Landcrafting has 8 major festivals, and innumerable minor ones.
Landcrafting is focused strongly on cycles of power, on waxing and waning, on battles which are eternally won and lost, on ritual patterns. The major festivals represent high-level shifts in power, and the different energies available across the year's cycle as different figures in the Court take and lose power. At their core, the Major Festivals celebrate the shift of seasons - the animals, plants and weather that is emerging or disappearing at this time. The major festivals are tides, not days - the day itself may be the apex of power, but the Powers will be dominant for several weeks around that time.
Individual Landcrafters must decide what, if any, role these days play in their personal liturgical calendar. We are of this land. No matter your path or alliegances, these 8 festivals affect you; yet doing ritual or celebration on these days is optional. Choosing to recognise them helps you remain in balance with the land, and curry favour with specific Greater Powers associated with these tides of the year.
The minor festivals are festivals chosen and celebrated by you, revering the powers in the Court you work with. These are typically more important, as they are the high days of the Court you work with directly. Your Powers may guide you to days they wish to mark; or you may develop them on your own. For example, in Welsh myth Creiddylad was betrothed to Gwythyr ap Greidawl, but was abducted by her brother Gwyn. King Arthur settled their dispute by arranging a duel for her every day on the first of May until Doomsday. If you work with Arthur, this could be the festival of Arthur the Just, commemorated with feats of skill, and so on.
Every Landcrafter celebrates their year differently. If you have an allegiance to Merlin, you may create a festival for different moments in his myth and celebrate them across the year. You can place them to coincide with the major festivals - for example, Merlin In The Tree at Mabon, Merlin Sylvestris at Samhain, and Merlin the Wise at Yule. If you were devoted to Hekate, you may celebrate Samhain as a key festival, and then each dark moon. If you were devoted to Mithras, then you might celebrate both solstices and equinoxes - and nothing else.
Minor festivals can also be associated with life experieneces - surviving cancer, transition - or a tradition local to your area. Take your time. In your first year, use the eight Wiccan sabbats to get you in tune with the land, and as you practice, change them to reflect your Court, add and subtract, and gradually you will develop a personal calendar.
The 8 Wiccan sabbats are taken from two sources. Four days were the festivals reconstructed by Murray and others as authetic, historic rites. Four were based on astrological events - the two solstices, two equinoxes. On top of this was woven the Wiccan myth and mysteries, of a child, a mother, a lover, and a dying god. Landcrafting uses the same 8 festivals, but does not (necessarily) recognise that mythic cycle. Instead, we:
In the short term, Landcrafters should consult mainstream Pagan sources for food and craft ideas. Correspondences related to food or herbs are generally the same. As they research and work with their Personal Court, they will gain more imagery to incorporate. As I work this wheel, I'll add more notes on my ideas of what to do. But if you concentrate on the tangible signs of the season - the weather and changing trees - and look to how your spirits change in response to the turning of the wheel, you will be well on your way to doing this for yourself.
Here are some generally-truisms about how the Powers wax and wane across a year, and hence the times it is best to celebrate them and call on their aid.
It is important to remember that ALL these cycles happen every year, and there are hundreds upon hundreds of them - more than anyone can reasonably revere or pay attention to, and you'll probably be aware of them shifting even if you don't yourself revere them at present. It's acceptable to mix and match these, use combinations, or pick one cycle to use across this year, and another the next. The seasons are mirrored by the waxing and waning moon in the month, and sun in the day, allowing us to access these correspondences at the “wrong” time of year in a pinch. These cycles show how in our crafts, opposites are often the same, or warp strangely towards each other changing with the tides, are linked in strange ways.
If you're new and lack direction, one good thing to do is pick one of these cycles that really speaks to you and then revere it across the year, designing a rite for each Sabbat relating to it, and meditating on its hidden mysteries.
And of course, the Powers are tricksy and may not stay where you have placed them, or may be in the ascendent for other reasons quite unrelated to the earth's turn. This is especially true of lesser spirits. If you revere a local wood, then your local council's funding and planning application systems will likely have the largest impact on whether that Power is powerful or diminished.
Remember that generally, witch deities and Powers are not tidal and do not fluctuate across the year, and that they are strong so long as their witch-band are strong and active. A witch can find something sacred and powerful, no matter the date.
