Go out at dusk in any month and stand still for a moment. The year is moving past the door.
It does not travel in a straight line. It turns.
Eight festivals mark that turning, and together they are called the Wheel of the Year.
Four of them fall on the solstices and equinoxes, when the sun itself sets the hour. The other four fall in the long spaces between, where the fields and the herds keep time instead.
The Eight Sabbats in Order
The wheel is most often counted from Samhain, where the old year closes and the dark takes the door.
- Samhain — the evening of October 31 into November 1
- Yule — the winter solstice, around December 21
- Imbolc — the evening of February 1 into February 2
- Ostara — the spring equinox, around March 20
- Beltane — the evening of April 30 into May 1
- Litha — the summer solstice, around June 21
- Lughnasadh — August 1, also called Lammas
- Mabon — the autumn equinox, around September 22
The solstice and equinox dates shift by a day or two from year to year, as the sun keeps its own slow arithmetic.
The four festivals that fall between are usually kept from sunset on the eve, when the first star is out and the day has finally let go.
Those are the eight. What follows is what they carry, and how they are held.
What the Wheel of the Year Actually Is
The wheel is a calendar, but it is also a story told in eight parts, and the story is told in light.
Light grows, reaches its height, fails, and returns.
Nothing in that cycle is truly a beginning, and nothing is truly an ending.
Each festival arrives already carrying the next one inside it, the way a green apple carries a brown seed.
At the longest night the light has already begun to turn back. At the brightest noon it has already begun to fade.
This is why the image is a wheel and not a ladder. A ladder is climbed and left behind. A wheel comes around again, wet with the same rain.
Greater Sabbats, Lesser Sabbats and Esbats
The eight are commonly sorted into two groups of four.
The greater sabbats, often called the fire festivals, are Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasadh.
They sit at the midpoints of the seasons and follow the rhythm of herds and fields — the smell of wet wool, the clatter of a gate, the smoke of a hilltop fire answered from another hill.
The lesser sabbats are Yule, Ostara, Litha and Mabon, fixed by the sun itself at the two solstices and the two equinoxes.
Neither group outranks the other in practice. The words describe origin, not importance.
Sabbats should not be confused with esbats.
Sabbats follow the sun. Esbats follow the moon, and there are twelve or thirteen of them each year.
The two cycles run alongside one another like a gold thread and a silver one, and the silver half is set out under moon phases.
Samhain, When the Year Closes
Samhain is kept from the evening of October 31 into November 1, when the wind has an edge to it and the dark reaches the window before supper.
The last harvest is in. The fields are bare, the mud has set hard, and the cold has arrived for good.
This is the sabbat of the dead, and of everything that has finished.
Names are spoken aloud into a quiet room. A place is set at the table with nobody to fill it, and a candle burns in a window for those who are gone.
Black and deep orange are the usual colors. Apples, nuts and root vegetables belong on the altar, still carrying the cold of the shed.
It is also a night for looking forward, because the dark is where the next year is made.
To those who came before, a light is left burning. Come to the warmth, and be remembered.
A fuller account of the night is given in the Samhain ritual.
Yule, the Longest Night
Yule falls on the winter solstice, around December 21. This is the shortest day of the year, and the darkness on either side of it is the longest the wheel allows.
Everything has stopped. The ground is closed, the trees are asleep, and the air tastes of iron and woodsmoke.
Yet the solstice is less the depth of winter than its hinge.
From this night the light lengthens again, a minute at a time, so quietly that only the calendar notices at first.
Evergreen branches are brought indoors because they hold their color when nothing else does.
Red, green and gold are the usual colors. Spiced drink and dried fruit belong here.
Candles are lit at dusk and kept burning as long as the night allows, until the wax has run down in slow ropes and the room has gone warm and amber.
The night is at its longest. Let the flame hold until morning, and let the light return.
Imbolc, the First Stirring
Imbolc is kept from the evening of February 1 into February 2, in the thinnest and palest part of the year.
Nothing is green yet. The change is underground and almost invisible, working in the dark beneath your feet.
Snowdrops appear and ewes come into milk. The days are noticeably longer than they were a month ago, and the light lingers a while at the edge of the sky before it goes.
Imbolc is associated with Brigid, keeper of the hearth fire, of poetry and of the smith’s craft.
White is the color. Milk, seeds and early bulbs belong on the altar.
This is a festival of cleaning, of clearing out, and of very small new flames.
Every candle in the house may be lit at once, until the rooms glow like a held breath, then put out one by one.
The seed has not broken the soil. Still it is awake. Let this small flame stand as its promise.
Ostara, the Balance Tips Toward Light
Ostara falls on the spring equinox, around March 20, on a morning that smells at last of wet earth rather than frost.
Day and night stand equal for a moment, level as water in a bowl, and then the light takes the larger share.
This is the sabbat of beginnings that can finally be seen.
Seeds go into soil and eggs are decorated. The windows are opened, and the stale cold of the house is let out into the garden.
Pale greens and yellows are common, along with anything freshly sprouted.
One quiet practice is to write a wish on an eggshell in soft pencil, then bury it in earth and let the dark keep it.
Ostara is used when you wish to start something and want the start properly marked.
Beltane, the Fires of Summer
Beltane is kept from the evening of April 30 into May 1, when the evenings run long and green and nobody wishes to go indoors.
Growth is no longer careful. It is loud, green and everywhere at once, climbing the wall and pushing up through the paving.
This is the great fire festival of the light half of the year.
Bonfires are built and ribbons are wound. Hawthorn blooms white against the hedge, and is left standing where it grows.
Red, white and green are the colors. Fresh flowers matter more than any object on the table.
Beltane celebrates union, of earth with sun, of two people, of desire with its object.
