Prayer is practical, Marianne Williamson tells us, and Illuminata brings prayers into our daily lives, with prayers on topics from releasing anger to finding forgiveness, from finding great love to achieving intimacy. There are prayers for couples, for parents and for children, prayers to mend broken relationships and prayers to overcome obsessive and compulsive love.

There are prayers to heal the soul, prayers to heal the body and prayers for work and creativity. Another section includes rites of passage, ceremonies of light for the important events in our lives: blessings of the newborn, coming of age, marriage and death.

'Read my prayers or someone elses's' Marianne Williamson says.

'By all means create your own.'

Illuminata is a way to bring prayer into practical use, creating a sweeter, more abundant life for yourself and the people you care about.

'No conventional therapy' she says, 'can release us from a deep and abiding psychic pain. Through prayer we find what we cannot find elsewhere: a peace this is not of this world.'

Marianne Williamson is the author of the No. 1 New York Times bestsellers A Return to Love, A Woman's Worth, Healing the Soul of America, Enchanted Love and Illuminata. Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages.