Re-enchanting the Forest: Meaningful Ritual in a Secular World

A compelling exploration of the lost yet crucial role of ritual in our increasingly secular lives. Today, in the 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 can leave us feeling alienated and bereft. Re-enchanting the Forest is written for that part in us that yearns for living ritual, that seeks to bring an embodied sense of solace and belonging back into our modern lives. 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 sometimes confused and disconnected spirits. With a foreword by Mark Rylance.

Praise for Re-enchanting the Forest

In today’s Western world, we are richer than we have ever been. The array of technologies, foodstuffs and consumer goods available to most of us would have rendered our ancestors speechless. We are told almost daily how lucky we are. So what is this huge hole at the centre of our culture? What is this grief that lurks beneath the surface? What is this thing we are missing, that so many of us can sense, but few can put their finger on?

It is, I think, a lack of understanding of our place in time and history, our loss of a deeper place in the natural order of things, a dim sense of our broken connections with the world beyond the human. A rediscovery of ritual is part of the necessary work to bind up this wound, and this book is a powerful part of the remedy.

Paul Kingsnorth, activist and author of The Wake and Real England

By introducing people to the ways of ritual, William Ayot helps people towards a wiser, richer, more connected life. Sobonfu Somé, initiated teacher, activist and author of The Spirit of Intimacy

This is the most compelling book I know on the vital but lost role of ritual in our lives. Neither an academic treatise nor a theological tract, Re-enchanting the Forest is about life as it is and might be lived in a secular world, a book that honoured my mind but reached directly into my heart and soul. I cannot recommend it highly enough, with only one caveat: reading it might change your life as it changed mine.

Parker J. Palmer, author of A Hidden Wholeness and Healing the Heart of Democracy

In this remarkable book, William Ayot reclaims the beauty of practical ritual to enhance our lives, to heal, to inspire and to reveal personal insights otherwise beyond our ken. Ritual comes home. We can welcome it back and hold it close to our hearts.

Professor Brian Bates, author of The Way of Wyrd

I love the way William Ayot’s book combines the story of his life with an exploration of the value and purpose of ritual. By weaving the accounts of his own challenges, described with such heartfelt honesty, with discussions of how to work with ritual, the whole subject comes alive. I found I couldn’t stop reading.

Philip Carr-Gomm, author of Druidcraft and Sacred Places

One of the most important and inspiring books I have ever read in the field of ritual practice. William Ayot shows us that ritual is nothing to be scared of. It is instead a vital aspect of an integrating psyche, as relevant and essential today as ever, and a true ally to well-being, perspective and purpose.

Ben Walden, Founding Director, Contender Charlie

This is a powerful book, a handy source to rediscover the lost art of rituals.

Satish Kumar, Editor-in-Chief of Resurgence & Ecologist Magazine

William Ayot guides us masterfully through the theory of ritual and its cultural heritage into its very essence.

Nicholas Janni, founder of Core Presence
Associate Fellow, University of Oxford Said Business School

 

Besides being beautifully written, gripping and moving, this book is important. At a time when humanity is slowly shifting from driven logos to connection and nurture, we need tools to bring us back into the stream of our personal and collective lives. William Ayot, in amazing, unpretentious simplicity, offers us ways to remember the rituals and ceremonies that have guided humanity since the dawn of time. In the United States, where I live, the split between detached and connected is particularly deep. The ideas and stories presented here are sure to have an impact on those consciously ushering in a different age.

Laurence Hillman, astrologer and author of Planets in Play

 

William Ayot takes the mysterious and elucidates it with simplicity, practicality and clarity while lifting the apparently ordinary to the realm of mystery. If you have shied away from religion or ceremony yet instinctively know there is a more-than-human world to engage in somewhere, this beautiful book is for you.

Richard Olivier, artistic director of Olivier Mythodrama and author of Shadow of the Stone Heart

 

William Ayot introduces us to the art and application of ritual in one of the most clear, insightful and illuminating accounts I have ever read. Many books claim that they will change your life - this one doesn’t - but if you let it, this book can work away at you from the inside, providing guidance and encouragement until you find your own courage, seek out your own rituals, and re-enchant your own life.

Andy Logan, co-founder of the Praxis Centre, Cranfield University School of Management

 

Through the kinds of authentic ritual that William Ayot shares with us in this wise and generous book, we can all learn to experience a different kind of knowing: one that cares deeply for our souls.

Geoff Mead, author of Coming Home to Story and
Telling the Story: The Heart and Soul of Successful Leadership
 

Beautifully written and profoundly important for our times. This book speaks to an ancient and urgent need directly and accessibly - it’s a very potent work.

Nick Ross, Director, A Different Drum

 

Perhaps our age is both the most abstracted and the most materialistic ever. We need to find new ways of expressing our current confusion and our longing for re-connection. Ritual – like art – builds bridges into the dream-time where some of the answers lie. William Ayot’s book has roots in a wiser past, and branches that stretch into a more embodied future.

Professor David Peters, Clinical Director, Westminster Centre for Resilience, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Westminster