'Round the Cauldron

Hello, and welcome back. Come join me, Megan and sit for a spell ’round the cauldron while we talk about witchcraft, polytheism, and the intersection of magic and mundane. I received a message on Instagram a few months ago — yes, I know…I’m late — about how I am adjusting to living in an area without four traditional seasons. Today, I want to take you through the Wheel of the Year, some very brief history of those celebrations, and how I’m basically throwing it out the window and making my own.

As always, a wonderful shoutout to my patrons on Patreon. Thank you so, so much for your support! It truly means the world to me and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you’d like to help support the show, feel free to join me on Patreon for as little as $1 a month and get patron-exclusive perks and content. I’m also in the process of switching over to my own self-hosted membership type thing so if that happens before this episode comes out, it will be posted about on Patreon.

Anyway, with that being said, let’s get into the show.

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The topic for this month’s podcast was inspired by a question I received on Instagram last year. It’s taken me a while to get to it but I wanted to do this topic justice, or at least as much justice as I possibly could. So, Alex sent me the following message: “I know you recently moved to Florida and I just wanted some advice as I also live in Florida. I grew up in Ohio and I’m very accustomed to seasons and I find it very difficult to really work any magic or feel much energy when trying to follow the wheel of the year when we don’t have much change in seasons. I was wondering how you see or feel trying to follow a seasonal calendar when there really isn’t any change here? I also live in a very urban environment and don’t have much access to nature and I just feel almost entirely disconnected from the earth. Do you have any advice on what to do in this situation?”

So, first, I want to say thank you, Alex, for sending me this message. I know you sent it to me many months ago and I’m finally getting around to making this particular episode. For anyone else that has any questions you want me to answer, either just in a message or topics to cover, feel free to reach out to me. My email is info@roundthecauldron.com. All of my social medias are in the show notes, and I am always — mostly always available to answer questions if I can or point you in the right direction if I don’t have an answer for you. 

But in order to answer this question, I feel like I need to give a very brief history of the current Sabbats on the Wheel of the Year, where they come from, and why they may or may not apply to you. I also need to talk about my thoughts on seasons and cycles especially now that I live somewhere with wonky seasons! I know there are a few books out there that cover the Wheel of the Year, making it your own, and the history of sabbats. The first one that comes to my mind is Year of the Witch by Temperance Alden is one that is always recommended but I honestly didn’t finish it because of some questionable phrases and some harmful language. I also don’t feel like it did all that great with explaining how to create your own holiday calendar. But full disclosure, I didn’t even finish it. Kelly-Ann Maddox’s book Rebel Witch — we just read that for book club on Patreon — it has a wonderful section on creating your own holiday calendar that really covers a lot of ground. I was really happy to see that a lot of what I’m already doing was talked about in a book! So, as I go through this episode, I do hope you’ll keep in mind that I am not a scholar or academic of any kind in this field. Everything presented here is based on my own research, my own current knowledge, and my own experience. I might get something wrong, though of course, I hope I don’t! Though if I do, please let me know and will be happy to correct myself.

I also hope that you’ll keep in mind when I talk about some of the sabbats that I am coming at them from the perspective of an Irish-focused Celtic Polytheist but we’ll get there.

So, in any case, let’s talk about a very brief history and sort of explanation of the current sabbats on the Neo-Pagan Wheel of the Year. These might be familiar to you. They might not, but in order to really do this topic justice, I feel like I need to talk about them. So, the sabbats on the Neo-Pagan Wheel of the Year are Samhain, Yule, Imbolc, Ostara, Beltane, Litha, Lammas, and Mabon. So, the Neo-Pagan Wheel of the Year is a modern invention that is primarily found within Neo-Wicca. And I’m specifying Neo-Wicca because there is a difference between Neo-Wicca and initiatory Wicca. Since Traditional Wicca is initiatory and I’m not initiated into a tradition, I can’t speak to whether the Wheel of the Year looks similar in Traditional Wicca versus the wider more publicly-available Neo-Pagan Wheel of the Year. 

