This post was inspired by a question on the Wildwood Tarot Study Group page.
The Wildwood Tarot is based around the eight festivals that make up the Wheel of The Year. We have four festivals that are the Solstices and Equinox and four that mark the periods between, roughly half way.
When exactly ARE these festivals?
The Equinox and Solstice festivals (Spring and Autumn, Summer and Winter respectively) are literally moveable feasts. They vary between the 20th and 22nd of March (Spring Equinox), June (Summer Solstice), September (Autumn Equinox) and December (Winter Solstice). The reason for this movement is pretty complicated, but basically the earth goes round itself but it also goes around the sun and there is a bit of ‘wobble’ on the earth’s axis AND a full solar year is not exactly 365 days … so by inserting a leap year extra day we try to keep things roughly on track. But eventually, in several thousand years time, the Northern Hemisphere’s Spring will swap places with the Southern Hemisphere’s Spring. This gradual shift is known as the Precession of the Equinoxes. Truthfully, there’s a great deal more to the Precession than that, but I don’t know all the ins and outs of it all – enlighten me in the comments if YOU do!
The remaining four festivals of Imbolc, Beltane, Lammas and Samhain tend to be celebrated on the first of February, May, August and November respectively. Is that astrologically correct? Is the first of those months exactly on the midpoint between the Solstice and Equinox? Nope. If they were, they would change every year. Not impossible to calculate, but probably only astronomers and astrologers would have access to lots of ephemera, reference information calculating formulae and tools (which is absolutely not me lol!). Or google (which absolutely is me!)
These four remaining festivals tend to be celebrated (since at least medieval times) on the first of the month because a specific DATE meant that contracts could be agreed, debts settled, unpaid debts pursued etc because the DATE could be easily verified by the most educated person around – the Church priest or minister.
What about prior to medieval times? I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t get stressed about it at all. Calendars are artificial markers of time and not all calendars are the same. For example – when you are talking about the first day of Spring, is that the first day of astronomical spring, ritual spring or meteorological Spring? On which hemisphere?!
Even when you have settled on the date that you want to celebrate your festival, when exactly do you do it on the day?
For me, for the festivals of Imbolc, Beltane, Lammas and Samhain it’s from dusk the night before until dusk on the day. I went to the Beltane Fire Society celebration in Edinburgh one year and it began at dusk on the 30th of April. If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me! As far as the Solstices and Equinoxes are concerned – I celebrate them on the day!
The point of this blog post is to show that the absolutely correct day for all eight of the festivals CAN be worked out from first principles if you have the right resources (and endless time!). Or you can use Google. Or you could go with the fairly standard practice of celebrating the Solstices and Equinoxes on the days that they occur (which changes) and celebrate the other four on their traditional dates of the first of the month.
The trick is not to get too caught up in the fact that what YOU do might be different from when *I* do it. Which might be different again to when friends on-line celebrate a particular festival. It’s not worth an argument, that’s for sure! Tolerance of different approaches is always a good thing in life.
When do you celebrate the festivals?