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Course #1; Lesson #5 Your Special Days of Celebration The Adjustment
The Witches holidays are a wonderful time of rejoicing, thanking, and working. But they are also a little confusing for new comers to the Craft. Our holidays are not accepted, nor even recognized, by the general population. This can make remembering them, not to mention openly celebrating them, somewhat difficult. I still have to look at my books or calendar to remember exactly what date a particular Sabbat falls on. The more time that passes, and the more I learn, the easier it is to remember the holidays though. The point I'm trying to make is don't beat yourself up if you suddenly realize that you missed a Sabbat!! The Lord and Lady are not going to "punish" you, so don't punish yourself. Just learn from your "mistake" and move on!!Silver discusses how some might develop feelings of internal disquiet, anger, and loneliness when it comes to celebrating our holidays, and particularly not celebrating more "acceptable" ones. Personally, I have yet to stop celebrating most of the major holidays. While I don't view January 1 as the new year, I still love the parties and bowl games lol. And this is still a good time to set new goals and such. Christmas will always be a favorite holiday of mine. I just love the lights, the decorations, the fat filled cookies, and all the things that go with it. While I don't celebrate it for the same reasons as the christians do (an face it, most of the public doesn't), I still look forward to giving and receiving during that season. Halloween has obviously became a much more important holiday, and my entire focus of it has changed, but I still attend the parties and hand out the treats to all the little ghosts and goblins. I never did observe Lent, so that's a non-issue for me. What I'm trying to say is that I don't believe you have to give up anything in Wicca that you don't want to. If you are comfortable celebrating other holidays along with the Pagan ones, great! If you find that there are standard holidays you are no longer comfortable observing, great! But if you feel like you have to stop celebrating a holiday just to be a better Witch, think again.
The Solar Holidays
There are 8 Sabbats that Wiccans celebrate, each one falling on either a seasonal quarter or cross quarter. The Solstices and Equinoxes are the quarters of the seasons. Yule, Ostara, Summer Solstice and Maban are the 4 quarter Sabbats. Candlemas, Beltane, Lammas, and Samhain are the cross quarter Sabbats. Collectively they represent many things, including birth, death, and rebirth.
Rather than going into detail here about each Sabbat, I am going to refer you to some links that can be used for additional reading. Between these links, our text, and other resources you may already have, you should be able to get a good, solid understanding of the Sabbats. I am doing it this way primarily to ensure that you are able to see several perspectives and options and pick and choose what you personally would like to focus on for each Sabbat. This way you are kind of defining the holidays in whatever manner seems right to you at the time. Remember though, we are all growing and learning, so your concept of the Sabbats are likely to change with time. Don't allow yourself to get so rigid in your beliefs that they become unchanging. In my opinion, this is a very bad thing, and a time when one's faith becomes stagnant and even begins to die.
Writing Assignment #1: This assignment will likely take quite a bit of effort, and will be very well worth it! Beginning with Yule and working your way in order to Samhain, utilizing any resources you have, take time to write a essay that outlines each Sabbat. You may want to include the standard meaning of each Sabbat, what traditional (or not so traditional) practices you find interesting and want to incorporate into your practice, the major correspondences associated with each Sabbat, the history, ideas for each Sabbats ritual, and anything else that you find interesting along the way. When you are finished you will have outlined some of the most exciting workings you will ever do within the Craft; understanding and celebrating the Witches Sabbats.
Esbats
As if it wasn't enough to ask you to learn a bunch of new holidays, we also celebrate and observe several Esbats each year. These are times designed especially for working magick, although as Silver mentions if everything is going smoothly in your life its also a great time for thanking the Lord and Lady. In our Coven we tend to combine the two, working magick where it's needed, and being mindful of the wonderful blessings we have in our life, even when things are going so smoothly.
It's important to have a good understanding of exactly what the phases of the Moon are, and what each phase means. During each phase of the Moon, there are certain energies at work that tend to help with certain types of magick. There are some who will not dream of working a type of magick unless the astrological correspondences are just right. And there are those who pay no attention to these correspondences at all and just do what needs to be done. Personally I kind of fall in the middle . While I do not deny that the correspondences are helpful, and try to work within them whenever possible, there are times when something just needs to happen and it can't wait for the next full moon to come along. I refuse to get to the point where I am limited in what I can do in my life magickally. So, I'll work with what I have, put all the energy I can muster from myself and my environment, and get to work. Of course, I'll admit, there are times when I'm just a bit to impatient to wait for the full moon, and that can cause problems in and of itself. So, my advice, if it can wait until all the correspondences are at the peak for that type of working, then wait. But if it can't, then by all means, do what you need to do.
