The Wheel of the Year is a British calendar, shaped by British weather. South of the equator the seasons run the other way, and witches there have had to turn the Wheel round to keep it true.
A good many people read this site from the other side of the world, and the first question most of them must have is when to keep the festivals. We are a British coven and can speak only at second hand about the southern year. But the principle is simple, and it is the one the Craft has always worked on: the rite should fit the land on which it is performed. The page on the elements says as much, the last paragraph of the page on the Wheel of the Year makes the same point about the festivals, and this page follows that thought further.
Turning the Wheel round
The Sabbats mark the seasons, not the calendar. Midwinter in Melbourne falls in June, and so Yule is kept in June. Each of the eight is kept about six months from its British date, so that the festivals stay with the seasons they belong to and the order of the Wheel is unchanged.
| Sabbat | In Britain | South of the equator | What it marks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Samhain | 31 October | 30 April | The end of summer. The feast of the dead |
| Yule | About 21 December | About 21 June | The longest night. The rebirth of the sun |
| Imbolc | 1 to 2 February | 1 to 2 August | The first stirring of spring |
| Spring Equinox | About 20 March | About 22 September | Day and night equal. The light gains |
| Beltane | 30 April | 31 October | The beginning of summer |
| Midsummer | About 21 June | About 21 December | The longest day |
| Lammas | 31 July to 1 August | 31 January to 1 February | The first harvest |
| Autumn Equinox | 22 or 23 September | About 20 March | Day and night equal. The dark gains |
The solstices and equinoxes are astronomical events and fall at the same moment all over the world. What changes is which of them is midwinter. The December solstice is the longest night in Britain and the longest day in New Zealand, and both are true at once.
The year turns at Samhain in both hemispheres, which means that in the south the witches' new year comes at the end of April. On the same date that we keep May Eve, witches in Hobart and Dunedin lay a place at the table for their dead, half a day ahead of us by the clock. We find that rather a good thought to hold in the middle of a Beltane rite.
Yule in June
The hardest thing about the southern year, by most accounts, is Christmas. The midwinter customs that Britain gave to Christmas, the evergreens, the log, the candles in the dark and the heavy food, arrive in the south in the middle of summer, where they make little sense, while the real midwinter passes in June with nothing in the shops to mark it.
Witches there have taken this in good part. Yule is kept in June, with fires and evergreens and the long night, as its meaning requires, and many households that have no connection with the Craft at all now hold a midwinter dinner in June or July for much the same reason. Christmas in December becomes, for a southern witch, a midsummer feast of the family, held in the sun, and none the worse for it. Southern witches we have met say that the arrangement gives them two good feasts a year where we have one.
Which way is sunwise
Witches move round the circle deosil, which means sunwise, the way the sun goes. In Britain the sun comes up in the east, is due south at midday and goes down in the west, and to someone standing in the middle of a circle that is clockwise.
Outside the tropics, south of the equator the sun stands in the north at noon. It still rises in the east and sets in the west, but it travels round the northern side of the sky, and the sunwise direction is anticlockwise. Many southern covens therefore cast their circles and move about them anticlockwise, which is to say, by the sun they actually see. Others keep the British direction, on the grounds that deosil has become a convention of the tradition and not an observation. Both have their reasons. A witch working alone should decide which makes sense to them and keep to it.
The quarters
The usual British arrangement puts air in the east, fire in the south, water in the west and earth in the north. It suits these islands because the south is where the sun is strongest and the west is where the sea is, and it is explained on the page about the elements and the quarters.
In the south, the noon sun and the heat are in the north and the cold comes up from the south. Many witches there accordingly put fire in the north and earth in the south. Some also move water to whichever side of them the nearest sea lies, which in eastern Australia is the east. Others keep the British scheme unchanged. The question is still being worked out, and we think it is being worked out in the right way: by people standing on their own ground and paying attention to it.
The southern moon
The moon's phases happen at the same moment everywhere, though across the world the calendar date can differ by a day, and the full moon is the full moon in Perth as in Penzance. But from the south it is seen the other way up. The waxing crescent is lit on its left-hand side and the waning on its right, the opposite of the drawing on the page about esbats and the moon, and the familiar markings on its face are upside down. A witch who has moved across the equator usually notices this before anything else, and finds it oddly unsettling.
A wheel for a new land
Turning the Wheel round keeps the festivals with their seasons, but it does not make the seasons British. The folklore that has gathered round the Sabbats belongs to the north. Snowdrops at Imbolc mean nothing where there are no snowdrops, and in much of Australia it is the wattle that comes into flower as the winter ends. In the tropics there is no winter at all in the British sense, only a wet season and a dry one.
The peoples who have lived longest in those lands have their own reckoning of the year, in many places with six seasons, or two, marked by what the land is doing rather than by the sun. That knowledge is theirs, and it is not for visitors to borrow. But the habit behind it is one the Craft can learn from. The best southern witches we have heard of keep a diary of the year where they live: when the first blossom comes, when the birds arrive and leave, when the rains begin. Over the years they keep the Sabbats less by the dates in a book and more by what those notes tell them. That is exactly what the Wheel is for, and it is the same work that every witch is set, north of the equator or south of it: to stop keeping the Wheel out of a book and to start keeping it where one stands.
In our coven
One of our initiates, who has given us leave to say so, spent two years working in New Zealand. She kept the Sabbats there by the southern year, with a small group she found in her city, and also lit a candle at the hour of each of our own rites at home, which usually fell early in her morning. For two years she kept sixteen festivals. She says that she has never understood the Wheel so well, before or since.