Anyway, these eight sabbats can be broken down into two different groups. The first group is the Celtic Fire Festivals and the second group is Astronomical Events. The Astronomical sabbats are also called quarter days, probably because there is one every three months, every quarter of the year. In the Wheel of the Year these are Yule, Ostara, Litha, and Mabon. However, their astronomical names are Winter Solstice, Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice, and Autumn Equinox. I think the Spring Equinox is also called the Vernal Equinox but I’m not really remembering if that is for Spring or Autumn. But these are the names I will use from here on out. I won’t be calling them Yule, Ostara, Litha, or Mabon. I will be using either Winter or Summer Solstice or Spring or Autumn Equinox. The Celtic Fire Festivals are Samhain, Imbolg, Lammas, and Beltane. These are commonly called cross-quarter days and are based on Fire Festivals that come from several different Celtic nations. Two of them — Lammas and Beltane — have different names than their traditional counterparts but we’ll go over that in just a minute.

Within Neo-Wicca, which is the common framework that the Wheel of the Year is presented in, the Wheel details the life cycles of both the God and Goddess. It may vary depending on who you ask, but as far as I remember, this generally begins on Samhain with the Goddess in her Crone phase and the death of the God. Throughout the cycle, the Goddess goes through various stages of life as Maiden, Mother, and Crone. The God goes through his various stages as the newborn son, the consort to the Goddess, and his life partner in death. Of course, within Neo-Wicca, this all varies massively depending on who you ask so please keep that in mind. Outside of Wicca, though, the Sabbats have different meanings.  

The astronomical sabbats have been celebrated around the world in one form or another throughout time. You can see evidence of this in the Germanic celebration of Jul, now known as Yule in modern day, that begins at the Winter Solstice. You can also see this in how Stonehenge is arranged for the light of the sun to align on the Winter and Summer Solstices. In Newgrange, a monument in Ireland built about 5000 years ago, the Sun rises on the Solstice and enters a chamber inside the mound. If there was no celebration, we can at least infer that the solstices were an important aspect of the lives of people thousands of years ago. In many places, the Solstices marked major turning points of the year. These are the points in time of the longest night, Winter solstice, and the longest day, Summer solstice. The other two astronomical days are the Spring Equinox and Autumn Equinox. Rather than being the longest day or longest night, an equinox is a point in time where the amount of time for day and night are relatively equal. Again, these two days may have been celebrated in many cultures across the world, certainly too many for me to research and talk about for one episode. I encourage you to look into the history of your culture and see if these days played a significant role for your ancestors!

Now, the Celtic Fire Festivals are Samhain, Imbolg, Lughnasadh, and Bealtaine. You may notice here that I replaced Lammas with Lughnasadh and Beltane with Bealtaine. I also need to mention here really quick, like I did a little bit ago, that I am coming to these Celtic Fire Festivals through a specific Irish-focused lens, though these particular festivals were celebrated in many different Celtic countries. And they still are celebrated to this day, they just might look different. 

So anyway, I replaced Lammas with Lughnasadh and Beltane with Bealtaine because Lughnasadh is the celebration that Lammas is based on when it comes to the Wheel of the Year. Also, Bealtaine is the Irish word for the month of May and was anglicized to Beltane for use in the Wheel of the Year. These sabbats were the inspiration behind the four cross-quarter days on the Wheel of the Year, but what do they actually mean? Within Neo-Wicca, for example, Lammas is the first of three harvest festivals. It’s a time of year when the Wiccan God symbolically loses some of his strength as the sun rises later and later each day. However, Lughnasadh is a celebration of the Irish God Lugh — remember, in this case, I’m coming to it from an Irish perspective — but it’s a celebration of the God Lugh and his accomplishments. Lughnasadh roughly translates to the funeral games of Lugh, but the funeral isn’t his. On this day, Lugh held funeral games in honor of his foster-mother Tailte. It is still a time of harvest and grain but it also comes with the sadness of loss and the happiness of celebrating life. 

This historical context is important for celebrating sabbats, in my opinion. The Celtic Fire Festivals have been taken out of context and watered down to things like Imbolg being the beginning of Spring and Samhain being when the veil is thin. This historical context is also important for those looking to celebrate the Wheel of the Year in the southern hemisphere. Don’t worry, I didn’t forget about you, my friends! Being in the Southern Hemisphere and trying to celebrate a holiday calendar that wasn’t created with you in mind can be quite confusing, or so I’ve been told by a few friends. Hopefully the tips I give here, the things I’m doing personally, can help you create a better holiday calendar that fits with where you are in the world.

