24/12/2025
Our stunning wreath was created lovingly for us by Jo da Silva ... It is woven through a wagon wheel 🛞 with eight spokes, symbolising the season "turns of the wheel" where Mother Nature's seasonal mood shifts, affecting our weather and relationship with the land around us.
The "Wheel of the Year" as we know it today is a myriad mix of different folkloric customs - the Spring & Autumn Equinoxes and Summer & Winter Solstices make up four spokes of the Wheel. A lot of our traditions surrounding these festivals in the UK have come to us from the Vikings, who celebrated four festivals at these times, including "Jol", or "Yule". Yule was a bare-faced, glorious defiance of midwinter darkness, full of feasting & fire. The Vikings also made wreaths of evergreen foliage to symbolise that life will always persevere and triumph... At the winter Solstice, so we are told, they would set fire to the wreaths so they flamed in honour of the sun, and roll them down hillsides to symbolise the sun's return. These festivals are known as "The Solar Events".
The other four spokes are brought to us by ancient Celtic traditions, called the midpoint festivals, or "Cross Quarter Fire Festivals" - Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasagh. These festivals tie in heavily with farming the land.
The Wheel of the Year as we know it today emerged in the mid-20th century, through the works of James George Fraser, Margaret Murray, Gerald Gardner & Ross Nichols, all drawing on their own research of ancient traditions.
The Wheel continues to weave itself into a living, breathing thing, gathering momentum, circling, change & transform; this, we believe, is one of the most important things about walking an Earth-centred path - that ritual is honest, alive, present and connective - (all rituals were performed for the first time once!) & humans have always adapted, modified and created ritual as a living path to connection, because we are adaptive, creative beings.
Right now, the Earth needs our relationship more than ever, so making room for eight earth festivals may be a newer consistent rhythm, but a desperately needed one.
Most of us are not able to live in such close proximity to the land, or live in such closely connected community, as our ancestors would have. Making room for eight festivals allows us to remain connected to Mother Earth all year round, inviting us to step beyond the threshold of our busy lives to connect with the land, ourselves and each other more deeply. Long may the Wheel turn in joy, reverence and connection! Long may we gather and celebrate the rhythms of the Earth, and remember who we are, become all we were meant to be....and thank you, thank you, thank you Jo for all our stunning evergreen foliage you wove as a gift to the so we could celebrate surrounded by the lushness of evergreens to remind us that, even in darkness, life will always find a way ✨🙏✨
