The wheel of the Year is a concept, which represents the repeated year. Let’s imagine a wheel roles along the ground. It has on it 8 spokes. If it starts with one spoke pointing to the ground and in full rotation it would have covered the entire circumference of the wheel, each of the 8 spokes would have had contact with the ground and then the movement would begin again from the starting spoke. This is like the cycle of the year. We mark it with 12 months and 365-366 days and at some point each of those days has a chance to come and go until finally the year begins all over again.
The same is true of the rotations of the bodies in the heavens. The earth and all the other planetary bodies rotating around the sun causing a regular cycle to occur. This rotation is symbolised with a wheel.
For people who identify as Wiccan, 8 holy nights called Sabbats are of particular significance. 8 events where it is common for a working coven to meet. As Wicca tried to make itself accepted as a religion, Wiccans tried to treat these like the religious holidays of Wicca. Like how Christians have Christmas and Easter, Wiccans have Yule and Ostara. If you were to pick up a typical Wicca 101 book, probably published by Llewellyn, 4 out of 5 times this wheel of the year will form a good amount of the books content. So one would be forgiven for thinking it is one of the most important parts of Witchcraft. Of the original Gardnerian Book of Shadows the Wheel of the Year made up about 20% of it’s articles. Magic however was done for centuries without needing to honour these particular festivals. Often gods and goddess would have a festival devoted to them for pagans for whom their relationship with their deity was paramount. A lot of the positions of various architecture from the pagan world suggest that they have a religious significance to the specific days such as the solstice. This would tend to suggest it is used on a certain day, however this stuff is so old we can barely speculate what the belief or practice was that surrounded that day.
If you fancy making your magical practice into a sort of religious like practice with its own holy days / fate days then by all means honour the Wiccan Sabbats, but do it with a pinch of salt for the reasons I will explore below. We explore the Sabbats, but I do so more out of a desire to mark the year and have regular ritual work for good practice and it bring us together.
Sabbats
Typical Modern Wiccans will mark this rotation with 8 holy nights. They are named Sabbats.
Etymology of the word Sabbat
The Sabbat is likely named after the Jewish holy day Shabbath, in what was probably an early Christian slur on Judaism. In fact earlier texts even describe a gathering of witches as a Synagogue (Jewish gathering). For example in 1458 Nicholas (writing in Latin) uses the term Sinagogam Faciniorum (a synagogue of bewitchments) to describe Witches. In 1564, Lambert Daneau describes “Synagogas quas Satanica sabbatha” (the gathering which the Satanic one sabbaths) where it would appear “sabbatha” could be a verb an action which is being done in the gathering. The word seems more popular with French speakers even when writing in Latin.
The word becomes more common and begins to be used in English in the 1800s. Eliphas Levi who writes positively about “High” magic criticises the Sabbath of Sorcerers, but speaks positive of the Sabbath of Kabbalists and Magi.
What happens at the Sabbat?
Often witches try to recreate the Sabbat ceremony appealing to myths, but recognising that many myths are coloured by the imaginations of the priests that wrote them down, they deliberately recolour what was said in a more positive form. For example the devil is depicted as a goat-headed man and this is often interpreted as a forgotten pagan deity appealing to the much criticised thesis of Margaret Murray, A witch-cult in Europe. While her views are heavily criticised by the academic community for lack of evidential basis, her work inspired many of the practices which arose in the 1950s.
In the myth that surrounds Witches in Christian art, witches are depicted dancing in a state of ecstasy in a circle around a cauldron and/or the devil (in the form of a goat-headed man or similar). Joining them in the dance are other devils. The scenes depicted are often show people overcome with sexual pleasure and performing acts such as kissing a devils butt.
In modern Wiccan practice, the follow are common at a Sabbat rite:
- Participants attend in circle around a centre point
- Some things are “blessed” / “consecrated” / “purified” through ritual action.
- Often the 4 directions are called similarly to an Enochian magic practice.
- A God and Goddess are called (these can be in the centre of the circle. It is not necessary that one be a goat-headed man, but a horned male deity is not unusual).