If you don’t have a European-based practice, the Wheel of the Year as it is right now might not be the best fit for you. Even if you do have a European-based practice, living somewhere like Florida can make things very weird for you and I’m definitely speaking from experience. As an example, being an Irish pagan, I do celebrate the Celtic Fire Festivals. Lughnasadh is a time of harvest. However, the growing season here in Florida is a bit backwards. I don’t harvest in August and September. I harvest like during wintertime and right before summer because of my climate and the way things grow here. For another example, the Wheel of the Year just gets flipped backward for anyone in the Southern Hemisphere. This means that while those in the Northern Hemisphere are celebrating Beltane, those in the Southern Hemisphere are celebrating Samhain. For some people, that works just fine! Many people are perfectly happy with their sabbats exactly the way they are and that is fantastic! This episode is for the people that need a bit of help figuring out exactly where their important days land on the holiday timeline. 

So, I know I didn’t go fully in-depth on the history and the context behind the current wheel of the year and part of that is because within Neo-Paganism, the Wheel of the Year outside of a framework of a tradition means a lot of things to a lot of different people. And while the cultural context of the four Celtic Fire Festivals is important, I don’t feel like I could accurately portray the history and the culture and the significance of those fire festivals because one, it’s not my culture. Though I do have Irish ancestry, that was a really long time ago and I didn’t grow up in Ireland so I don’t really have a tie to the culture outside of my practice. But two, there’s a lot of cultural context that comes with those particular celebrations. And I’m still learning about them myself so it wouldn’t be fair of me or accurate of me to try and explain all of that context and history and folklore and how the holidays have changed over time because I don’t have all that information. 

But what I can do is help you maybe get a different idea of the things that you can do to build your own Wheel of the Year. So, I’m just going to fire off some quick tips themselves and then I’ll talk about why I think they’re helpful. Okay? Ready? Here are a few tips.

Forget about everything you know about the current Wheel of the Year. Forget about all major holidays in your country, your city, your family, etc. Throw out every single celebration and start from scratch — a blank timeline, okay? Figure out the days that are important to you, no matter what they are. Figure out the days that are important to the land around you or in regard to the land you live on. Figure out what is important in your practice in terms of holy days, cultural significance, etc. Get flexible with your timeline. Don’t be afraid to change your mind. Okay, so that’s sort of the rapid fire session. Now let’s talk about it all together. 

First, why should you forget about everything you already know or do? Throw it all out and start from scratch? Here’s the thing, and of course, I’m just speaking from my own experience, but sometimes we celebrate holidays just because everyone else does. Sometimes we just do it because that’s been tradition or what we grew up with. But if it isn’t something we’re connected to, why should we bother celebrating? 

I recently had this kind of conversation with my daughter around Easter time because she wanted to do an Easter egg hunt. She wanted to go to church with her friends and sit through the sermon just so she could do the Easter egg hunt. And I explained to her that, you know, Easter is a religious holiday. It has significance to a faith that she’s not part of, that she doesn’t believe. And while I understand that yes, Easter egg hunts are fun for children, and all of those activities that come with celebrating holidays are fun for kids, I don’t think it’s right to celebrate a holiday, a religious holiday especially, that has no real meaning to you as you celebrate it, if that makes sense. Yes, that was an interesting and kind of difficult conversation for her to come to terms with because I don’t celebrate Easter and I’m not going to send her to church if all she wants to do is the Easter egg hunt, especially if it’s a church I have never been to. 

But anyways, yeah, start with a blank timeline. And this can be however you want it. Start it from January to December. Start it from your birthday, from the beginning of the month of Pluto — you know, I don’t know if that’s a thing but hopefully you get what I’m saying. Grab a piece of paper and create a timeline with your own beginning and your own end. That’s step one. That’s it! Right now, it should be blank but let’s see what we can fill it with!

