How to Integrate the
Wheel of the Year Festivals
into Your Circle of Eight
The Circle of Eight is ideally tailored to celebrate the festivals of the Wheel of the Year: Winter Solstice, Imbolc, Spring Equinox, Beltaine, Summer Solstice, Lammas, Autumn Equinox, and Samhain. You don’t have to begin at any particular time of year; after all, the wheel turns around endlessly. It is just as valid to begin celebrating the festivals at Beltaine as at Samhain or the Winter Solstice. If you already celebrate the festivals but want to change the style of celebrations to reflect more local content, again, there is no special time of the year it is better to begin this. My first ever public ritual was for Lammas; the one after we began the Circle of Eight was Beltaine, and the first one after we’d begun working with the geographic Circle of Eight was the Summer Solstice.
Some people use older, different, or indigenous names for these festivals while still holding them at the same times of year, on the equinoxes, solstices, and cross-quarters. I don’t think it matters what you call them. Just as you may need to translate the names I have called them by, so you should feel free to translate these suggestions, guidelines, and instructions. The whole point of localizing your magic and ritual is to find what works for you where you are and for the people you are with. This process of integrating your Circle of Eight into Wheel of the Year festivals is a two-way process to allow the direction to speak to the ritual and the ritual to speak to the direction. People are the translators—the vessels within which this negotiation, balancing, and recognition take place.
There are several different ways you can incorporate your Circle of Eight understandings and your geographic Circle of Eight into the Wheel of the Year. Each position in the Circle of Eight translates immediately into one of the festivals; this is shown, according to hemisphere, on page 12.
You might choose to make the celebration for each festival completely local, according to what each direction means to you. You could choose to hold the rituals at the site of your directions, actually in the place, and let that inform your ritual; a ritual on a beach or in a park will be different from one held in a forest. You may choose to allow a more conversational thread to emerge, where the direction influences the flavor of your ritual without rewriting it altogether. Perhaps you will try a variety of these methods, finding what works for you or just enjoying different approaches.
How to Incorporate Your Circle of Eight
into the Wheel of the Year Festivals
1. Discussion and Brainstorming
Begin by sharing all you have learned, as you have journeyed around your Circle of Eight, about the direction that corresponds to the festival you are planning a ritual for. You can have one person taking notes or you can have a large sheet of paper and all write down your understandings in single words, short phrases, or pictures and colors.
If you have been working a geographic Circle of Eight, either continue (or begin another sheet) with your understandings, feelings towards, and relationship with the place in your Circle of Eight that corresponds with this festival.
Now examine the festival itself. You might like to discuss it thoroughly—its historical roots, its place in the wheel, the traditional activities associated with it—or just talk about what it means to you: how you have celebrated it in the past, the parts of it you feel resonate with your own life, the place where you live, the type of magic or ritual you work, as well as any aspects of the festival you would like to explore further. Continue note-taking for this section.
2. Selecting What to Work With
Look back and read through all the notes, picking out the pieces that speak most loudly to individuals and the group. Highlight or underline those that several people agree on as being important. Place these on a new page or large sheet of paper.
3. Asking Questions
Ask the group: If we were to build a ritual to celebrate this festival based on this information, what might it look like? Where would we hold it? Who would we invite? What would the major themes be? Does it represent our locality—what we have discovered so far in our Circle of Eight about the direction that corresponds with this festival and (if working with a geographic Circle of Eight) specifically the place of that direction? What activities could we have, as part of the ritual, that would emphasize these points? Is there anything else, based on our work with the Circle of Eight, that we would want to include, such as calling to eight directions rather than four, including themes of the opposite festival in the celebration of this one, or references to the geographic locations or the nature of the eight directions?
4. Crafting a Ritual
Try putting your answers together in the shape of a ritual. Check the shape and length of the ritual so that there are a variety of different activities and that people’s needs are catered to. You may need to add or subtract pieces of the ritual to meet these requirements. Sometimes parts of a ritual can benefit from practice while other parts can be left to flow. Ritual by ritual, you will find what works and how to create a structure that reflects all that you want it to.
If you follow this method, you may end up with eight rituals, over a year, that look nothing like each other. One might be a silent midnight walk across the moors, another a picnic with games and festivities, another an afternoon of craft, deep sharing, and spellworking. Or your rituals may emerge looking recognizably connected to each other but entirely different than what is found in books on the festivals, or they may be entirely related to what’s in the books but with a strong local and immediate flavor. After each ritual, it is invaluable for the people who created it to meet again, discussing what worked best and what they would change or improve on next time.