the wiccan sabbats

The eight festivals of the Wheel of the Year mark the liturgical calendar of the Wiccan religion. As with so many practices within Wicca, these celebrations contain within them several different layers of meaning.

On the surface, the Wheel of the Year represents the turning of the seasons. Beginning at mid-winter, we watch the days grow longer; the first garden calendars appear in the mail. By Imbolc the sun is warming. Sometimes we can hear the calling flights of wild geese high above, the first buds are seen on the trees. Oestara marks the middle of spring. We prepare our gardens for planting. Beltane brings warmth, flowers, the full blooming of the earth. We pass Litha or Mid-Summer when the sun reaches the zenith and the days begin to shorten. Then come the busy harvest festivals of Lammas and Mabon as the days grow shorter and the air turns crisp and cold. And finally we reach Samhain when the last of the crops are in from the fields and the chill of winter is almost upon us.

At a deeper level, the Wheel of the Year also marks the seasons of our own lives and deaths. We are born, we grow and learn. We work hard to make a life for ourselves, and eventually we grow old and we die. Only to be born again with the turning of the Wheel. In this we are one with all of the natural world, and realizing that connection is an important part of what it means to be Wiccan.

Deeper still, the Wheel talks to us of initiation. We come to the path full of life and light, growing and maturing as we continue with our studies. We learn the easy steps of tasks, of mythology, of external trappings. But we also begin to plumb the inner reaches as we learn the Mysteries that only the Gods can teach. Until, at last, we come to that greatest Mystery of all, the mystery of Death and rebirth. For the initiatory process is a form of death, and the initiation itself is a rebirth. Linking this initiatory path to the Wheel of the Year was one of the reasons why it was traditional for a student to study for one full turn of the Wheel before being considered for initiation.

But something else lies hidden here. For the Wheel is not truly a circle. It is in truth a spiral, where each turning does not bring us back to the same point from which we started, but moves us just a bit higher up our climb to reunite with the Divine.

And at the deepest level yet, the Wheel is the great dance of the God and Goddess, that dance which ever creates, nurtures, destroys, and creates again.

That great dance begins at Yule when the Lady gives birth to the miraculous Sun Child, the promise that life will continue and that the world will not go down into the darkness and cold.

At Imbolc, the Goddess stands as the Young Mother with the Child-God at Her side.

They grow and change with the awakening earth, until at Oestara She is now the Maiden and He is the Youth who pursues her.

They wed at Beltane and from that union comes the fertility of the earth itself.

Under the hot sun of Mid-Summer, She is the radiant Queen and Mother, and He reigns as the Oak-King. But at the peak of His power, He is wounded by his dark twin, the Holly King, and the world turns towards the darkness again. Yet He is not fully defeated. He and His Queen continue to rule over the light.

Lammas follows next with the fulfillment of the harvest and the promise of life’s continuance. Yet still the darkness grows.

By Mabon the light and the darkness balance. The Lord and the Lady face the idea of death, just as we mortals must face it. Their powers wane in the gathering gloom.

And by Samhain the Lord is dead, and the Goddess..now the Crone, wanders a darkened world by Herself until the Winter Solstice comes again.

By celebrating the Wheel of the Year, we help to continue that dance of the Lord and the Lady that make possible life here on this Earth. We connect ourselves firmly both with the Divine and with the Earth itself, knowing that we are a part of both, and that both are an integral part of who we are as well.

-Lark-