In Defense of the Wheel of the Year

People sometimes complain that the eight-holiday Wheel of the Year feels constrictive, cookie-cutter, or inauthentic. You might hear someone say that the eight sabbats don't accurately map the seasons where they are, that the Wheel borrows from folklore that's irrelevant to them, or that they don't see the point of having these eight fixed holidays. Sometimes, people also express concerns about cultural appropriation, as some of the sabbats are widely called by Irish names that originated outside of a Wiccan context.

Some of that criticism is legitimate, and certainly no one has to incorporate the Wheel of the Year into their practice if it doesn't suit them. Even so, I think this critique misses a couple of important points about what the Wheel of the Year is and why it's valuable. In this video, I talk through the initiatory context that originated the Wheel, as well as arguing that we should understand the Wheel of the Year not as a set of eight cookie-cutter holidays but as a single ritual without beginning and without end.

Buy my books:
https://bookshop.org/contributors/jac...

Rebecca Beattie's THE WHEEL OF THE YEAR:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-whee...
Jane Meredith's CIRCLE OF EIGHT:
https://www.amazon.com/Circle-Eight-C...
Jane Meredith's RITUALS OF CELEBRATION:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/rituals-...
Jason Mankey's WITCH'S WHEEL OF THE YEAR:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/witch-s-...