What it is
Many modern Pagans keep eight festivals a year: the two solstices, the two equinoxes, and four days that fall roughly between them at the start of February, May, August, and November. Together they are called the Wheel of the Year, and in many traditions they are also called sabbats. The four cross-quarter days carry Irish names, Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh, and Samhain. The solstices and equinoxes carry a mixture of English, Norse, Welsh, and invented ones.
The wheel as a single eightfold cycle was put together in England in the 1950s. Each of its parts has a long history, some of it ancient and much of it medieval or early modern, but no ancient people is known to have kept all eight. That is no criticism of the modern calendar, which has been loved and lived by two generations. It does mean that a reader who wants to know where the festivals come from has to look in several different places: the poets and antiquarians of the ancient world, the scribes of medieval Ireland and England, the folklorists who recorded the customs of the countryside, and the almanac makers who sold the year to everyone.
Where to begin
Read the Irish riddle in The Wooing of Emer that names the four great feasts, then the chapter on the months in Bede's The Reckoning of Time. Then take Maire MacNeill's Festival of Lughnasa as a model of what careful study of one festival can do. For the modern wheel, read the chapter on the sabbats in Gardner's Witchcraft Today, described in the guide to Witchcraft and Modern Paganism.
Ancient calendars
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Works and Days Hesiod. Greek verse. About 700 BCE. B 1
A farmer's year told by the rising and setting of the stars, with the right season for plowing, sailing, and harvest, and a list of lucky and unlucky days of the month. The oldest surviving European almanac, in effect.
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Fasti Ovid. Latin verse. Left unfinished in 8 CE. B 1
A poem on the Roman religious calendar, one book for each month from January to June, explaining the festivals, their rites, and their myths, sometimes from interviews with the gods themselves. Ovid was sent into exile before he could write the second half.
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The Coligny calendar Gaulish. Bronze tablets of the second century CE. Found in 1897. B 2
Fragments of a large engraved calendar that sets out a five-year cycle of lunar months, adjusted to the sun, with days marked as good or not good. The first month is Samonios, a name that has been connected with the Irish Samain. The only substantial calendar in a Celtic language from antiquity.
Medieval sources
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Tochmarc Emire (The Wooing of Emer) Old Irish. Earliest version perhaps eighth century, surviving in later manuscripts. B 2
The hero Cu Chulainn courts Emer in riddles, and she demands that he go without sleep from Samain to Imbolc, from Imbolc to Beltaine, and from Beltaine to the harvest feast. The text pauses to explain each one. The classic witness to the four great feasts of the Irish year.
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Sanas Cormaic (Cormac's Glossary) Old Irish. Attributed to Cormac mac Cuilennain, who died in 908. B 2
A dictionary of hard words, explaining Beltaine as a "lucky fire" through which the druids drove cattle against disease, and Imbolc as the season of ewes' milk. The etymologies are often wrong. The customs they describe are the earliest record we have.
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De temporum ratione (The Reckoning of Time) Bede. Latin. 725. B 2
A monk's treatise on the calendar and the date of Easter, with one short chapter on the months of the pagan English. It is the only source for the goddess Eostre, who gave her name to Easter, and for Hretha, for Modranecht, the Mothers' Night at midwinter, and for the summer months called Litha.
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Ynglinga saga, in Heimskringla Snorri Sturluson. Old Norse. About 1230. B 2
Snorri says that Odin ordained three sacrifices: at the start of winter for a good year, at midwinter for growth, and in summer for victory. In the saga of Hakon the Good he describes the Christian king moving the feast of Yule to the date of Christmas. Late evidence, written by a Christian, but the best the North gives us.
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The Kalender of Shepherdes French, Paris, 1491. English versions from 1503. L 3
A popular almanac and encyclopedia for lay readers: the months and their labors, the zodiac man showing which sign rules each part of the body, the planets and their children, and rules for health. Reprinted in England for more than a century.
The folklorists of the seasons
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Observations on Popular Antiquities John Brand. 1777. Enlarged by Henry Ellis, 1813. B 3
Customs of the English year from New Year's Day to Christmas, with their supposed origins. Brand thought many of them were survivals of popery as much as of Paganism. The starting point of English folklore study.
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The Every-Day Book William Hone. Two volumes, 1826 and 1827. B 3
A radical publisher's book of the days of the year, its saints, customs, weather lore, and curiosities, issued in weekly parts and filled with letters from readers. Charles Lamb contributed.
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The Book of Days Robert Chambers. Two volumes, 1864. B 3
A "miscellany of popular antiquities in connection with the calendar", one or more entries for every day of the year. Uneven, enormous, and still the quickest way to find what a given day once meant.
