| The Celtic Lunar Calendar
Every society, every tribe has its calendar,
its own particular way of taking bearings amid the endless
flow of days, months and seasons. By taking these natural
rhythms and imposing upon them a more or less arbitrary but
agreed system of divisions, we get a calendar -- a
framework for organising the past and planning the future.
Human activities, events, celebrations can them be coordinated
between different groups, and kept in step with the cycles
of the natural world. So a calendar is a powerful practical
tool, but it also has a deeper cultural significance. It embodies
and sustains an important part of our world-view, and often
quite subconsciously influences the way we perceive the passage
of time and our place within the world's rhythms. (Keith Bailey,
1988)
The
Cycles
I see seeds of the new Aquarian
spirituality in the feminist goddess and pagan spirituality
emerging now. And I do mean seeds because this movement is
harking back to the old spiritualities, supposedly of the
Celtic and Neolithic peoples. However all they can do is reflect
what we think these ancient beliefs were because no one actually
knows what these spiritual systems were. So these movements
are creating something new, inspired by the megaliths of the
neolithic peoples, or of various Aboriginal or other tribal
peoples and their religions. The new that is emerging is primarily
Earth centred (Pachamama, love the Mother, all the Earth is
sacred, etc.) and so we tune in to the cycles and seasons
of the sun, cycles of the moon, seasons of the Earth which
are sun and moon related, and to the planets.
For the last ten years I have
been using the Lunar Celtic calendar, as described by Keith
Bailey, and in which he gives lunar dates for the cross-quarter
festivals. These are festivals which have supposedly been
celebrated by people in Britain since forever - no one knows.
Growing up as a child in Scotland, I remember the cross-quarter
days were still bank holidays. There are folk customs all
over Britain relating to these festivals. Many of the neolithic
megaliths, both stone circles and barrows, have their major
axes related to the movement of the sun, particularly mid-winter
and mid-summer sunrise and sunset, and some of them are cross-quarter
day orientations. Glastonbury Tor and the Michael line is
the most obvious line of sacred sites oriented to the cross
quarter days.
This calendar is based on the Coligny tablets, bronze plates found
in the South of France in 1897, which date from about 1st
Century CE. Whilst using it, I have found that it runs on
a similar lunar system to the Chinese calendar, although the
Chinese system is a 12 year cycle. The oldest calendars are
the lunar calendars because the moon rises one hour later
each day and waxes and wanes changing its shape noticeably
each day, making a perfect marker for the record keepers.
The Moslem calendar is lunar, as is the Jewish, the Ethiopian
and the Tibetan.
However, there is a problem with
a lunar calendar in that the moon is very very wobbly, th'inconstant
moon as Shakespeare calls it . It does not cycle, returning
to the next dark moon or full moon, on an even number of days
- its month is 29.5 days on average and this can change from
one month to the next depending. The moon phase cycle depends
on up to about half a dozen different factors which affect
the apparent motion of the sun and the moon. These factors
can line up at different ways at different times, so the time
from one full moon to the next is always changing, and can
sometimes differ by more than a day between adjacent cycles
(Bailey). The Coligny system follows the average lunar cycle
with great accuracy but is sometimes a day out because of
these wobbles, but on average in any solar year by having
six of the months 29 days long and six 30 days long it stays
as close to the moon as possible.
However, the same applies to
the year, the sun and the moon don't cycle together so there
are twelve and a quarter months to each year, which means
that two in every five years have thirteen lunar months and
the rest have twelve, these two extra months being 30 day
months. And this is only a rough adjustment, so an extra day
is also added in the fourth year of each cycle. This is the
basic five year cycle which keeps the moon, earth and sun
roughly together in their varying seasons. According to Keith's
reckonings, six of these cycles makes a 30 year great cycle
- a month of years at the start of which one of the extra
months is left out in order to fine tune the system, which
needs further fine tuning by creating a month of cycles, five
great cycles which is a 150 year semi-period. In the first
cycle of each semi-period one of the months drops a day. This
semi-period is doubled to make a full period of 300 years
which begins with only half a month, thus every 300 years
the order of the dark and light halves within the months is
reversed. Four of these periods make up a year of 1,200 years
beginning with a cycle in which one of the months has 30 days
instead of 29. Whew! so you can see the difficulty involved
in fine tuning the moon to the sun!!! Which makes me see red
when people go on about there being 13 months in the year,
because it is absolute rubbish put about by people who never
actually go out and watch the moon.