- A chant is performed as participant whirl themselves into ecstasy (at least mentally) some times they walk around the circle deosil while doing this. (Gardiner wrote about a spiral dance in his early draft of his book of shadows often modern attempts to do a spiral dance can be awkward and cause a loss of focus, but enjoy the process.)
- The God and Goddess take ritual actions which are symbolic of sex in a practice which has been inherited form Aleister Crowley’s Gnostic Mass.
- Anything that has been called is released.
Janet Farrar writes in her “A Witches’ Bible” that a Sabbat should always end with a party.
Some groups like the Cultus Sabbatti seek to recreate the more diabolical portrayals of the Sabbat rituals where liminal behaviour and dancing in ecstasy is common. In my experience these groups focus on sex, drugs and dancing and animal sacrifice is not common adhering to a more modern morality over authentic recreation of Christian slanderous descriptions. Their work tends to be on greater and greater experiences of the dreaming reality where they can meet with the devil and dance around his cross roads. The use of Christian symbolism such as devils and demons in these rituals is more an allegory of states of gnosis than typical Satanism. Most other practicing modern Wiccans are Neopagan.
For a specific ritual script that is commonly used by Pagans across groups, I suggest Janet and Stewart Farrar’s A Witches Bible. This pretty much forms the textbook for most British Traditional Wicca today, however, you can totally re-write the rituals to suit you, so feel free to try it without the book and refer to it if you ever wonder what did they do in the past. Also a version of Gerald Gardner’s Book of Shadows is available online. For a more accurate historical account of the cultural events that Wiccans are trying to recreate through their Sabbat rituals, I recommend you turns to Ronald Hutton’s Stations of the Sun.
Why should someone observe the Sabbats?
You know what? I’m going to begin with the controversial statement. It’s just not necessary. Magic and Witchcraft have been practiced for thousands of years with very little evidence of any of this Sabbat molarchy happening outside of the minds from some loopy Christians. It is not necessary. Cunning women and grimoire operations were common. There is recorded evidence of their existence. Sabbats, on the other hand, were all allegations. It was something claimed by priests of Christianity. They meant it as a cautionary tale. “Don’t get mixed up with the witches. You’ll end up kissing a demon on his stinky butthole, while the witches dance around the devil killing babies and making poisons in a cauldron” I am going to question the things that are done by modern practitioners at first then move slowly into ideas that are more supportive of Sabbats.
Just to be clear while I am including this in my Magic 101 page, this is not a 101 article. It is really designed for someone who has at least picked up a Wicca 101 book and done some sabbat rituals. Someone on the Magic 101 path should figure out some regular practices that fit nicely with their lifestyle and support it. I would say that these Sabbats are optional, but regular practice should not be and connecting to the earth is also a necessary part of any Earth-based spirituality. It is not necessary for exclusively astrological magic or Shamanism. In deity-focused Neopaganism adhering to the chosen deities special holidays, festivals and holy days is more important than the Wiccan Sabbats.
Culture or Spirituality
As I read through A Witches Bible by Janet and Stewart Farrar, I often find myself feeling like they are desperately trying to find meaning in cultural things which might not have had much meaning at all. I vaguely remember a phrase “Women used to wonder topless through the fields to promote fertility with the crops.” (Sorry if that is a bit paraphrased.) This makes me wonder, even if they did walk around topless – which we don’t know – how do we know that fertility was the reason for it. Perhaps there was no particular reason for it. It could just be normal to their culture. Like for example the Himba tribe famously do not cover their chest in traditional garb. This is not for fertility, it just isn’t a part of the body that is important to cover in their culture. Since the observations on old British pagan ways were almost always made by an outsider looking and speculating, we just don’t know why they did it and having anthropologists boiling everything down to fertility and sex is very Freudian. While reproduction is important in human cultures and definitely a high motivator, it is not the only motivator by any means. If this perhaps was a cultural action and not a magical one, then what else might they have got wrong?
Imagine if someone in 2500 CE looked back at today and concluded that we made eggs out of chocolate on Easter to make as an offering to a Rabbit god called the Easter Bunny to prevent the Rabbit god eating the real eggs of our birds, so we could continue to have chickens. And if we had chickens then the spring would come as their chicks hatch. So make chocolate eggs to bring the spring along. It seems barmy does it? Well this is the sort of speculation that is made out of observation of ancient cultures and it doesn’t seem a good place to base a religious or spiritual practice.
