"Wicca is a form of Neopaganism and modern Witchcraft. Wicca is a religion. Wicca is a spiritual path. Wicca is a way of life... and Wicca has the potential to be the most relevant and important new spiritual development of the 21st Century and supplant the irrational and superstitious religions prevalent in the past 2,000 years - as long as we can learn to keep it progressive and guard against its commercial exploitation and trivilisation." - Kevin Saunders, 2009

Last updated: 1 February, 2010

The Pagan Wheel of the Year - a revision

It never made sense to me that pagans, following nature-based spiritual paths, would fix major festivals to an artificial calendar. The minor sabbats are fixed to specific moments in the turning of the Sun - the solstices and equinoxes - why would the major sabbats not also be fixed to natural events? There is little, if any, evidence that our ancestors followed a year divided into eight, so how did this come to be?

Well, basically the founders of Wicca, Gerald Gardner, Doriene Valiente and others, seem to have made a serious miscalculation during their reconstruction and, in their enthusiasm, ended up with this eight-spoked Wheel of the Year instead of the twelve-spoked Wheel. The eight-spoked Wheel of the Year, in common usage by modern Pagans across the world, is barely 60 years old, but has become common because this error has been repeated over and over again... the twelve-spoked Wheel of the Year, however, can be traced back thousands of years to the time of the ancient Egyptians.

I had once thought, like many others, that the major sabbats were probably more lunar orientated, but this is not correct either. They are clearly part of the solar cycle. The lunar cycle is marked in another way during the esbats. A pagan surely has no problem following two cycles, lunar and solar, simultaneously. We worship the Goddess and God and their interaction, so why try to unify them when they are clearly two interdependent intertwining threads?

We should remember that the Gregorian Calendar that we use in our modern diaries is basically an artificial affair. We should also remember that back in the 17th Century adjustments were made to correct perceived anomalies. The change from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian shifted dates by around 11 days (to correct anomalies already clear). If we take the Julian Calendar, that was in use for many centuries, the Sun would have moved into Scorpio around the 1st November rather than the 23rd October as it does today. The Sun would have moved into Taurus around 1st May instead of the 22nd April. In fact the Zodiac 'months' would have matched the Julian Calendar much more closely. A tenth century reference (Cormac's glossary - there are many others) records Druids marking Beltane on the 1st May in honour of the god Bel. (Cattle were driven through the fires - perhaps a symbol of Taurus.) The 1st of May in the tenth century would have coincided with the Sun moving into Taurus (six hundred years before Gregorian calendar came into play). The 1st May in the 21st century is simply an artificial date on the Gregorian Calendar that has no actual correspondence with a natural event.

The figure below shows the pagan festivals set against the Zodiac Wheel of the Year with the months adjusted to correspond with the signs. With these adjustments, we can see that the major sabbats now match the dates that have been used for hundreds of years. When we changed to the Gregorian Calendar the dates would have remained the same, as the actual date had been used for many centuries, but the fact that they matched up with a major event in the solar astrological movement would have been lost. The major sabbats, I believe, should mark the entrance of the sun into the signs of Scorpio (Samhain), Aquarius (Imbolg), Taurus (Beltane), and Leo (Lughnasadh).

These signs are the fixed signs in the Zodiac. So the occasions would mark the times the sun moved into this fixed energy. These four signs are also associated with the four elements of Earth , Air, Fire and Water. So the occasion marked the sun moving into signs representing fixed elemental energies. The fact that it is the sun moving into those signs is why they are known as fire festivals - of course! Many people use Samhain to mark the end of one year and the beginning of the next (even though a circle doesn't have a beginning or end). If we celebrate it as the sun enter Scorpio we find it is represented by an animal that represents death (through its sting) and rebirth (as it sheds its skin) - exactly the sort of symbolism Samhain tends to bear. The other (minor) Sabbats - The Winter and Summer Solstices and the Equinoxes of Spring and Autumn - fall on the four elelements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water moving into signs represenying cardinal elemental emergies.

The minor sabbats - the equinoxes and solstices - would not have moved with the change from the Julian to Gregorian calendars as the fact that the Sun is at its height or the day and night are equal would have been obvious even to the illiterate. They mark, and always have, the movement of the Sun from one sign to the next. This does mean, however, that they no longer fall as cross-quarter dates. It also clearly suggests that four festivals (marking the Sun's movement into Gemini, Virgo, Pisces and Sagittarius) are missing. There are plenty of references to festivals at these dates. The most readily available refer to christianised Celtic saints, though the stories associated with them suggest earlier pagan roots as so many do.

*(Dates given here are for the commonly used Gregorian Calendar)

It makes far more sense to me for those following a path so closely connected to nature to fix them in this way than to an artificial calendar imposed by the religious leaders of a path that had lost touch with its nature-based roots. I suspect most pagans will continue using the eight-fold wheel. Whilst the major sabbats (if applied to the Gregorian Calendar) are not tapping into the energies as originally intended, the fact that so many people are involving themselves in a festival creates considerable energy in itself. As with all things, it is a matter for personal choice, though being Wiccan (an occult path rather than a mystical) surely it is important to apply oneself to the activities of the goddess and god rather than a calendar perverted by papal decree.

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