Keith writes: Western civilisation
has increasingly lost touch with the immediate immanent
side of reality and this is clearly reflected in our modern
civil calendar. One whole set of very conspicuous cycles -
those of the moon and tides - are totally ignored. Our months
are a complete sham: we may as well number the days in the
year from 1 to 365 (or 366) and forget about months. Even
our years and days are based on an abstraction, the Standard
Mean Sun whose celestial longitude changes always at a constant
rate. The visible sun that warms the earth and casts shadows
on sundials has a far more interesting motion, now fast, now
slow compared to clock time. It's not that one view is better
or more correct than the other, the problem is that an abstract,
cold, analytical view of reality, essential to understanding
the mechanical side of the universe, has come to dominate,
almost to deny the immediacy and wholeness of existence. We
have lost our balance.
The calendar that results is
determined by the land in which one lives, for in the northern
hemisphere the days are shortest in the season of winter and
longest in the season of summer. This is not so in tropical
lands which do not have such clearly defined seasons linked
with changing day length, so their calendars, like that of
the Mayans, have different constraints upon them. In Britain
the old calendar with the eight quarters and cross-quarters
is clearly linked with the movement of the sun. The solstices
and equinoxes marking the maximum points in day-length and
season, and the cross-quarter days, which are linked with
the seasons of the earth and are primarily agricultural, defining
the turning points from one season to the next.
During the year the rising and
setting times of the sun at the solstices changes very very
little over a two to three week period. They then slowly start
to speed up until the cross-quarter days, after which they
speed up to maximum change in rising and setting times around
the equinoxes. Then gradually slowing again to the next cross-quarter
day, after which there is only a very slight change until
the next solstice. I think of it like the swing of a pendulum,
when the pendulum is at its uppermost point it almost stops
moving - this is like the sunrise and sunset times at the
solstices; when the pendulum is in the middle of its swing
it is moving at its fastest - this is like the sun rising
and setting times at the equinoxes. And together with these
times are the actual movement of the sun in the sky. In summer
it is highest, gradually getting lower this speeding up to
the equinoxes, then gradually slowing down till it is at its
lowest in winter solstice. So the cross-quarter days are times
when the sun noticeably starts to shift its movement, at Samhain
when we are noticeably moving into the dark quarter - at Beltain
when we are noticeably moving into the light half.
Having given you some idea of
the difficulty of linking the movement of the moon with the
movement of the sun and the seasons of the earth, let me now
give you a little of the basic philosophy behind the lunar
calendar of the Celtic peoples, or more likely of the neolithic
peoples who built the megaliths, who we probably have to thank
for this very beautiful system. Like the Chinese, the Celtic
lunar calendar is based on a world-view in which balance is
central. First there is the dynamic balance of darkness and
light, warmth and cold, running through days, months, years
and longer cycles. They are all arranged one within the other
so as to closely follow the visible changes of the moon and
seasons(Bailey). The Celtic day begins at sunset because all
the divisions of time are founded on the principle of darkness
before light. In the beginning was the darkness - then came
the light. This means, according to Keith's interpretation
of the Coligny calendar, that the day begins at sunset - going
into the dark of the night, and the month begins at the last
quarter of the moon when it is going into the dark half of
its cycle. This is why all our major festivals are on the
eve of the day, May Eve, Christmas Eve, New Years Eve, Hallowe'en,
still kept to this very day as people's holidays.
At first it feels strange to have the next day beginning at sunset
and the month beginning with the last quarter of the moon,
but as you tune in to the principle of darkness before light
so you learn to recognise that the dark half of the lunar
cycle is best kept as a whole, so you go through all of the
dark phase and then through the light half. I now light a
candle for each month, and lighting the new candle as we go
into the dark feels very good.