Fire before the summer. Let what is joined here grow tall, and let it grow green.
It stands directly opposite Samhain on the wheel, and the two are often felt as a pair — one fire lit into the summer, one candle lit against the dark.
Litha, the Sun at Its Height
Litha falls on the summer solstice, around June 21. The day is at its longest, the sun is at full strength, and the light seems unwilling to leave the sky.
This is the brightest point of the wheel, and also a turning.
After this the days shorten again, though the heat has not yet peaked.
Gold and full green are the colors. Honey, summer fruit and cut herbs belong on the altar, warm from the garden and still smelling of it.
Herbs cut at midsummer are widely held to be at their strongest.
Many are dried at this point, hung in bunches in a dark and airy room, and kept for the rest of the year.
Handling and drying are covered in the field guide for the green witch.
Fires are lit at dusk and watched until they fall to embers, and those who watched them walk home through a grey that never fully became night.
Lughnasadh, the First Harvest
Lughnasadh is kept on August 1, and is also called Lammas. The air stands thick and still, the fields have gone gold, and there is dust on everything.
The first grain is cut, and bread is baked from it and broken at the table while the crust is still too hot to hold.
The name is connected with Lugh, and the festival was long marked by games, fairs and contests.
Summer is still warm, yet something has changed in the quality of the light. It comes in at a lower angle now, and it has turned the color of honey.
Gold and brown are the colors. Bread, grain and the first fruit belong here.
This is the sabbat of first results, the first return on work begun in spring.
The first sheaf is cut. What was sown has answered. Let the bread be broken and shared.
Mabon, the Second Harvest
Mabon falls on the autumn equinox, around September 22, when the mornings come up grey and the evenings smell of leaves and rain.
Day and night are equal once more, and this time the dark takes the larger share.
Apples, late fruit and the main crop come in together, and the kitchen fills with baskets. Mabon is a festival of thanks and of weighing.
What was gathered is counted, and what failed is admitted without complaint.
Russet, brown and deep red are the colors. Fruit, wine and seed heads belong on the altar.
Some of what is set out is carried back outdoors afterward and left for the birds.
The scales are level. What was given is received with thanks, and what was lost is let go.
How the Sabbats Sit Opposite One Another
The wheel is a circle, so every sabbat stands across the empty middle from a partner, and the two look back at each other all year.
- Samhain faces Beltane, the dead and the living
- Yule faces Litha, the longest night and the longest day
- Imbolc faces Lughnasadh, the first stirring and the first harvest
- Ostara faces Mabon, the two balanced days
Reading the pairs is often more useful than reading the list in order.
Each festival explains the one standing opposite it. A thin Imbolc altar makes sense once the loaded Lughnasadh altar is remembered, white milk answering gold bread across half a year.
The Wheel South of the Equator
The dates given above follow the northern hemisphere, where Samhain arrives on a bare branch.
South of the equator the seasons are reversed, and many practitioners turn the wheel with them, keeping the festival that matches the weather at the window rather than the date on the page.
Samhain is then kept around April 30, and Beltane around October 31. Yule falls in June, and Litha in December.
Others hold to the northern dates for the sake of shared practice with distant covens, so that one flame answers another across the world on the same night.
Both approaches are in ordinary use. Choose once, write the choice down, and keep to it.
Setting a Sabbat Altar
A sabbat altar is dressed from whatever is actually outside the door — the mud, the blossom, the bare twig, the windfall gone soft on one side.
That single rule does more work than any long table of correspondences.
- Something growing, cut or fallen from the current season
- A color that matches the light outdoors
- Food or drink belonging to the festival
- One or two candles
Choosing, dressing and lighting those candles is covered in candle magic.
A sparse altar is not a failed one. An Imbolc altar is supposed to look thin, because February is thin.
Marking a Sabbat Alone
Most sabbats are kept by one person in an ordinary room, with the curtains drawn and one small flame standing on the table.
Group ritual is not required, and the wheel turns no less without it.
One simple shape serves for any of the eight.
- Clear and wipe the surface
- Cast the circle, if a circle is part of your practice
- Light the candle and name the sabbat aloud
- Say what the season has brought and what it has taken
- Eat or drink something belonging to the festival
- Close the circle and put out the flame
The opening step is described in full under the magic circle. Naming the sabbat aloud matters more than the exact words chosen, and the room alters a little once the name has been said into it.
The wheel has turned again. This night is named and kept. Let the season be welcome here.
Keeping the Wheel in Writing
A wheel kept only in memory blurs after two or three years. The nights run together and the details go the way of smoke.
Write each sabbat down on the night itself, while it is still in the room and the wax is still soft.
Record the weather, what stood on the altar, and what was said.
Record what you asked for, so that the next turn of the wheel can answer it.
The book of shadows is where those entries belong. After several years the pages stop reading as separate nights.
They begin to read as one long cycle, repeating with small differences, the way a tide comes back over the same stones.
When a Sabbat Passes Unmarked
Sabbats are missed. Work, illness and ordinary life take them, and the date goes by with the candle still lying in the drawer.
Nothing is broken by this. A festival may be kept late, quietly, on the first free evening that follows.
A candle lit three days after Imbolc is still an Imbolc candle.
The wheel does not ask for perfect attendance. It asks for attention.
Beginning the Wheel Where You Stand
There is no need to wait for Samhain in order to begin. Start at whichever sabbat comes next, whatever the weather is doing at the glass.
Keep that one properly, then the one after it, and let the circle close itself.
One full turn teaches more than any amount of reading about it.
By the second turn the eight dates stop being a calendar. They become a landscape — a dark field, a lit window, a green hill, a gold one — and you already know the way through it.
The wheel turns whether it is watched or not. Let it be watched.