Anyway, on to the Moon Phases. Lets start with the Full Moon. This is obviously when the Moon is at it's peak, or its fullness. The Lady is shining like a bright beckon in the sky. The full Moon "phase" begins 3 days prior to the Full Moon, and continues until 3 days after. So we have a 7 day cycle where Full Moon energy is available to us. Obviously, the peak of this energy is on the Full Moon itself, but I have found there are times when we just can't get everyone in our Coven together on that particular night, and we have had great success working within the 7 day cycle. I almost wonder if the Lady didn't set that up, knowing ahead of time that we would be busy people? Full Moon energies are especially helpful when working magick for banishing unwanted influences in your life, protection, and divination.
The period between the Full and New Moon is called the Waning Moon. This is also a 7 day cycle. To quote Silver "this is a time for banishing and rejecting things in our lives that we no longer wish to carry around with us. Negative emotions, bad habits, diseases and ailments can successfully be banned during this time."
The New Moon kind of changes the rules a little bit. Before I continue, there are bound to be some who do not observe the dark of the moon, but that is a relatively standard concept, and while I can't say I have really considered it myself, it is important that everyone be familiar with the basics so they can decide for themselves how to use it. The Dark of the Moon is the 3 day period just before the New Moon. Many Wiccans choose not to practice magick during this time, rather using it as a time of rest and reflection. I must be honest and say that I do not keep a great record of my magickal workings, and have never opted not to perform magick because of this phase, but I don't know that I have either. Personally, this is one of those areas that we all need to personally research and discover how we are going to approach.
Considering that everyone is going to observe the Dark of the Moon, the actual time for working New Moon magick is the day of, and 3 days following. Again, quoting Silver, "the New Moon is used for personal growth, healing, the blessing of a new project or venture, etc. If done correctly, success should be obtain(ed) by the first Full Moon."
The period between the New and Full Moon is called the Waxing Moon. According to Witchvox this is a great time "to do a spell for growth, beginning new projects, initiation and enhancement."
And then we come back to the Full Moon, and the cycle starts all over again.
One way to approach magick, and work within the correspondences, is to seriously think about what it is you want, and how can you word it so that you are working with the correspondences. For example, lets assume that there is a problem in your life that you need to solve. You could use Full Moon energies to banish the negative influences in your life. Or you could use the Waning Moon energies to banish negative emotions or bad habits. You could also use the New Moon energies for healing and growing to help you deal with the problem. Finally you could use the Waxing Moon energies to enhance your situation. All of these approaches work with the same problem, and yet still take into account the astrological and spiritual correspondences which will only add power to your spells. This may be a simplistic example, but I hope it proves that with some serious thought (which should be put into any spell), you can work magick when necessary.
Silver concludes this chapter with a listing of the Full Moon names. While it's important to read through this information, I am not going to expound on it, simply because these are not the only names associated with the Full Moon cycles, and we will discuss this much more in-depth in a later class. For now, it's enough to understand that each Full Moon has it's own particular properties, and that its helpful to work within these properties to further aide your magick.
Writing Assignment #2: Take time to write down your understanding of each of the Moons phases, as well as some goals and areas that you want to work on in the next couple of upcoming phases. This will aide in your understanding of their energies, and also help you set some self improvement goals.
Lesson 5 Quiz:
1. List the "traditional" dates that each of the Sabbats fall on.
2. Briefly describe the type of magick that is, according to our text, associated with the Full Moon.
3. The _______ Moon is the phase between the Full and New Moon.
4. The _______ Moon is the phase between the New and Full Moon.
5. T/F I have completed each of the writing assignments for Lesson 5.
Lesson 5 Quiz Answers:
1. Yule: December 20 or 21
Candlemas: February 1
Ostara: around mid March (usually about March 21)
Beltane: May 5
Summer Solstice: text doesn't say really, but its usually around June 21
Lammas: August 2
Mabon: on or around September 21
Samhain: October 31-Nov 1; or Nov. 7 depending on tradition2. Full Moon energies are especially helpful when working magick for banishing unwanted influences in your life, protection, and divination.
3. Waning
4. Waxing
5. Hopefully T.
Continue on to Lesson 6
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