"Today, in the increasingly secular West, we hold neither adequate rites of passage for our youth, nor initiations for our growing number of elders. We have neither healing rituals for the loss of an unborn child, nor ways to mark the severing of a twenty-year relationship. [This book] is written for that part in us that yearns for living ritual. Drawing on his own experience, and on the ritual cultures of the indigenous world, William Ayot demonstrates the value and power of ritual to revive and 're-wire' our sometyimes confused and disconnected spirits."--Back cover.