
place within the ritual tradition of her people and her
responsibility to continue it. As a breed Ephanie is raised
outside of the formal tradition of her people, but inwardly she is
ritual-oriented. Her difficulty, which she shares with Loney,
Tayo, Abel, Cedarfair, and Welch’s nameless protagonist, is
finding a point of entry into the ritual patterns of her people.
One function of the storytelling part of the oral tradition is to
give people a basis of entry into the more obscure ritual
tradition. Entry into the narrative tradition enables individuals to
realize that the significance of their own lives stems in large part
from their interlocking connections with the lives of all the
others who share a particular psychospiritual tradition. It lets
people realize that individual experience is not isolate but is
part of a coherent and timeless whole, providing them with a
means of personal empowerment and giving shape and direction
to their lives. The seamless web of human and nonhuman life,
which is simultaneously the oral tradition and the thought of Old
Spider Woman, is neither causal nor sequential. It is
achronological and ahistorical, and it is simultaneously general
and highly specific.
These universal characteristics of life are embodied in the
oral tradition, which is composed of the rituals and their