The Wheel of the Year
Today we will be looking at The Wheel of the Year
The Wheel of the Year represents the ever turning cycle of the seasons and traditional pagan celebrations. It’s basically a calendar!
The wheel displays the 8 pagan sabbats
Yule/Midwinter/Winter Equinox
Imbolc/Candlemass
Ostara/Eostre/Spring Equinox
Beltane/May Day
Litha/Midsummer/Summer Solstice
Lughnasadh/Lammas
Mabon/Fall Equinox
Samhain
The Wheel above shows the dates for the Northern Hemisphere, and the Wheel below shows the dates for the Southern Hemisphere (That’s me!).
The Eight Sabbats
The word “Sabbat” comes from the “Witches’ Sabbath”, a medieval term designing an assembly that practices witchcraft. Indeed, the Sabbats are not regular holidays: they are days of power when we practice magick. In addition, each Sabbat falls on a focal point during the year, when nature has a specific energy. This is why there is a specific ritual for each one. Even if the Sabbats are based on ancient Celtic festivals, they also exist in a lot of other cultures under different names. Furthermore, there are two types of Wiccan Sabbats: the Sun festivals and the Fire festivals.
The Sun Festivals
The Sun festivals are called as such because they are related to the Sun’s position around the Earth. For this reason, their date varies slightly each year. Amongst the four Sun Sabbats, there are two equinoxes (Mabon, Ostara) and two solstices (Yule, Litha). During the two equinoxes, the day and the night are of equal length: nature is in a perfect equilibrium. Thus, during those Sabbats, all magick should be aimed in reaching balance in your life. In contrast, the two solstices are moments of extreme imbalance between dark and light, where one triumphs over the other. Indeed, the Winter solstice (Yule) marks the longest night of the year while the Summer solstice (Litha) celebrates the longest day of the year. Those two Sabbats are times of transformation, appropriate for protection and purification spells.
The Fire Festivals
Contrarily to the Sun Festivals, the Fire Festival are not related to the Sun’s position around the Earth. They always happen at the same date each year, when nature’s energy is particularly powerful. The Sabbats of Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasadh fall under this category. Additionally, in ancient times, the Fire Festivals marked the cycles of agriculture and breeding. Even today, these days of power are celebrated in various cultures under different names (for example, a lot of cultures have their own feast of the dead in late October with a similar aesthetic to the Wiccan Samhain).
My next post will cover what all the different Sabbats celebrate and mean!
(also some fun ways to enjoy them)
