I Send a Voice

By Evelyn Sybil Mary Eaton (1902 - 1983).

178 Pages | First Quest Book edition 1978, 5th printing 1990 | Softcover | Quest Books, U.S.A. | ISBN: 0835605116.

A FIRST PERSON ACCOUNT of the consciousness expanding, transforming rites of an Amerindian Sweat Lodge.

Evelyn Eaton writes of her compelling determination to become worthy of participating in a Sweat Lodge healing ritual. Later, after undergoing ordeals inside and outside the Lodge, she dared to ask Power Man for a Pipe. I Send a Voice provides an unusually authentic picture of the Amerindian during one of his most sacred and esoteric rites. With Evelyn, we live through the deep drama of numerous experiences of physical and spiritual healings: grow to love, admire, and respect the powerful Grandfathers.

From page 36:

" Sharing was the point. Someone gathered and brought the tule reeds. Someone brought the rocks and the wood for the fire. Someone drew the water and carried it in pails. Many hands must have built the Sweat Lodge, cutting and trimming the willow trees, planting them in the ground, bending them symmetrically together to support the roof. In the old days someone would have cured the deerskin or the buffalo hide to stretch on the framework. Then there would be a ritual to bless it, in which everyone concerned would take part.

The description of such a ritual was in Chapter III of Brown's The Sacred Pipe. There was a diagram showing the Inipi, the purification lodge. The Sweat Lodge here was made by another tribe, but the principle was the same. I thought of the circle, in all its symbolism, from a glyph of the Creator, that Point within the Circle, whose center is everywhere, to its representative, the sun, source of light, life and spiritual illumination. From there, I went to meditation on the Medicine Wheel, a mandala of concentric depths and intricate designs, where everything in the universe has its appropriate place. "