It's the same with the year. The Celtic year begins at Samhain, as
we go into the dark half of the year. This marks the turning
point from autumn into winter. By now we have collected all
our blackberries, and cob nuts, the harvest is in - all our
potatoes and herbs ( you can tell I am a gardener, and one
of the things about living this calendar is that one tunes
in so much more closely to the cycles and seasons of the earth.)
Midwinter is solstice, the birth of the new young sun in terms
of the light, but the darkest point is Imbolc in terms of
season, and yet the darkest point is also the turning so the
first signs of the new are apparent. At Imbolc the first lambs
are born and the snowdrops appear and this is the turning
into the beginning of spring which reaches its high point
at spring equinox with the great celebration festival of Easter,
eggs are being hatched, hares are boxing and all the seeds
planted, potatoes and onions in the ground ready for Beltain
which is the turning into the fullness of the light, the beginning
of summer, the growing period and so the wheel turns to Lammas,
the beginning of autumn, the first harvest happening along
with all the crop circles!! Thus every day starts with the
night, every month starts with the dark half, and every year
starts with winter.
The Festivals
There is a place for marking certain moments. We have roots in the
old, and in one sense they are old, but the way we are celebrating
them today is new - I am certain that our way of celebrating
has not happened before because we are 20th century beings
and we, for example, drive, or hitchhike to a special sacred
place. I am sure that no one (or at least very, very few)
four thousand years ago would have dreamed of going to Avebury
if they lived in Devon, apart from a special pilgrimage that
would have taken days or weeks. They would probably have gone
to their local sacred site. Nowadays few people go to their
local site, most go to the biggies, although often at dawn
I am the only person on Chalice Hill and I see few people
watching sunrise from the Tor.
One thing that amuses me is that
at present you can celebrate any festival three or four times
- for instance the traditional date, say the 21st of June,
March, etc. for Equinoxes and Solstices, or you can take the
precise astrological moment when the sun moves into the appropriate
sign, or you can celebrate according to the moon, say Equinox
full moon and so on. It's really great fun because you can
spend about 10 days celebrating each festival and as they
come round every six weeks that's a lot of time spent celebrating!
And I have yet to see the same thing happening twice on any
of these festival days. We are finding out ways of celebrating
these times, and at present it is pretty chaotic, spontaneous;
there are no fixed formulas, all is changeable according to
the moment.
Following the lunar system, I celebrate Samhain as the moment when
we enter the dark of the year and so this is the end of the
old year and the beginning of the new. I celebrate Samhain
when the moon enters her last quarter because at that moment
she is going into the dark too and will be darker from that
point on. And I light the fire to mark the moment at sunset
when the day is going into the dark. And so day, moon and
season are all at the same point in the cycle. Its quite a
moment and really feels the full essence of going into the
dark. We normally put a stick of apple wood to burn on the
fire representing everything which we wish to let go of so
we do not take it with us to the new year.
At Imbolc the fire of ash wood,
is lit at midnight when the moon is completely dark. Some
people call this new moon, I call it dark of the moon because
for me first crescent is new moon. Imbolc is the turning point
when the earth is at ultimate darkness and from now on everything
will start to get less dark - the first crescent will appear
soon, the days start getting warmer and noticeably longer,
snowdrops and crocuses appear and so on. At midnight we normally
turn all the lights out and sit in the darkness for a while
and then we call Bride to come in with us. A girl then comes
in from outside bringing a candle, the first light. We then
each in turn light a candle making a prayer, planting a seed
for the new year. In Christian mythology this is the festival
of the Purification of the Virgin when Mary takes her new
born son to the Temple. This is the new sun that was born
at winter solstice who has been held within the dark of the
mother until now and is now strong enough and big enough to
come out - and so the sun starts to ride noticeably higher
in the sky, to shine with noticeably increasing warmth and
the days to be noticeably longer.
At Beltain the fire is lit at
dawn when the moon enters her first quarter, marking the shift
into the light half of the cycle, into summer when the seeds
have all been planted and everything is growing well. We normally
jump the fire, through the smoke, raising energy high with
lots of laughter and life. At Lammas, when the moon is full,
the fire is lit at midday the moment of the fullness of the
light, when the cycle turns so that from now on it is going
to be less light, the growing time is over and the reaping
time is here and the berries are collected for wine and jam
and the nuts are ready and death makes its first approach.
