She explores such principles as androgyny and virginity, freeing them from the limited social context in which we have trapped them, and argues the necessity of feminine rituals in history. In her search for the original forms of the feminine, Hall has insisted that imagination is as valuable a tool as reason. She guides the reader on a journey through myths and symbols, confronting these not in the rational mode of the language itself, but on the deeper level of the unconscious life. Hall views the process as a modern form of the rites of passage, in which the initiate loses a part of herself, in groping through darkness toward this part acquaints herself with Mnemosyne, the memory of dreams, and thus is born a new way to the world.

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