What’s important to you? Think about that for a second. What matters to you personally? Not necessarily in regard to your practice or your religious beliefs, but just as a person? What’s important? Think about personal days of significance. These personal days of significance are definitely worth celebrating! Birthdays, anniversaires, entire months, weeks, etc. Figure out what days are worth celebrating for your personal life and add them to your timeline. Seriously, you can add as many or as little as you want. One day, two days, 10 days out of the year. Every day of the year you want to celebrate something? I mean, that’s doing a lot, in my opinion, but you do you, right? If you only want to add your birthday and the birthdays of your family, that’s fine! You can even add in personal anniversaries such as sobriety (definitely something worth celebrating, in my opinion), even the anniversary of finding your forever home, or the day you adopted your favorite pet. It’s fine. It doesn’t matter. If it matters to you then put it on your timeline. 

The next category, so to speak, that you might want to add includes looking at the land around you. What’s going on? What happens in the natural world surrounding your home, whether that be your micro-environment, so your specific neighborhood or your specific apartment building, even? And  I think this is especially important if you live somewhere that doesn’t have the typical season markers of change if that’s something you’re looking for. I remember last year, I think it was, that I made a reel on Instagram about how I knew the season was shifting into winter in Florida based on the light coming on in my car to tell me that my tire pressure was low because it was cold outside. 

If that’s something that happens where you are, celebrate it! But also, try to get a little deeper with the land. And this can take practice, patience, and a lot of observation of the natural world around you so be patient with yourself. What is harvested in your area? What is planted, and when? What does the agriculture look like? What about big events in your area? My mind automatically goes to agriculture because that’s just what it does. But in my area, strawberries are a big agricultural and economic staple. Strawberry season in my area is marked with food stalls at the farms, local strawberries being found in the large chain grocery stores, and the strawberry festival. We know strawberry season is coming to a close when we start to see signs for picking your own strawberries on the farm to pick up the stragglers that got left behind and didn’t make it to the store. 

Even manatees have their own season! Funny story and not at all related to this, but I want to tell you. A couple weeks ago, we went to the beach and I love to swim in the ocean. It’s just…it’s just what I do, okay? And I decided that I was gonna wear goggles this time because I was looking for shells in the sand under the water. Well, I dove under the water, and I’m swimming, I’m swimming. I’m trying to make it out to the sandbar and I’m still underwater. And all of a sudden I come face to face with a manatee, right in front of me. And it’s not the first time that we’ve seen manatees in the water where we’re swimming, but yes…face to face with a manatee. I scared them and they scared me and we both turned around and swam in opposite directions. And I’m really glad I was wearing goggles that day, otherwise I would have ran right into it, like smacked right into it.

But anyways, you tend to find manatees closer to the shore in Florida during the colder months of the year because that’s where the water is warmer. But in the summer, they generally stay out in their own habitats further away from shore. If manatees were important in my life in some way, I could find a way to celebrate their return during the colder months and their departure during the warmer months. This is true for most animals and even plantlife! I mean, here in my part of Florida, we have several seasons related just to bugs. Love bugs, mosquitos, dragonflies, fire ants — even the gators have seasons, okay? It just takes a bit of observation to notice these shifts.

One other thing I’m personally doing this year is marking the beginning and end of hurricane season. I haven’t decided if I will do this ritualistically but I feel like now that I’m in a forever home, I’m more stable in my home life than I was last hurricane season, it’s time to start honoring and marking the start and end of what can be a very chaotic time in Florida depending, of course, on how the weather behaves. I feel like it’s an important time to honor the natural patterns of weather, to reflect on how humankind has played a role in climate change, and to ask for protection from the gods and land spirits during hurricane season. 

Lastly, figure out what’s important for you to mark in your personal practice. This goes both for witchcraft and polytheism, so choose what works for you. This can include marking the seasons in your area based on the season and patterns around you, not on a perceived beginning to spring for the whole Northern Hemisphere. Celebrate when the first flower blooms in your garden. Honor when the first leaves begin to fall in your yard. If you don’t have a yard, that’s fine. Pick a point of reference or simply observe the world around you when you go outside. Do you see flowers blooming? Celebrate it! Do you see the leaves falling from the trees? Honor that. Celebrate the first snow if it snows where you live, or the first thunderstorm of summer. 

