Wheel of the Year
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The Wheel of the Year is celebrated as the natural cycle of the seasons, commemorated by the eight Sabbats.
In Paganism all of nature is cyclical, the passing of time is a cycle, represented by a circle or wheel. The course of birth, life, decline, and death that we see in our human lives is echoed in the seasons.
Wiccans have their own traditions for this:
The eight Sabbats are holidays that celebrate the passing of the year. Each Sabbat also symbolizes a time in the life of the Wiccan God, who is born from the Wiccan Goddess, grows to full manhood, mates with her, and reigns as king during the summer. He then declines and dies, rising anew the next year.
The Sabbats, with the traditional dates of their celebrations, are:
- Midwinter/Yule, on the winter solstice
- Imbolc, on February 2 and the preceding eve
- Ostara, on the spring equinox
- Beltane/Beltaine/May Day on May 1 and the preceding eve
- Midsummer/Litha, on the summer solstice
- Lughnasadh/Lammas, on August 1 and the preceding eve
- Mabon, on the autumnal equinox
- Samhain, on November 1 and the preceding eve October 31
This calendar follows the seasons of the northern hemisphere, where the celebrations that form the basis of the modern Sabbats originated. Wiccans in the southern hemisphere usually celebrate the Sabbats on the opposite dates of the year (6 months apart from the northern dates), in order to follow the cycle of seasons where they live; i.e. an Australian Neopagan would celebrate Samhain on May 1, when a Canadian Neopagan would be celebrating Beltane.
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History of the Wheel
The four cross-quarter festivals (often called 'fire festivals') of Imbolc, Beltaine, Lughnasadh and Samhain are historically authentic and well attested in medieval Ireland; they probably derive from the first century Coligny Calendar which, being a lunisolar calendar, does not correspond to fixed days in the solar calendar.
The feast of Midwinter was indeed celebrated in England, being derived from the Roman feast of Saturnalia.
However, as a whole, the Wheel of the Year is likely a modern Wiccan construct, combining various traditions in order to make up an eightfold seasonal round. There is no evidence that any group of historical Pagans followed the full cycle; this can be demonstrated by the observation that some of the festivals are drawn from those of the Gaelic peoples and some from the Anglo-Saxons, while a third class have been constructed to fill out the assumed cycle.
- "No known pre-Christian people celebrated all the eight festivals of the calendar adopted by Wicca. Around the four genuine Gaelic quarter days are now ranged the Midwinter and September feasts of the Anglo-Saxons, the Midsummer celebrations so prominent in folklore and (for symmetry) the vernal equinox, which does not seem to have been commemorated by any ancient northern Europeans."
- Source: The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles, Ron Hutton
In England, the solstices and equinoxes are referred to as quarter days and the other four (sometimes called the fire festivals) as cross-quarter days. In Scotland, the fire festivals were (until a change of law in 1991) referred to as Quarter days, also as Rent days. This has led to some confusion of terminology, as different groups call different sets of festivals the 'Quarter days'.
Modern Interpretations of the Wheel
Some Wiccans are adopting dates for the (Cross-)Quarter Sabbats between the Equinoxes and Solstices based on a count of days rather than the Calends of the months, working on the assumption that the dates given above derive from the Roman based Gregorian Calendar. They recognize that the fire festivals are near the midpoints between the solstices and equinoxes, and use the midpoint dates instead of the traditional dates. These modern calculations tend to give dates a few days after the traditional calendar based dates - Feb. 4 or 5 for Imbolc, May 6 or 7 for Beltane, Aug. 5 or 6 for Lughnasadh, and Nov. 5 or 6 for Samhain. There is some Archeological evidence for such day counting in Neolithic European cultures, including astronomical alignments in tombs to Sunrise about a week into November (Samhain) BBC TV Meet the Ancestors - The Orkney Tomb.
Others, who cite origins of the fire festivals in the Celtic calendar, dispute this practice as anachronistic and based on faulty logic.
Another variant of the Wheel sets the four Sun Sabbats (Yule, Ostara, Litha and Mabon) to the solstice/equinox dates, while the other four (called Moon Sabbats) are set depending on the phase of the moon, with Imbolc, Beltane and Lammas at full moon and Samhain at the new moon dates.
Gregorian months in the wheel of the year
- January ends at or near Imbolc in the northern hemisphere and Lughnasadh in the southern hemisphere.
- February begins at or near Imbolc in the northern hemisphere' Lughnasadh in the southern.
- March spans spring equinox in the northern hemisphere and autumn equinox in the southern. These equinoxes coincide on or about March 21.
- April ends at or near Bealtaine in the northern hemisphere, Samhain in the southern.
- May begins at or near Bealtaine in the northern hemisphere, Samhain in the southern.
- June spans summer solstice in the northern hemiphere and winter solstice in the southern. These solstices coincide on or about June 21.
- July ends at or near Lughnasadh in the northern hemisphere and Imbolc in the southern.
- August begins at or near Lughnasadh in the northern hemisphere' Imbolc in the southern. .
- September spans autumn equinox in the northern hemisphere and spring equinox in the southern. These equinoxes coincide on or about September 21.
- October ends at or near Samhain in the northern hemisphere, Bealtaine in the southern.
- November begins at or near Samhain in the northern hemisphere, Bealtaine in the southern
- December spans winter solstice in the northern hemisphere and summer solstice in the southern. These solstices coincide on or about December 21.
Astrological signs in the wheel of the year
The following refer to signs in the Western Tropical zodiac and not to the constellations of the same name used in the Sidereal zodiac .
- Capricorn begins at winter solstice in the northern hemisphere, summer solstice in the southern hemisphere.
- Aquarius spans Imbolc in the northern hemisphere, Lughnasadh in the southern.
- Pisces ends at spring equinox in the northern hemisphere, autumn in the southern.
- Aries begins at spring equinox in the northern hemisphere, autumn in the southern.
- Taurus spans Bealtaine in the northern hemisphere, Samhain in the southern.
- Gemini ends at summer solstice in the northern hemosphere, winter in the southern.
- Cancer begins at summer solstice in the northern hemisphere, winter in the southern.
- Leo spans Lughnasadh in the northern hemisphere, winter in the southern.
- Virgo ends at autumn equinox in the northern hemisphere, spring in the southern.
- Libra begins at autumn equinox in the northern hemisphere, winter in the southern.
- Scorpio spans Samhain in the northern hemisphere, Bealtaine in the southern.
- Sagittarius ends at winter solstice in the northern hemisphere, summer in the southern.