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GREEN & WHITE FESTIVALS
The 9 Sabbats of the year are split into 2 groups - Green Festivals and White Festivals. The Green Festivals are the Solstices and Equinoxes: Yule, Ostara, Litha and Modron, and these mainly represent the turning tides of our earth on it's solar axis, these being times of equal day and night, and the shortest and longest daylight. The White Festivals are Samhain, 12th Night, Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasadh, and these mainly represent the lives of the Goddess and God. At Samhain, the Goddess in her Crone phase awaits the return of her Son, born at Yule, and on the 12th Night, the young Sun God is initiated into his heritage and given his majikical tools. The Goddess is transformed at Imbolc, to the Maiden Goddess and she too embarks on her journey. At Beltane, she meets the God of the Greenwood, and they are united in their love for each other. This becomes the time of the Mother Goddess, when the earth flourishes with life. Following Lughnasadh, a Harvest Festival and a time of thanksgiving for the bounty of the earth, the God is sacrificed for the continuum of life, and rests in the Underworld in the womb of the Goddess, and this time becomes a period of reflection and remembrance of our ancestors, but a time too of hope at the return of the God. Although the Sabbats can be categorised in this way, they are also intertwinned in each other, as the lives of the Goddess and God are to be found on every day of the year, as their influences affect all life on our planet earth, Mighty Gaia, the whole year round. |