Many of our spirits have “dark” and “light” faces. How could they not? So many of them have gone from gods, to devils, to demons, to deadfolk, to mythic history, to fairy folk, to an odd feeling that follows you down the alleyway above the Aldwych. How could they be anything but a mix of memories?
Typically these turnpoints explain the seasons: Brigid who is reborn at Imbolc and triumphs at Beltane, ruling until Samhain where the Cailleach returns. These two witches are rivals, or sisters, or lovers, or perhaps the same figure. It can be hard to tell.
Some turnpoints are explained BY the seasons. Across the year, the Seelie court gives way to the Unseelie, the two locked in an eternal battle for dominance of the year. The lengthening nights give succour to the Unseelie fey, whereas Seelie figures rejoice in the springtime and bounty of summer trees. Again, their turnpoints are Samhain and Beltane - although the two types of fairies can hardly be said to be good and bad as, on the whole, they are a strange and unsettling people, with an odd sense of humour.
Another traditional turnpoint story is the battle of the Oak King of the summer and the Holly King of the winter, although this legend has never existed in much more detail than that, having started in a vague sketch by Robert Graves.
When we talk of light and dark, this isn't exactly the same as good and evil. Both faces have things to teach, and hidden wisdoms, and both are likely to be helpful or hostile - they're often different faces of something very similar.
Samhain and Beltane are the wild, the untameable, the tree-branch rattling against your window, and a certain quality of manic energy, inviting you to lose yourself in the woods. It is a time for anarchic gods, for misrule, for gods of wine or other madnesses, and for the non-human.
The harvest at Lammas, and the indoor-wards at Yule, the fresh start of Imbolc all carry qualities of community, the domestic, the home, plants you can grow and tend, fields you can control, and human crafts such as farming, weaving and tanning. These times are good for gods of home and hearth, of law and community, Powers who are fond of humans and their ways.
Autumn is the time for rites of the dead. Lammas is the day of the dying god who goes under the earth to bring us corn. Mabon is most powerfully linked with Underworld traditions, and is an excellent time to travel to that Otherworld. On Samhainn and Walpurgisnacht, the dead may walk the land, and the barrows open. With these times are all Powers related to death and the dead.
Yule, Imbolc and Ostara are linked to births and rebirths; Beltane and Midsummer to life in its full richness.
The sun represents knowledge, as we know - but the night does not represent stupidity. It represents knowledges which are hidden, strange, uncanny, and challenging. The winter months are time for reflection, for strange magics, unwise researches, and asking dangerous questions; for inner work and journeying, and accordingly, a time for hidden gods who are highly mysterious, or long forgotten; or tricksters, outsiders. The summer is the time for gods who are kings and queens, who are mighty, who are visible, who hold their power like a chariot and spear.
We can use the four solar festivals - Yule, Spring Equinox, Midsummer, Autumn Equinox - in a pattern about knowledge, self-knowledge, or power. Remember that none of these times are “bad” exactly" - Yule is not weakness, but of hidden or unexpected strength. Similarly, we can use the four other festivals to explore lunar aspects - self-discovery, inner initiation, the Mysteries, the unhallowed and strange.
The Wild Hunt is associated with several different times in the year:
We can add onto this rituals celebrating the birth of young animals in the spring festivals, the strength of the archer and hunter at Beltane and Midsummer, the sacred nature of a victim giving up its life to feed man at Lammas, and the hunter becoming the hunted at Mabon. Samhain is the meat harvest.
There's another hunter cycle which sees the summer and winter as predator and prey - the winter wolf pursuing the summer's prosperity, the summer's hunters chasing the winter wolf away.
Imbolc is for lambs and milk; Ostara is for eggs and hare; Beltane is the haws and the flowers and the bounty of the forest; Midsummer is for deer; Lammas is for bread and cakes; Mabon is for mushrooms, apples, brambles and nuts; Samhain is for meat. These festivals are often linked with the Guardians - the mighty Hunter ancestor, the Baker ancestor, and so forth.
There's no good reason why a follower of Fencraft can't use the Wiccan symbolism, of fertility and children, death and rebirth. For us it's AN option, but not the ONLY option. Aside from this, appropriate times of year for sexual or fertility imagery are Lammas and Beltane.
I hope these patterns make some sense to you and help you celebrate the year. Please let us know other cycles and patterns you have discovered, to add to this page. We're a messy pathway, one way for everyone is never going to fully make sense of our contradictory and fluid world.