Living by the cycles of nature is remarkably easy and takes no major life changes, just following what feels instinctively right and authentic to you. It is about listening to your body, your mind and your spirit - voices that can get drowned out by the noise and bombardment of often conflicting information and promises of instant popularity and success if you buy the right brands or sign up to the right network.
You may decide to go along to a neopagan gathering at a seasonal change point or find out more about one of the more nature-based forms of spirituality. However, the purpose of this book has been to introduce some of the best of the old ideas that can be incorporated into the busy world of today that has its benefits as well as its drawbacks. Paganism, like every other form of spirituality, has to evolve and to opt in rather than opt out of the modern world in which most of us must live.
This has been an appropriate book for me to write at this point in my life. At nearly 60, with grown-up children, only now have I realised that I can travel anywhere with just my computer and hand luggage, and that a lot of the items of material security I thought essential for happiness are merely trappings. As I clear the junk of 30 years in a house I must soon leave, I realise the only lasting and necessary treasures are my children and my happy memories, and how truly lucky I am to have those.
I finally watched my now floorless caravan, the setting for so many happy days with the children and a writing sanctuary away from my DIY-mad neighbours, being towed away to the caravan park in the sky. As the wild geese from the local bird park practise their flight before migration, as I have seen them do so many times, I know that autumn in my life as well as the season is rapidly approaching.
I have to gather in what is of worth and accept that some things did not work out and that becoming 60 is not as frightening or old as I thought it would be. I am a Travelodge druidess through and through, a crushed-velvet witch (as one welly-booted pagan described me) and so, for me, neopaganism will always be mixed with home comforts.
But true paganism is what you feel in your heart, what you say and how you make every day count. Whether you celebrate the passing seasons in a neon-lit discotheque or on a wild hillside, whether you dance or walk more sedately or uncertainly through the year and your life, you leave your sacred footprints for future generations.
Cassandra