The paper focuses on various aspects of symbolic and sacred space in the novel Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, discussing the following issues: the Native American versus the Anglo-American attitude towards the land, symbolic geography as a map of the hero’s healing and regeneration, the hero’s journey on the mountain as Axis Mundi, sacred space as a reflection of the spirit world, the construction of barriers and fences that exclude, such as the exclusion of Natives beyond the garbage dump of Gallup, the Native American slum as a space situated between cultures, the reservation as a symbol of separation; the desert as a metaphor of spiritual emptiness and despair; the uranium mine as a symbolic rape of Mother Earth, the novel Ceremony as a ceremonial sacred space of healing comparable to a sand-painting, the hero’s return to the kiva at the center of the Pueblo community, as a way of remembering and remembering Native American identity.
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