The Wheel of the Year

Last updated: Wednesday, 13 November 2024

Annual cycle of seasonal festivals observed by many modern pagan and neopagan traditions, marking the year’s main solar events and agricultural milestones.

A ‘coherent and balanced sequence of eight festivals over the duration of one calendar year’ (Cornish 2024), reflecting a cyclical view of time. Repetition, continuity, interconnectedness; a ‘sense of perpetual return’ (ibid.).

  1. Samhain (Oct 31-Nov 1): Marking the beginning of winter. Associated with death and the ancestors.
  2. Yule (Dec 20-23): Winter solstice, celebrating the rebirth of the Sun and the arrival of longer days.
  3. Imbolc (Feb 1-2): Fire festival marking the first signs of spring, honouring the Celtic goddess Brigid.
  4. Ostara (Mar 20-23): Spring equinox, celebrating fertility, new beginnings, and the return of life.
  5. Beltane (Apr 30-May 1): Fire festival welcoming the warm summer months, associated with fertility.
  6. Litha (Jun 20-23): Summer solstice, marking the longest day and the Sun’s peak strength.
  7. Lughnasadh (Aug 1-2): First of the annual harvest festivals, giving thanks for crops and abundance.
  8. Mabon (Sep 20-23): Autumn equinox, a time of balance, reflection, and the second harvest festival.

It is important to recognise the ritual Wheel of the Year as a modern construction. Nevertheless, at the same time, the Wheel is a more experiential, emotional, and sensory way of apprehending the cycles of the year. It is a means to situate practitioners in time and space, and to foster attention to the natural world around them, rather than quibble over the extent to which it is, or is not, historically authentic. It introduces different registers of time, enchanted and mythic, which respond to the flow of the seasons and the imagination rather than to the regulated order of clock time. The eternal battle between light and dark, life and death, is conceived of as a spiralling cycle, rather than a linear chronology of no return. To the contrary, the Wheel of the Year holds at its heart the celebration of return, rebirth, and renewal. — Helen Cornish, “Enchanting cyclical time: Living through the Wheel of the Year” (2024)

Tags: time

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