I can always tell when the seasons are getting ready to shift in my area because the fog will roll in. I’ve only been in Florida for about two years, actually it’ll be two years this June — wow — but I have already noticed that pattern for my area. Fog is something I notice because it’s always captivated me. This fog hangs around for a few days in the morning then dissipates. Then, as if the season has materialized through the fog, the weather patterns change.

If there are holy days associated with deities you worship or work with, be sure to add those to your holiday timeline, too. I know there are many deities who have holy days or celebrations associated with them. For me personally, this is why I celebrate the four Celtic Fire Festivals as they relate to my personal practice, specifically Imbolg and Lughnasadh. If you’re not sure what holy days or celebrations relate to your deities, see if you can do some research on what they would have been in ancient times. If that information isn’t available, choose a day, week, or month that you think relates back to them and honor them then. 

I am of the opinion that while ancient holidays and celebrations associated with specific deities, holy days associated with specific deities — they’re important if you know what they are, but I think it’s totally fine to choose a day, or a week, or a month, or a season, or whatever…to honor a specific deity if that’s what you feel called to do and if that’s how you relate to that particular deity and, you know, if that deity is okay with it. It’s fine.

You can also include the phases of the moon if that’s something you want to mark. I know it seems like everyone in the wider witchcraft community focuses on the full moon. It’s seen as a time of significant power for spellwork, but what if you don’t care about the full moon? What if you prefer the new moon or the waning moon? That’s fine! Honor that instead in whatever way suits you. You can even honor the phases of the sun throughout the day if that’s what you choose to do. You can get as personal and detailed as you want!

Now, what happens if you’re going along, you’ve got your timeline, you’ve created it all, and you get to a celebration and you realize that it doesn’t feel right there anymore? It doesn’t belong there anymore? Guess what? You can remove it. You can take it out. Don’t celebrate it! That’s the beauty of creating your own holiday timeline, your own personal wheel of the year. You can add things and remove them as you see fit. This allows for your own growth, both in your personal life and in your practice. Don’t be afraid to be flexible with your celebrations, either. They are meant to be celebrated and honored for a reason. This is something I’ve always struggled with — how do I make holidays I never felt connected to feel sacred? And this, creating my own holiday timeline, has been instrumental in bringing that connection back.

There are two more things I want to talk about before we finish up this episode. The first one is how I have personally adjusted to the different seasons here in Florida and how that has affected my practice. First off, I definitely need to mention that while I’ve been here for two years, this is an ongoing process. And personally, I feel like it will always be an ongoing process as our climate on Earth shifts and changes. But anyway, the only place that I ever had a solid foundation for the seasons and energy would be my home town. That’s the place I lived the longest and the place I am most familiar with. I was born there. I didn’t move out of that state until I was 19 and even then, I went back less than a year later. I lived in the middle of Oklahoma in a small town for roughly 9 months. And when I say small, I mean like a population of less than 500 people with no grocery store, just a gas station and a post office. Yeah, that was fun. I lived in the Reno area of Nevada for a little more than a year. I lived in Oregon for almost two years. Now I’m here in Florida for almost two years. 

I’ll admit that I still struggle sometimes with feeling the energy of where I live. I think this is due to two things — my mental health and being new-ish to the area. One of the first things I noticed when moving here is the summer thunderstorms. They are pretty predictable. They happen almost every day in the summer around 4pm. Torrential rain, huge raindrops, house-shaking thunder rumbling through the sky, and a calm like I had never felt before. This was routine. This was expected. 

It wasn’t until we moved out of our apartment and into our house that I noticed the fog during seasonal shifts. We now live in an area that is more spacious and allows for the fog to settle in. Before, I didn’t have that and honestly, in the apartment, I was more concerned with trying to get out of the apartment that was run by a really crappy landlord. 

Where I am now in my practice, the one thing that has helped me connect with the energy of the land is gardening and spending a few minutes with the trees in my yard. I can’t sit on the grass for too long because of the ants, but standing with my hands on the tree for a few moments, reaching out with my own energy, and making that connection has been something that has helped ground me but also acclimate me to the different energy here in Florida as opposed to Oregon. I know not everyone has access to a yard or a garden, but find something that’s similar that can work for you. Buy a cute plant or make a habit of sitting in a park that you have access to. Spend some time just existing outside. Be mindful of where you are. Sit in silence and stillness and just be. And for those times when you can’t get outside, maybe open a window.