Should these leaps to conclusion and speculation be something to build a religious holiday on? We just don’t know why they did half the things they did. Constantly speculating that it was a fertility rite for better crops is about as arrogant as Freud, who seemed to have thought everything was about sex. I find it a little bit frustrating when my Pagan friends demand a certain day off work to honour a Sabbat. Yes your boss might not recognise your religion and that’s not fair, but if it doesn’t actually have a spiritual basis then it makes sense not worry about whether you are honouring it perfectly and on a certain day. I vaguely remember a description of Imbolc that said it doesn’t have to be on Brigid’s day it’s meant to be when the ewes begin lactating. Why demand of your boss it must be on the 2nd of February, while he is in the middle of audit and inspection, when the ewes can start lambing any time from December to June and you don’t even have any sheep?
Perhaps there is something to some of these rituals. I’m not going to be completely throw them out. While we don’t know that these rituals were spiritual actions, we also don’t know they weren’t, so I am not saying “don’t do them”. But there is far more that we know is a spiritual ritual action. We have Hymns to Sumerian gods, Egyptian Funerary writings and Greek Magical Papyri. These things give us instructions on how to do magic and the writers wrote down the result they were expecting to find. Why would we try to recreate cultural phenomena in a ritual setting when instead we can actually be doing rituals that are recorded to have a believed effect? This is just something I want you to think about. It just might be a little bit better to honour Hekate with a modern twist on her traditional hymns and give her an offering rather than ritualistically sacrificing the 12th century equivalent to the Easter Bunny to the first century equivalent of Cher and chanting “Doth Thou Believeth in Life in the wake of Love”.
My big frustration in my experience of Sabbat rituals is that rituals involve chants designed to whirl people into states of ecstasy and then suddenly half way into ecstasy, I often find someone will have us stop mid chant to fiddle with a well, bob for apples have a Holly king defeat an Oak king. And I ask myself “did she miss that we were zhuzhing up the energy for a culminating moment?” So think about things like this. Most Wiccan rituals were clear designed to build up to point and release the accumulated energy. If you break that then you kind of missed the point. And if you break that to worship the Tooth Fairy or do the ancient equivalent of going to Ascot to see the races, then you REALLY missed the point.
Question it. Am I doing something to help me connect with my heritage / the heritage of the land I am living on? Does it actually work for that purpose? Is it messing up the other aims of the ritual? Is that really part of why I am here in circle today? This is why I like to think about cultural things. An argument can definitely be made that it is for your heritage and honouring the land spirits which perhaps enjoyed seeing this stuff years ago, but it’s entirely possible it reminds them of a group of men that the land spirits did not like before so it could even be bad. There’s a big overlap between renaissance fare and neopagan ritual, but if you want a spiritual experience you need to know the difference almost by instinct.
I ask myself, “Am I just repeating something someone once did to stave off boredom since they didn’t have a Xbox or a Netflix subscription?” I have my own culture. I don’t need to manufacture a new one or recreate one that died out and frankly I don’t have time to waste. Either it is something that will help me reach my goals, or its fun, or it’s a waste of time.
It is also worth noting that according to Ronald Hutton’s Stations of the Sun, in many cases people are trying to recreate practices which don’t go back further than 1800s so that would tend to suggest to me that they are Christian festivals being rebranded. Likely Christian festivals that had pagan influence once upon a time. But recreating victorian festivals is not going to help you connect to the lands ancient pagan heritage.
For the sake of others recognising the rites, I throw in a little bit of the Sabbat rite, but avoid it getting in the way of the magical work. This means particularly for people who work a lot with Wiccans the rite will be recognisable as a Sabbat rite. They should be able to recognise that a Beltane ritual is a Beltane ritual. But for me this must not get in the way of the ecstasy of the ritual or you’re missing the point. If you are raising energy and directing towards blessing the participants, creating a servitor or offering to a deity then you should not let anything get in the way of that. Have a main focus for a ritual and that will help it work for you, trim down aspects which are not relevant to the main focus. By all means include Pagan / renaissance cultural things outside of the ritual like bobbing for apples and walking through fields of wheat topless IF YOU WANT TO.