I make a wine for each festival and will always give thanks
to the earth for all she has given, pouring the wine on to
the earth as a way of giving back to her a token, to remind
myself that we have so much, so much and we rely on her for
all we have.
This gives a real rhythm to my life. I get to know all the phases
of the moon and all the phases of day and night and tune into
the seasons in a way I have never tuned into them before.
I watch the animals and the plants. Snowdrops are light related
in their growth, however hot or cold the winter they always
flower around Imbolc. Daffodils seem to be heat related and
in a warm winter they will flower around the same time as
the snowdrops but with a cold winter they don't flower till
nearer the equinox. The hawthorn always blossoms around the
time of Beltain whatever the temperature, but the Elder flowers
in May when winter and spring have been warm, and at summer
solstice when they are cold.
To me there is a real magic in
getting up in the dark and leaving the house before cockcrow
to bicycle or walk to Chalice Hill and sit in the dark watching
and waiting for the first tinge of less dark in the sky that
tells that dawn is about to come. Learning which birds first
start to sing: the cock comes first starting to crow about
three quarters of an hour before first light, crows are about
the last - you can hear a specific sequence of their waking
and giving voice, the music of the dawn, each part of the
orchestra coming in in its own time. This magic is of the
moment of the beauty of nature. There is no hierarchical structure,
no set pattern or form I have to follow, I am following my
inner spirit. Perhaps there is some need sometimes for a certain
amount of structure, of formalised ritual but I don't think
we have found the right structures yet. People cast circles,
invoke deities and guardians, use incense, candles and crystals,
and these are all excellent tools to help create an atmosphere
which can be magical. That is all. They are an excellent psychological
ploy to help the mind shift into that special space in which
the mystery is tangible. If we recognise this perhaps we can
allow flexibility in, let our intuition seize the moment so
that we don't have the deadness that is so often present at
these sort of rituals. Because structuring and formalising
is the patriarchal mode. It is power over, control over, making
boundaries. I think we must go through our fear that without
formality there will be nothing. We must learn to flow with
the moment, with knowing when there is a need to hold energy,
when there is a need to let it go. Trust our feelings and
our intuition.
I feel that the emerging pattern of ritual is that of spontaneous
experience, of attuning oneself to nature, to one's inner
state of being - what is called immediate religious experience.
This can happen at any time though it more often occurs if
a stage is set, such as being at a sacred site all night of
the full moon. There are techniques which can be done to help
one shift into a state of consciousness in which one is more
likely to have a profound mystical experience, such as using
certain plants, fasting, lack of sleep, chanting, drumming,
dancing, being in certain places at certain times, etc., but
these are merely techniques - the actual experience can happen
at any time and that is the lifeblood of this spirituality.
It is deeply integrated with one's own personal development,
one's own growth to living the whole of one's potential as
a human being both spiritual and physical. And central to
this is opening up to and being aware of the unconscious,
working with our dreams, with creative imagination and visualisation,
practising meditation, yoga, Tai Chi, Qi Gong breathing, using
therapy to explore our shadows, our problems, our fears and
insecurities, so that we can become much more whole, clear,
happy people.
The holy is encountered as much outwardly as inwardly - we all long
for wholeness for complete oneness of our being both inwardly
and with nature. If we are struggling with internal problems
these also tend to manifest in outward events. We must consciously
take on the suffering that is invariably part of our personal
growth. Spiritual self-development is not an easy process;
in fact it is bloody hard, a tremendous burden, but it seems
we are being pushed, kicking and screaming into forever ploughing
on, ever striving to clear out all that which holds us back
from being shining ones in true unity with the whole, living
the Tao, or however else you visualise this aspect of walking
the path. I can totally recommend living this calendar as
an aid to growth on this path.p
References.
If you want the full details of the Celtic
Lunar Calendar, please write to:
Keith Bailey, Highlands, Keveral Lane,
Seaton, Tor point, Kernow PL11 3JJ.
Or e-mail: carrot@clara.net |
