Life is not a smoothly continuous process, but is broken into stages. There is life and death, becoming and passing away, and in this alternation man is continually returned to the primeval period, and he is thereby the object of divine creative activity whereby he can enter a new stage of life as a new man, until he has reached the highest stage of the true and perfect man, until indeed he has ascended by stages not only to the point of being godlike but of becoming divine. All ceremonies of transition, such as at birth, initiation, marriage and death, correspond very closely with each other in that on every occasion they repeat the drama of primeval creation. Man passes into death and returns to the total godhead and the Tree of Life, and then the godhead re-enacts the creation and man issues again from the Tree of Life as a new creature. . .

(Pacific Islands Culture)