Agricultural rites
Some of the rites are specifically about a certain time of the year in the changing agricultural season. For example “Beltane” and “Samhain” (pronounced Sa-wen). Again I’m asking you why should you do these rites? We are not an agricultural society. For farmers having a big celebration at the end of a harvest is a good idea. It becomes something to focus on for people struggling to make it to the end of the day. Something to work towards, even when they’re feeling exhausted and it is still over a month away. It also would bring a community together. So it satisfied a function. Question: is that function relevant today? Do we need it to be a harvest festival? Are not the Summer holidays and Christmas fulfilling this purpose?
Some people feel however that we are disconnected from our agricultural life and the plant world around us and by practising rituals at such times they are put more “in tune” with the natural world. There is an argument for it there. It should connect us with the changes in the seasons and the plants and the animals. Having access to electrical lights and television we no longer recognise the suns cycles so easily. The sabbat rituals are then to put in connection and timing with the sun, moon and earth. This can increase our awareness of astrological and natural forces.
It is also important to note that we might be putting our internal world in time with the outer world. This is the same ritual action as Chakra Dhyana and Israel Regardie’s Middle Pillar ritual. We recognise that within us is a reflection of many of the forces that exist in the world and by connecting the two together we achieve ritual power. In order to create change in the world we need but make that change within us and the world changes in sympathy with our inner world. You might note in the ancient text known as the Emerald Tablet this concept is laid out. It was originally in Classical Greek and since similar texts tend to be quite pro-Egyptian and anti-Greek it may have once been in Ancient Egyptian. It was translated into Latin in 1500s and is now available in modern English. Just like something which has gone through Google Translate a few times something might be lost in translation but the English reads as follows.
It is true, beyond doubt, most certain and true.
Hermes Trismegistus – The Emerald Tablet
That which is above is like to that which is below, and that which is below is like to that which is above,
to accomplish the miracles of one thing.
And as all things come into being by contemplation of the one, so all things arose from this one, by an act of adaptation.
Its father is the Sun, its mother, the Moon.
The wind carried it in its womb, the earth is its nurse.
It is the father of all works of wonder, throughout the whole world.
It is often understood that below could be that which is within the human being and above is that which is outside the human being. So this talks about uniting the inner earth tides with the outer earth tides and the inner solar cycles with the outer solar cycles.
Some view it as though the world has powerful energy currents and by observing the Sabbats you are putting up your sails into those energy currents and using them to develop yourself and increase personal power.
Solar rites and Lunar rites
A lot of witch religious practices are based on sun-worship and moon-worship. Even the walking around the circle always in a motion that matches the sun. Often the male deity in a witches circle is associated with the sun and the female with the moon. Sabbat rituals are often held at key points in the sun and moon time table. The solstices, the equinoxes and on full moon nights.
For many practitioners of magic astrology plays a key part. The sun and moon represent real powers in the world that often move in time with the apparent movement of the sun and moon around the sky and the zodiac belt. In texts such as the Picatrix, it suggests that spells could lift an intention up to the transparent sphere surrounding the earth which had the planet on it and when that intention reached that sphere it would radiate back down to earth and manifest what was requested depending upon the astrological timing etc.
This would suggest rituals performed as specific astrological time allow for greater connection. But this is only true of rituals which depend on the positions of the sun and the moon.
Some just fall around a particular day for example the most well known is Samhain which falls on 31st October. Originally there were 4 sabbats in Gardiners original book of shadows each was the eve of a particular month: Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain. These are originally months or at least I have sources for 3 of them being months and assume about the 4th. Months were once upon a time based on the movement of the moon which is the origin of the first three letters of the word month. So it could be said that these are lunar sabbats. The 4 added in the book of shadows published 10 years later are all based the position of the sun so these could be considered solar.
Regular practice
One of the key pieces of advice that Crowley gave was to “invoke often”. As time goes on, we get more and more efficient at rites and sometimes we end up able to do weekly rites together before meals while we wait for a roast or a lasagne to cool / crisp up. Not everyone can do this. They can’t commit to a daily ritual practice like my chakra cleansing or some stuff my coven gave me to do daily.
