The back cover of the book describes this as offering "a wealth of techniques, procedures, and suggestions for group of individual rituals that every women seeking a spiritual life can draw upon." Well, not all women. Basically, I'm an atheist and thoroughgoing rationalist, but one that not only seeks to better understand spirituality but wishes I could find a way to express myself within it rationally. I thought a form of paganism might do, since it seeks to root spirituality within the earth, ie reality. I resonated with this passage in the Introduction:

Spiritual does not necessarily mean credulous, shallow or naive. On the contrary, the deepest spirituality springs from the deepest thought. A profoundly spiritual ritual may have nothing to do with otherworldliness at all, but may celebrate the sacredness of the real and the natural... Women's rituals can have these very legitimate aims without any recourse to irrational beliefs... the new feminist spirituality is for everyone, regardless of belief or unbelief. It can be successfully related to traditional or nontraditional faith or to none.

But I'm afraid I find even here very little space between the spiritual and the supernatural and the superstitious, and I just can't take seriously the idea of "sewing a priestess robe" or "decorating an altar." Yet I kept this book on my shelves--I suppose because on some level I honor what Walker is trying to do, find her proposed rituals entertaining and intriguing, neo-Paganism fascinating. ( )