And I’m still adjusting. You know, I think I’ll probably always be adjusting. There’s always something new to discover, something new to feel in the air, and something new to pay attention to. 

Alex also asked about living in a city. I’ll admit I have never really lived in the middle of a city with like tall buildings, what some people would call a concrete jungle. I’ve always lived either on the outskirts of a town, more in the suburbs, I guess. Or in small towns on the outskirts of large towns or cities. I’m going to pull a clip from my interview with Christine Grace, though, which I’ll link in the show notes. I feel like she explains it much better than I can, especially since she’s got the experience to back up her tips! While she is the witch at the forest’s edge now and she lives in her own cabin with her family in the forest, she didn’t always live that way and I feel like her tips would be helpful for anyone that hasn’t heard them yet.

“Cities are amazing and so alive and so it is much like the forest is a wonderful place to connect, cities actually are too. It can just be a little less obvious. So I would suggest kind of going with what you’re drawn to. Like, what are you kind of interested in where you live? Are you excited about thinking about the geology beneath your building? Is that interesting or are you kind of like, uh-uh? 

Are you excited about the fungi that live in the mulch around like the landscaping around your building? Are you excited about looking up and seeing birds? Like what is your thing? Like, are you pumped about wind and weather, or are you in love with constellations? Even with light pollution, you can still see some stars most of the time. 

So it kind of depends on what you’re interested in, but there’s always a place to go, whether it’s… so I’ve lived in some apartment buildings that have like a little strip of landscaping around them and some that literally have nothing around them. But there are always parks. There’s always geology. There’s always animals, and it may not be quite the romantic animals that you have in mind. Like if you tend to kind of romanticize like the beach or the forest or something, the animals and plants that you have near you might not be exactly those romantic ideals and it also might not be what you see in a lot of books about witchcraft where it’s kind of specific lists of, you know, work with this animal in this way. Work with this plant. 

In this way, those plants and animals might not be yours, but that’s okay. You can draw on those ecological resources that are not witchy and kind of pull those non-witchy resources into your practice. And one of my absolute favorites is geology because it’s always there. Even if it’s covered over mostly with concrete, there is still some really interesting geology happening underneath you and we talk a lot about grounding, and what can be more grounding than to really know what you’re grounding into.”

If you want to listen to the entire interview I did with Christine Grace, that will be linked in the show notes. I highly recommend it. She’s a wonderful person and we had a great conversation. But I feel like, again, her tips, the things that she said, are better than any tips than I could have given to anybody because I…yeah, I don’t live in the middle of a city and I never have not had access to a yard or some type of easily accessible nature around me.

So, wherever you are, whatever climate, culture, and living situation, I hope this episode has given you some food for thought on how to connect with your land and build your own seasonal and holiday celebration calendar thing. Call it a timeline, call it a wheel of the year, call it whatever you want. It’s yours. It’s personal. And it should make you happy and excited!

Before we end this episode, let’s pull a card from my Spirits and Shadows Oracle Deck to give us some food for thought for the coming month.

[cards shuffling]

Alright, so I pulled Foresight. I’ll be sure and post a picture of Foresight for everyone to see, probably on Instagram. I will definitely include it in my newsletter. But for anyone that’s not going to have the ability to see the card, this card depicts a baclk cat halfway behind a wall peering out into…at me, looking at me, looking at…this direction, I guess…how to describe it? So, for the month of June, what can we be aware of? Foresight calls us to plan ahead. It calls us to be mindful and use our intuition and let it guide us before making big decisions, before making decisions at all. Trust your gut and instinct. Think ahead. Maybe, if you use divination, I feel like this would be a good time to do some divination, maybe on a situation that you are questioning or that you’re not sure how you should move forward. Lean into your intuition this coming month and let the black cat of Foresight guide you.

Thank you so much for listening. If you have comments, questions, or suggestions, please reach out to me. My contact information is always in the show notes and you can find me on social media. All of those links will be in the show notes and with that, I’ll talk to you soon. Bye for now!