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The 8 Seasons of the Year

Solstice & Equinox

There are 8 season in the Celtic year - 4 overlighted by the Sun and 4 by the Moon. The diagram below, called the Wheel of the Year, gives the names and times of the festivals. You will find different spellings in other places  but these are common ones and generally used.

bulletPut your pointer over the Wheel of the Seasons and click where you want to go ...

Wheel of the Seasons (Northern hemisphere) - The four Sun festivals, celebrate significant times in the annual progress of Earth around the Sun, the two solstices and the two equinoxes. The solstices are the longest day, 21st June, and the shortest day 21st December. The equinoxes are the two times in the year when day and night, light and dark, are of equal length. there are 13 weeks between one sun festival and the next.

The Moon festivals come half way between each pair of Sun feasts so again, there are 13 weeks between each Moon festival. If you do the arithmetic you'll see that there are 6 weeks from a Sun festival to a Moon festival and 7 weeks from a Moon festival to a sun festival.

Celtic shamans celebrate the "Eve", the evening and night before the due day, for both sun and Moon festivals. This is about going down into the dark, the womb, and re-birthing one's Self in the dawning of the new day and season.

The four sun festivals are presided over by the masculine element and the four moon feasts by the feminine. These latter were called the Quarter Days in mediaeval Britain and are still used by the Law Courts to define their year - Michaelmas which is fairly close to Samhain; Hilary which roughly equates to Imbolc; Easter which roughly coincides with Beltane; Lamas which equates to Lughnasadh.

bullet  For the southern hemisphere, transpose the dates - Midwinter becomes 20th June, Imbolc becomes 31st July, etc. And the sun has its zenith in the North ... the other side of the coin.

 

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