Eight times a year the Craft stops to mark where the sun stands and what the land is doing. Together the eight Sabbats make the Wheel of the Year, the calendar of most modern pagans.
The Sabbats fall about six and a half weeks apart. Four of them mark the solstices and equinoxes, the points in the year fixed by the sun. The other four fall midway between, at the beginning of each season as the old farming calendar reckoned it. Select any festival on the wheel below to read about it.
The Greater and the Lesser Sabbats
The Craft divides the eight into two sets of four.
- The Greater Sabbats
- Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane and Lammas. These are the cross-quarter days, which open winter, spring, summer and autumn. They correspond to the four great seasonal feasts of early Ireland, and versions of them were kept across Britain. In the Craft they are celebrated on the eve, since the old day began at sunset.
- The Lesser Sabbats
- Yule, the Spring Equinox, Midsummer and the Autumn Equinox. These are the quarter days of the sun. Their dates shift by a day or so from year to year, because they are astronomical events.
Greater and lesser describe their standing in the tradition's history, as is explained further down this page. In practice all eight are kept with equal care.
The dates
| Sabbat | Usual date | Other names | What it marks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Samhain | 31 October | November Eve, Hallowe'en | The end of summer. The feast of the dead |
| Yule | About 21 December | The winter solstice | The longest night. The rebirth of the sun |
| Imbolc | 1 to 2 February | Candlemas, February Eve | The first stirring of spring |
| Spring Equinox | About 20 March | The vernal equinox | Day and night equal. The light gains |
| Beltane | 30 April | May Eve | The beginning of summer |
| Midsummer | About 21 June | The summer solstice | The longest day. The sun at his height |
| Lammas | 31 July to 1 August | Lughnasadh, August Eve | The first harvest |
| Autumn Equinox | 22 or 23 September | The autumnal equinox | Day and night equal. The dark gains |
The exact dates and times for the present year are on the page for the coven year.
How the Wheel came to be
The eightfold year feels ancient. As a single scheme it dates from 1958.
The peoples of these islands certainly kept seasonal festivals. The four cross-quarter feasts are recorded in early Irish literature, and the English had their own customs at May Day, Lammas and Hallowmas. Midsummer and midwinter were kept with fire and feasting all over northern Europe. But there is no evidence that any ancient people observed all eight as one cycle.
Gerald Gardner's first coven kept the four cross-quarter days as its Sabbats, following Margaret Murray, who had argued that these were the great festivals of the witches. The solstices and equinoxes were observed in a smaller way, at whichever full moon fell nearest. In 1958, while Gardner was away on the Isle of Man, his Hertfordshire coven decided that it would like to give the solar festivals their full due and keep them on their proper days. They wrote to ask whether he had any objection. He had none. From that exchange of letters came the pattern of eight equal festivals.
The same pattern was adopted shortly afterwards by the modern Druids, and from those two sources it spread through the whole pagan revival. The name Wheel of the Year became general in the years that followed. It is now so much taken for granted that people are surprised to learn it is younger than many of those who keep it.
The story the Wheel tells
Many witches read the eight Sabbats as a single story about the Goddess and the God. It was never fixed in one form, and covens tell it differently. A common version runs like this.
At Yule the Goddess gives birth to the God as the newborn sun. At Imbolc she recovers and is a maiden again, and he is a growing child. At the Spring Equinox they are young together. At Beltane they are lovers, and their union brings the summer. At Midsummer he is at the height of his power, and already past it. At Lammas he gives his life into the corn, and is cut down with the harvest. At the Autumn Equinox he departs into the dark. At Samhain he reigns as lord of the dead, and the Goddess, as the wise old woman of the waning year, mourns him and carries him within her to be born again at Yule.
It should not be pressed too hard. It is a way of saying that the year is one life, and that every life has the same shape.
The beginning of the year
The witches' year is generally held to begin at Samhain, at the opening of winter, on the principle that the dark comes before the light as the night before the day and the seed in the ground before the shoot. Some covens count from Yule, when the sun is reborn. A wheel has no beginning, and nothing depends on it.
Names
The festivals go by several sets of names, and a newcomer may find this confusing.
The early rites of the Craft, as they have been published, call the four Greater Sabbats by the plain English of the calendar: November Eve, February Eve, May Eve and August Eve. Gardner in his own books wrote of Hallowe'en, Candlemas, May Eve and Lammas. The Irish names, Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasadh, came into general use among witches in the 1960s and 1970s and are now the commonest. The older English names are still used, and many British covens prefer them.
The solstices and equinoxes had no special names in the early Craft apart from Yule and Midsummer. In the 1970s an American writer proposed Ostara for the spring equinox, Litha for the summer solstice and Mabon for the autumn equinox, and those names are now very widely used, particularly in North America. On this site we use the names we use in our own circle, and give the others where it helps.
In other climates
The Wheel was made in Britain and fits the British year. It fits less well elsewhere, and witches in other countries have adapted it. In the southern hemisphere the festivals are generally kept six months apart from ours, so that Yule falls in June. In places with no real winter, or with wet and dry seasons in place of our four, some covens have begun the patient work of making a wheel that is true to their own land. That is entirely in the spirit of the thing. The point of the Sabbats was never to observe a date. It is to notice where one is.