In Defense of the Wheel of the Year
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- Опубліковано 7 жов 2024
- People sometimes complain that the eight-holiday Wheel of the Year feels constrictive, cookie-cutter, or inauthentic. You might hear someone say that the eight sabbats don't accurately map the seasons where they are, that the Wheel borrows from folklore that's irrelevant to them, or that they don't see the point of having these eight fixed holidays. Sometimes, people also express concerns about cultural appropriation, as some of the sabbats are widely called by Irish names that originated outside of a Wiccan context.
Some of that criticism is legitimate, and certainly no one has to incorporate the Wheel of the Year into their practice if it doesn't suit them. Even so, I think this critique misses a couple of important points about what the Wheel of the Year is and why it's valuable. In this video, I talk through the initiatory context that originated the Wheel, as well as arguing that we should understand the Wheel of the Year not as a set of eight cookie-cutter holidays but as a single ritual without beginning and without end.
Buy my books:
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Rebecca Beattie's THE WHEEL OF THE YEAR:
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Jane Meredith's CIRCLE OF EIGHT:
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Jane Meredith's RITUALS OF CELEBRATION:
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Jason Mankey's WITCH'S WHEEL OF THE YEAR:
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This was so interesting! Thank you for sharing your ramble :) and your perspective. I will definitely look up those titles you shared.
Thank you for this fantastic video!! Always love to hear what you have to say and your recommendations!! ❤
Lots of good points here, Jack. I felt pretty out of touch with the sabbats for years, and even more so since living in Florida... but I was able to connect a lot deeper with things by using the Wheel as a general guide, then looking locally at what was going on around me -- what is blooming? what's in season? what are animals doing? etc.
I really like the concept of each sabbat being a tuning moment. That's a lovely way to think of it and it resonates more for me than anything else I've read/heard. Thank you!
Great video, Jack - again highlighting the detriment of a "little knowledge" being perceived as "the way". I was always taught that the "wheel" is more of a "cycle" - it follows nature and every year, yes spring follows winter, summer follows spring etc but new things happen, are observed, because your knowledge grows - well it does if you actually go beyond seeing the sabbats as merely "holidays" and as observation/marker points.
In my own book (self plug) "Dancing the Sacred Wheel", I talk not only about this but how to adapt something that doesn't fit (ie Northern Hemisphere British seasonal references) to your own environment including investigating what your local indigenous people observed. Here in Australia, I got tired of NH writers telling me to "swap dates around 6 months" because it simply does not work that way - not only is Australia the same size as the USA, but there are many microclimates. (I assume the USA has as well yet no US writer seems to mention this).
Despite my book now being some 12 years old, it still remains one of the few solely about Sabbats for the Southern Hemisphere.
My biggest bug bear about the Wheel of the Year these days is the popularized use of Aidan Kelly's B*S* words - Mabon and Litha, and to a lesser point Ostara - and disappointedly how even seasoned initiates are now using them.
PS Lammas is Anglo-Saxon
i think it´s the priests, they
like to repeat old stuff, as opposed
to witches who are more individuals,
and thus want to invent new things
(the whole concept of change).
we didn´t have priests here
because it was more family based
(basically every family had their
own shrine and a keeper of that
shrine, which job was hereditary
in some places).
in the bigger celebrations it was
often the shaman who acted as the
leader of the festival (for example
in the spring they venerated the
water spirits when the rivers opened
up from ice).
it can be argued whether any of the
"set holidays" were ever practiced by
the common people, meaning that
they were more like the audience
(that´s why they started to force it
with the latter day religions, it was that
unnatural / unpleasant).
Thanks for sharing this video Jack, thanks for the food for thought 🙏😊💖🧚♂️
Loved this!💜💜💜
Good video! I can get behind using the original traditional names of the Sabbats. What's interesting about all of the books on the Wheel of the Year is that it seems like every source I read has vastly different lore. So, it can be difficult to figure out what it is actually all about without requiring an initiation into a coven. Furthermore, I've recently seen many people trying to forcefully cancel Ostara, Litha, and especially Mabon because of their introduction by know oathbreaker Aidan Kelly. What do you think of that?
No. The names Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasadh did not originate with the Farrars and their book Eight Sabbats for Witches. This is the second time you’ve said this in a video. Please read The Tree by Raymond Buckland, first published in 1974. It is currently still in print as Buckland’s Book of Saxon Witchcraft.
Yes, it is absolutely true that Buckland uses Irish names in The Tree! Nonetheless, in terms of wider impact in the Wiccan community as a whole, I would still point to ESfW as the factor that gave those names the widespread circulation thy have today.