A British witch once observed, "When the table is set, you know it is tea time." This marvelous and so very English remark had nothing to do with tea but everything to do with ritual. Her expression was another way of saying, "When the altar is set, the candles lit, the circle cast, you know it is ritual time." Your deep self knows that you are ready to enter what Wiccans call "the place between the worlds," the place we often reach in dreams, or in art.

Another British witch gave me an even more useful insight. "Think of the formal toast," she said. "It encapsulates almost every aspect of ritual." First you touch the glass and feel its solidity. Then you raise the glass to your eyes, focusing on the wine as it swirls around. Then you raise the cup to your nose to smell the bouquet; your mind is focusing now on the scent. You clink the glass of another person, and your ears hear a clear, musical, resonant sound. Then finally, you taste the drink. If you go through this process with intention--and of course most people in bars and restaurants don't--you will taste the drink fully.

Although it may seem frivolous to compare a ritual toast with a ceremony, they are similar insofar as both use the senses to deepen one's attention. That's what candles, incense, music, gestures, wine or bread, chant, dance, and trance are all about, at least in part.

Every religious tradition shapes its rituals to allow participants to enter a deepened state of awareness and return safely to the workaday world when the ritual is over. Isaac Bonewits, in his book "Real Magic," describes ceremonies from many religious traditions and shows their similarities--how they all start with a welcoming or some kind of acknowledgment of place or the creation of sacred space. Then they slowly work up to a peak and at the end have some form of grounding or reconnecting with daily life.

But the most important thing about ritual is that it gets you to the deep center of things. We have all been to that place at some point in our lives. It's where everything is alive and connected to everything else. Some of us find it in meditation, or during times of great pain, illness, or danger. Others have experienced it in childbirth or during intense artistic or intellectual work. Often it can happen in a communal gathering where there is a shared purpose, in a righteous action, or in a political demonstration.

When I was 18, my mother took me to a Zuni Corn Dance. I was vaguely interested for the first hour but became bored. Then suddenly, time stopped, and the world became a vibrant, glowing reality. In the best of these experiences, we cease, if only for moments, feeling alienated from the universe and from each other.