Sabbats become a good substitute. They’re in the calendar… they’re only every 40-50 days so they’re not too frequent that it’s easy to skip one, but also they not spread too far apart. Really if someone wants a magical practice they really need a regular spiritual time that they can do without depending on other people for it. Most people say rituals should be done daily, I’m not going to claim that, but it does help. Do what fits in your lifestyle. Try to do too much and you won’t keep it up for long. Do too little and you might as well do nothing at all. At least the Sabbats provide an excuse to get together and invoke together.
Start doing regular Esbats and you’re golden! We often do moon at 4 phases or if there’s an upcoming Sabbat we focus on that. This can mean up to 52 rituals a year which is a good start. Add a personal practice and you’re super charging your life. Just make sure it doesn’t get in the way of the purpose for which you are living your life.
What days are the Sabbats?
Again. Does it matter? Pick the days you want to honour and so long as you have good and valid reason to work those days the great. But you might want to concern yourself with what was done before.
When Gerald Gardner originally wrote about it in 1949, there were only 4.
- November Eve – 31st October
- February Eve – 31st January
- May Eve – 30th April
- August Eve – 30th July
This order has led to many treating Samhain (31st October) has the beginning of the year.
The rituals in the Gardnerian Book of Shadows suggest that November Eve was considered a time for working with the dead, February Eve a time of resurrection, May Eve a time of bringing of fruitfulness and August Eve a time of the end of the fruitfulness period.
In 1957 more solar based Sabbat rituals were added.
- Spring Equinox (when day and night are equal time, roughly 21st March)
- Summer Solstice (the longest day of the year, roughly 21st June)
- Autumn Equinox (when day and night are equal time, roughly 21st August)
- Winter Solstice (the shortest day of the year, roughly 21st December)
The spring equinox appears to be dedicated to fires. The summer solstice features and adoration of the sun and a phallic instrument being placed in a cauldron of water (symbolic of intersession) so water is significant here. The Autumnal Equinox enacts the departure of the sun. The winter solstice symbolises the rebirth of the sun.
At a later stage these were changed to the modern 8 ones we have today.
| Gardner BOS | Date | Modern Name | A focus of the rite |
| November Eve | 31/10 | Samhain | Death |
| Winter Solstice | 21/12 | Yule | Rebirth of Sun |
| February Eve | 31/01 | Imbolc (31st-2nd Feb) | Brigid Lighting Candles |
| Spring Equinox | 21/03 | Spring Equinox / Ostara | Saplings / sowing |
| May Eve | 30/04 | Beltane (1st May) | Fertility |
| Summer Solstice | 21/06 | Midsummer / Litha | Sun at Zennith |
| September Eve | 31/08 | Lammas / Lughnasadh | Thanks giving bread |
| Autumn Equinox | 21/09 | Autumn Equinox (erroneously Mabon) | Harvest / Thanks giving |
I’m no going to write a lot about this subject, it has been done many times before. In fact any Wicca 101 book will have a small section about it. If you really want to learn about the book to read is actually Ronald Hutton’s Stations of the Sun. It’s one of the few books that covers the Wheel of the Year in detail with reflection on historical sources. Many other authors play it a little bit fast and loose with the truth, making assumptions, jumping to conclusion and sometimes just writing what they wish were true, rather than what actually is based on fact and evidence. Hutton’s book doesn’t give practices or rituals for each part of the year in a practical way. It is a history book, but but like I have said repeatedly as I have worked through this, it is up to you what you do.
If you want a good core book for typical Wiccan practice the previously mention “A Witches Bible” by Janet and Stewart Farrar is a good choice. There is little consistency in the Neopagan world and few groups respect the same authors, but this provides a complete working system with respect to Gardiner’s original book of Shadows and it was written early enough to have formed somewhat of the definitive core book.
My Wheel of the Year
Since I live with a Druid and New practitioner and I practice with a Coven that meets on the 8 Sabbats as well as other days I do end up doing Sabbat rituals. I am able to include some of the rituals and notes from the practices we have done here. As and when I do more I will add more.
Autumnal Equinox