Wheel of the Year

Wiccans celebrate several seasonal festivals of the year, which are known as Sabbats; collectively these occasions are often termed the Wheel of the Year.^[60] Many Wiccans, such as Gardnerians and most eclectics celebrate a set of eight of these Sabbats, though in other groups, particularly those that describe themselves as following "Traditional Witchcraft", such as the Clan of Tubal Cain, only four are followed, and in the rare case of the Ros an Bucca group from Cornwall, only six are adhered to.^[61] The four Sabbats that are common to all these groups are the cross-quarter days, and these are sometimes referred to as Greater Sabbats. They originated as festivals celebrated by the ancient Celtic peoples of Ireland, and possibly other Celtic peoples of western Europe as well.^[62] In the Egyptologist Margaret Murray's The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921) and The God of the Witches (1933), in which she dealt with what she believed to be a historical Witch-Cult, she stated that these four festivals had survived Christianisation and had been celebrated in the pagan Witchcraft religion. Subsequently, when Wicca was first developing in the 1930s through to the 1960s, many of the early groups, such as Robert Cochrane's Clan of Tubal Cain andGerald Gardner's Bricket Wood coven adopted the commemoration of these four Sabbats as described by Murray. Gardner himself made use of the English names of these holidays, stating that "the four great Sabbats are Candlemass [sic], May Eve, Lammas, and Halloween; the equinoxes and solstices are celebrated also."^[63]

The other four festivals commemorated by many Wiccans are known as Lesser Sabbats, and comprise of the solstices and the equinoxes, and were only adopted in 1958 by members of the Bricket Wood coven,^[64] before subsequently being adopted by other followers of the Gardnerian tradition, and eventually other traditions like Alexandrian Wicca and the Dianic tradition. The names of these holidays that are commonly used today are often taken from Germanic pagan and Celtic polytheistic holidays. However, the festivals are not reconstructive in nature nor do they often resemble their historical counterparts, instead exhibiting a form of universalism. Ritual observations may display cultural influence from the holidays from which they take their name as well as influence from other unrelated cultures.^[65]

Sabbat	Northern Hemisphere	Southern Hemisphere	Historical Origins	Associations
Samhain, aka Halloween	31 October	30 April, or 1 May	Celtic paganism (see alsoCelts)	Death and the ancestors.
Yuletide	21st or 22 December	21 June	Germanic paganism	Winter Solstice and the rebirth of thesun.
Imbolc, aka Candlemas	1st or 2 February	1 August	Celtic paganism (see alsoCelts)	First signs of spring.
Ostara	21st or 22 March	21st or 22 September	Germanic paganism	Spring Equinox and the beginning ofspring.
Beltaine aka May Eve, or May Day	30 April or 1 May	1 November	Celtic paganism (see alsoCelts)	The full flowering of spring. Fairy folk.[66]
Litha	21st or 22 June	21 December	Possibly Neolithic	Summer Solstice.
Lughnasadh aka Lammas	1st or 2 August	1 February	Celtic paganism (see alsoCelts)	The harvest of grain.
Mabon aka Modron[67]	21st or 22 September	21 March	No historical pagan equivalent.	Autumn Equinox. The harvest of fruit.