The Wheel of the Year

Lesson 1 of 9 · 5 min

What the Wheel of the Year is

The eight festivals

Four solar points (the two solstices and two equinoxes) alternate with four seasonal or 'cross-quarter' festivals, giving a festival roughly every six or seven weeks.

Historical context

Where it comes from

The eightfold Wheel developed within mid-twentieth-century British Wiccan and Druid circles and is particularly associated with Gerald Gardner and Ross Nichols of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids. Individual festivals draw on genuinely older Gaelic and Germanic observances, but the eightfold wheel as a single calendar is modern.

Historical context

Names came later still

Some sabbat names are attested seasonal festivals: Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh are recorded in medieval Irish sources. Others, notably Ostara, Litha and Mabon, were adopted as sabbat names in the twentieth century, Mabon only in the 1970s.

Why this matters

The Wheel doesn't need an invented ancient pedigree. It does mean that claiming an unbroken ancient lineage is inaccurate, and unnecessary.

In plain English

Eight seasonal markers, some old, some newly named, arranged into one calendar about seventy years ago.

Worth knowing

Dates vary by tradition and hemisphere. Many Wiccans mark the astronomical solstice or equinox rather than a fixed calendar date.

Worth remembering

The Wheel is a modern calendar built from older, unevenly documented festivals.

Where this comes fromShow

Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun (Oxford University Press, 1996)

A detailed history of British seasonal festivals and their documented customs.

Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon (2nd ed., 2019)

On the mid-twentieth-century assembly of the eightfold Wheel.

Where reliable evidence is limited, we say so rather than filling the gap.

Next: Samhain (SOW-in)

Where historians disagree, this app says so. Where traditions differ, no single one is presented as the correct Wicca. Our approach

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