A Witch’s Year is a year-round guide to the practice of witchcraft that will show you how to create your own magic based on the ever-changing cycle of the seasons. It is a compendium of magic, lore, rituals, observances, spells, projects and all manner of things, that aims to show that there is a lot more to witchcraft in the twenty-first century than simply observing a brief series of seasonal festivals. Witchcraft can be a day-by-day, week-by-week and month-by-month magical and spiritual practice that will enrich your life, inspire and delight you, and bring you into a deeper relationship with all the beings who share this world with us, with the spirit world and with the gods.
I am a witch and a magical practitioner; working with the spirit world is at the heart of what I do, and I make magic with my familiar spirits and with the spirits of the land. Like many contemporary witches, I am also a Pagan and perform rituals dedicated to Pagan goddesses and gods, both old and new. You will find in this book a combination of practical magic, ways to connect with the spirits, and rituals that honour the gods and celebrate seasonal festivals or Sabbats. It contains practical projects; things to make and places to visit. First and foremost, the witchcraft I practise is experiential; it does not always happen in words, and sometimes the deepest magic comes from uniting mind and body in doing something that may appear simple but can have profound results: tying feathers into a length of yarn or weaving a sun wheel; sitting quietly under a hawthorn tree or looking into a still pool.
Witchcraft for me is a constant process of unfolding and becoming; with every passing season, I learn more about the great time cycles that animate our lives, about the goddesses and gods, the world of spirit, and also how to live here in this world now. Witchcraft has, over many years, profoundly changed the way I experience time and the seasons. It has meant putting the journey of our earth around the sun and its monthly dance with our moon at the heart of my experience of life, rather than simply bowing to the demands and pressures of ‘human’ time, which are so often at odds with how we yearn to be, and with the needs and rhythms of the rest of life on the earth. Living day to day by the lunar and solar rhythms, and experiencing the constantly changing seasons as fully as possible, has a very beneficial effect. Noticing the crescent moon just after sunset for the first time at the start of a month, or seeing and hearing a flock of migrating swans passing over a city, or standing in a bluebell wood in Maytime, or experiencing the power of the highest tide of the year; all of these can remind us of who we really are and where we live.
Making the lunar and solar time cycles central to your life will change the way you experience time and the passing of the seasons. The moon is at the heart of witchcraft. For witches, the moon is a goddess whose rhythms influence the tides of our bodies and minds, just as they control the tides and the growth of plants. Witchcraft is mostly practised at night, and as the moon waxes and wanes, she shapes our magic and guides our rituals and our dreams and visions. To be a witch means to put the lunar rhythm at the centre of your life and experience it to the full. The moon was our earliest measure of time. We divide our calendars into months; (these were originally lunar months) and months are divided into weeks (originally the period from one lunar quarter to the next). Use a lunar calendar to make the moon central to your Witch’s Year and structure your time. Learn to recognise how the moon’s phases affect your emotions as well as your bodily feelings. The moon will be fundamental to all your witchcraft; the lunar calendar will be your first consideration when planning rituals or practical magic.
The other great rhythm is that of the solar year; the passing of the seasons from Solstice to Equinox to Solstice again as the earth orbits the sun. Pagan witches structure their seasonal festivals by this great circular rhythm and refer to it as the Wheel of the Year. The sun, the bringer of light, warmth and life, is also personified and honoured as a deity, usually a god. It is the interplay between moon and sun, the way they dance together through our seasons, that creates the Witch’s Year. The constant, ceaseless, tidal lunar rhythm is the essential background to the events and festivals that mark the solar year.
