(^160) A Wiccan Bible
days long, but let’s use modern science to be a bit more exact: One day is 24 hours, or
the amount of time it takes the Earth to rotate once; one month is 29.531 days, or
708.744 hours, or the amount of time it takes for any one phase of the moon to be
repeated, dark to dark, full to full, new to new or any portion thereof.
One year is 12 months, so to find the length of a year we can take 29.531 and mul-
tiply that by 12, and we should come up with that familiar figure 365 days. And that is
exactly what we would come up with if there were indeed 12 months in the year, but
there are not. If there were, the year would be 354.372 days long. What about those
other 10.62 days? Wouldn’t they accumulate and wind up adding an extra month every
2.78 or so years? They would, which is why the lunar calendar is not the best choice for
tracking annual events. It is, however, an excellent tool in tracking monthly events when
a modern calendar is not available. One needs only look into the sky to get a general
idea what time of the month it is.
But instead of adopting a strictly solar calendar, attempt after attempt was made to
justify the Moon and solar cycles. Now, many of them were rather ingenious, but none
were ideal for the masses that did not possess a level of education that permitted their
understanding. So chances are Murray, in inventing the modern use of the words Sabbat
and Esbat, was on to something after all. Not because either word was used by the
ancient Pagans, but because once a year events (celebrations) were best marked by a
solar calendar, and routine things, matters of kith and kin, were best marked as by a
lunar calendar.
This is about how most Wiccans find their practice today. Larger festivals are marked
on the solar calendar and private or small group celebrations sometimes occur on the
full moon. But in saying that, please do not confuse the idea of a lunar month with the
current 12 months of the year. Although those months were definitely fashioned on
the many attempts to synchronize the lunar months with the solar year, our modern
calendar is a strictly solar calendar with nothing more than the names of the months
borrowed from the older attempts at fusing the two. It could just as easily have 11 or 12
months. For evidence of this fact, just look at your calendar and notice how the full
moon wanders about it from month to month.
The Celtic Moon Calendar
This is why the so-called ‘Celtic Moon Calendar’ of popular-Pagan culture seems
to change from book to book. Even if we set aside the fact that the Celts were a vastly
diverse group, having different words, cultures, and names not only for the lunar cycles
but for the gods and goddesses themselves and also set aside the difficulty in determin-
ing the number of months in a year, we are left with the question: When does the year
start? Although it might seem like a no-brainer that the solar year starts at Winter
Solstice, we have to remember that the Winter Solstice was not marked by the ancient
Celts.
q WB Chap 09.p65 160 7/11/2003, 5:53 PM
barré
(Barré)
#1