The eight festivals of the Druid tradition

THE EIGHTFOLD YEAR

The Longstone, Isle of Wight, in the mists of Winter Solstice sunrise, 2004.

Belteinne (Beltane) or May Day, in Parkhurst Forest, Isle of Wight, 2005.

Druids today celebrate eight festivals, which mark the key points of the cycle of each year in the natural world. They are points of the year which would have had particular significance to our ancestors, whose lives depended on their crops and their livestock and so were profoundly affected by the changing seasons and the vagaries of the weather.

Probably the best-known of the year's key points is the Summer Solstice, when modern Druids traditionally descend on Stonehenge in the UK to watch the sun rise over the Heol Stone and to celebrate the peak of the power of the Sun at Midsummer. Yet the most powerful is arguably quite the opposite nodal point, the Winter Solstice, when the year is rekindled and dark is defeated by light, as the Sun King, the Mabon, is reborn to grow into the fresh new year with all its gleaming bright new opportunities.

Four of the festivals, including the Summer Solstice, actually mark turning points in the year and are solar festivals, characterised as male, while the four intermediate ones are lunar and female (satisfying the Druid love of balance) and are associated more with turning tides, within man and within nature.

At the end of September, 2006, Wight Druids took part in a special joint ritual with Dakota Elder Chuck Derby, blending Native American pipe ceremony with Druid rite in a beautiful oak grove at Landguard Manor, Shanklin, as an opening to Orania's Teaching and Healing Weekend. Nico Verhoeve filmed a large portion of the event and a small selection of stills from his movie are now online, with Nico's kind permission, at www.wightdruids.co.uk/Orania/

Sharing of bread and mead during Summer Solstice, 2006, celebration at The Longstone, Isle of Wight.

The festivals are:
February 1/2: Imbolc (Candelmas).
March 21: Alban Eiler or Spring Equinox.
May 1: Belteinne (Beltane).
June 21/22: Alban Hefin or Summer Solstice.
August 1: Lughnasadh.
September 20/23: Alban Elfed or Autumn Equinox.
October 31: Samhuinn (Hallowe'en).
December 21: Alban Arthuan or Winter Solstice.

Each has its own symbolism and its own particular form of celebration which is closely related to all that is happening in the natural world around us at that specific time and what is to come through the year ahead.

Much more information on this subject and many others related to Druidry available online at
http://www.druidry.org/obod/druid-path/index.shtml

More on The Longstone at www.druidnetwork.org/sacredsites/longstone/index.html