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The Golden Bough James George Frazer. Third edition, 1906 to 1915. T 3
The volumes called Balder the Beautiful gather the fire festivals of Europe, at midsummer, Beltane, and Halloween, and read them as relics of sun charms and human sacrifice. The theory is discarded. The collection of customs remains, and its influence on the modern wheel is everywhere. See Reference and Bibliography.
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British Calendar Customs A. R. Wright and T. E. Lones. Three volumes for England, 1936 to 1940. B 3
A systematic gathering of recorded customs for movable feasts and fixed days, with sources for each. Dry, reliable, and still useful.
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The Festival of Lughnasa Maire MacNeill. 1962. B 2
A study of the Irish harvest festival at the start of August from medieval texts and from nearly two hundred places where it was still kept on hilltops and at lakes and wells in living memory. One of the great works of Irish folklore.
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The Year in Ireland Kevin Danaher. 1972. B 3
The Irish calendar customs from Saint Brigid's Day to Christmas, gathered from the archives of the folklore collectors and described plainly. The best short book on any national festival year.
The almanac tradition
Almanacs were the most widely owned printed books in early modern England after the Bible. A cheap annual pamphlet gave the calendar of saints' days and fairs, the phases of the moon, the times for bleeding and planting, the eclipses, and a forecast of the year's weather and politics by the stars. Most were thrown away when the year ended. The survivors are a record of what ordinary readers wanted to know about time.
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Merlinus Anglicus Junior William Lilly. Annual almanac from 1644. L 3
The almanac of the leading astrologer of the English Civil War, which sold in the tens of thousands. Lilly's picture prophecies of 1651 were later taken to have foretold the plague and the fire of London, and he was questioned about them in 1666. His Christian Astrology is in the guide to Astrology.
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Vox Stellarum Francis Moore. Annual almanac from 1697, under this title from 1700. L 3
A physician and astrologer's almanac that outlived him by three centuries. Almanacs under the name of Old Moore are still sold.
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Predictions for the Year 1708 Jonathan Swift, writing as Isaac Bickerstaff. 1708. L 3
Swift predicted the death of the almanac maker John Partridge on a fixed day, then published an account of the death, and left Partridge to spend the following year insisting that he was alive. The most famous attack on the astrological almanac.
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Poor Richard's Almanack Benjamin Franklin. Philadelphia. For the years 1733 to 1758. L 3
A parody of the astrological almanac that became the best-selling almanac in the colonies, opening with a prediction of the death of a rival compiler. Its proverbs have outlived its jokes.
Calendars, almanacs, and festival programs printed by Pagan groups since the 1960s are collected as ephemera in the Waters.
The modern wheel
Gerald Gardner's Witchcraft Today of 1954 names four great sabbats, on the eves of February, May, August, and November. The solstices and equinoxes were added in his circle a few years later, and his friend the Druid Ross Nichols kept the same eight festivals. Doreen Valiente's writings gave the cycle much of its liturgy, and the names Litha, Ostara, and Mabon for the solstice and equinox festivals were added in the United States in the 1970s. The guide to Witchcraft and Modern Paganism describes the books in which all this happened. Practitioner books on the festivals, from 1960 to the present, are shelved at B 5.
Things to watch for
- Eight is modern. The four Irish feasts are well attested in medieval sources. The importance of the solstices varies from people to people. The combination of the two sets into one wheel dates from the 1950s.
- Names. Litha comes from Bede's names for the summer months, Ostara from Jacob Grimm's guess at a German form of Eostre, and Mabon from a figure of Welsh legend with no known connection to the autumn equinox. They are good names, and they are new ones.
- No lord of the dead. The "Celtic god of the dead" called Samhain is an invention of eighteenth-century antiquarians. In Irish the word names the feast and the month of November.
- Old style and new. When Britain changed calendars in 1752, eleven days were dropped. Customs kept on "Old May Day" or "Old Christmas" fall eleven or twelve days later than their names suggest. Check which calendar a source uses.
- Survival or revival. A custom recorded in 1850 is evidence for 1850. Claims that it goes back to the Druids need evidence from in between.
- The other hemisphere. Pagans in the southern hemisphere often turn the wheel around, keeping Samhain at the end of April. Books written in the north do not always say so.
On the shelves
Modern books on the Wheel of the Year are shelved at the West Gate in class B 5, and the folklore of seasonal festivals in B 3. The Irish, English, and Norse sources stand in B 2, and Hesiod and Ovid in B 1. Astrological almanacs are shelved at the South Gate with astrology in L 3, and calendars and almanacs printed as ephemera are kept in the Waters. Related guides: Witchcraft and Modern Paganism, Astrology, and Natural Magic and Folk Magic.