Wheel of the Year

The Wheel of the Year is the ritual calendar of Wicca and modern Neopaganism: a cycle of eight sabbats spaced roughly six weeks apart. It combines the four Celtic fire festivals with the two solstices and the two equinoxes, and tells the myth of the God who is born at Yule, unites with the Goddess at Beltane, sacrifices himself at the harvest and dies at Samhain to be reborn. In the form celebrated today it took shape in the second half of the twentieth century. In the southern hemisphere the wheel is usually turned by six months so that the festivals match the real seasons.