Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Wheel of the Year
Summary
The Wheel of the Year is an annual cycle of seasonal festivals, observed by a range of modern pagans, marking the year's chief solar events (solstices and equinoxes) and the midpoints between them. British neopagans crafted the Wheel of the Year in the mid-20th century, combining the four solar events ("quarter days") marked by many European peoples, with the four seasonal festivals ("cross-quarter days") celebrated by Insular Celtic peoples. Different paths of modern paganism may vary regarding the precise timing of each celebration, based on such distinctions as the lunar phase and geographic hemisphere.
Observing the cycle of the seasons has been important to many people, both ancient and modern. Modern pagan festivals that rely on the Wheel are based to varying degrees on folk traditions, regardless of actual historical pagan practices. Some Wiccans use the term sabbat (ˈsæbət) to refer to each festival.
The ancient pagan peoples of Europe differed in the festivals they celebrated. In the British Isles, the Anglo-Saxons primarily celebrated the four solstices and equinoxes, while Insular Celtic peoples primarily celebrated the four midpoints between these. The four Celtic festivals were known to the Gaels as Beltane (1 May), Lughnasadh (1 August), Samhain (1 November) and Imbolc (1 February).
The festival cycle known as the 'Wheel of the Year' was influenced by works such as The Golden Bough by James George Frazer (1890), which explored various European seasonal festivals and their possible pagan roots. Another influence was The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921) by Margaret Murray. Murray promoted the witch-cult hypothesis; a now-rejected theory that European witch trials were an attempt to suppress a pagan religion that had survived into the early modern era. She attempted to identify the festivals celebrated by this supposed 'witches cult'. Murray reports a 1661 trial record from Forfar, Scotland, where the accused witch (Issobell Smyth) is alleged to attend witches meetings "every quarter" at Candlemas (2 February), Roodmas (3 May), Lammas (1 August), and Hallowmas (1 November).
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.