Neopagan Festivals
New pagan traditions appeared in the second half of the 20th-century with different deities and rituals, but features in common such as recognition of the feminine aspect of divinity, the sanctity of nature, rejection of concepts of sin and salvation in Abrahamic religions, and identification with pre-Christian traditions. These new traditions feature a cycle of eight annual seasonal festivals, often called the Wheel of the Year.
Where did these festivals come from? Different authors invented a festival cycle for the new traditions based on historical ideas. Festivals are not equally spaced over the year but are five or seven weeks apart, reflecting the solar and lunar cycles. Two authors influenced festival cycle design: Edward Williams (solar cycle) and Margaret Murray (lunar cycle). Ronald Hutton describes this in detail in an article in the journal Folklore (Ronald Hutton (2008) Modern Pagan Festivals: A Study in the Nature of Tradition, Folklore, 119:3, 251-273, DOI: 10.1080/00155870802352178).
Four of the eight festivals use the cardinal points of the solar cycle (quarter days), the winter and summer solstices, and the spring and autumn/fall equinoxes. The other four are based on the lunar calendar (cross-quarter days) and represent dates when seasons started in traditional British and Irish cultures. These cross-quarter festivals are fire festivals. The winter solstice festival precedes three fertility festivals (Imbolc, Ostara, and Beltane in Wicca); the summer solstice festival precedes three harvest festivals (Llamas, Mabon, and Samhain in Wicca).
Druid traditions typically use the quarter days of the solar cycle, and Celtic paganism sees the cross-quarter days of the lunar cycle. Pagan witchcraft (Wicca and others) and Norse paganism (including Asatru) use all eight festivals and sometimes add their own. The eight festivals are known by different names across pagan traditions, reflecting the older cultures that these traditions identify with. Below are festivals across traditions, using dates for the Northern hemisphere.
Note that Asatru also has the following holidays in addition: Midwinter (6 Jan), Lenzen (7 Mar-6 Apr), Summer Nights (6-20 Apr), Harvest home (14 Oct), Sunwait (9 Nov – 21 Dec).
The 18th-century Welsh author Edward Williams (known by his Bardic name Iolo Morganwg) was concerned with finding evidence that an ancient Druidic tradition had survived the Roman invasion of Britain. There was no evidence of Druidry in surviving Welsh manuscripts, so he created Druidic festivals with Welsh names.
The English author Margaret Murray described a witchcraft tradition, making claims not fully backed by evidence. Murray felt that important festivals were the cross-quarter days that marked the start of the seasons (and solstices and equinoxes were not observed by British witches).
Gerald Gardner used Murray’s ideas when developing Wicca, including the duotheistic female and male deities of the Goddess and God (influenced by Alistair Crowley and the American author Charles Leyland). Gardner initially emphasized the cross-quarter day festivals but later included seasonal rituals for the solstices (and later the equinoxes) produced by Doreen Valiente, based on prayers from Hebridean folklore.
In 1954, Gerald Gardner published his non-fiction book Witchcraft Today, and the eight-festival cycle described within it provided a template for later traditions. In 1964, Ross Nichols seceded from the Druid order to establish the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids and incorporated the Wiccan pattern of eight festivals. By the 1980s, most Wiccans and other pagans did not realize the festival cycle pattern was dating from the 1950s, not ancient traditions. Pagans thought the Wheel of the Year had been the festive cycle of pre-Christian north-western Europe.
The eight-festival pattern appears in pagan movements formed in the United States in the second half of the 20th century, like the Californian Pagan tradition known as the New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn, based on the work of Aidan Kelly, who used sources including Gardner, Robert Graves, and Margaret Murray in designing the liturgy for this tradition. Kelly used the names “Ostara” and “Mabon” for the spring and autumn/fall equinox festivals (Mabon derived from the same-named character in Welsh literature).
Does this matter? Should we be concerned whether we are working within an ancient pagan tradition, a reconstructionist version of such as tradition, or a neo-pagan tradition often based on ideas from medieval literature rather than ritual practice? I feel that it does not. The key is that we understand the basis of the festival cycle and are aware of the seasonal cycles, nature, and associated supernatural forces and spirits.
The header Photo is by Photo by Andrey Zvyagintsev on Unsplash