The most important thing to understand about the eight Witchcraft Sabbats is that they are not man-made. They are not holidays in the same way that a calendar anniversary of some date that has a special importance in history. The eight Sabbats of Witchcraft were not man-made because they existed long before man was made. These eight holidays can be said to be as old as the Earth itself.
Solstices happen twice a year - in June and December. The June Solstice happens around June 21, when the Sun is directly overhead the Tropic of Cancer. The December Solstice takes place around December 21. On this day, the Sun is precisely over the Tropic of Capricorn.
Solstice comes from the Latin words sol, meaning 'Sun ' and sistere, meaning 'to come to
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There are two more days that are similar and equally important. Each Spring, there’s a day when the hours between sunrise and sunset are exactly equal to the hours between sunset and sunrise. This is the "Vernal Equinox". Also, there’s a day each Fall when the hours of darkness and the hours of daylight are exactly in balance. This is the "Autumnal Equinox". It can’t be overemphasized that the importance of these four days is simply a part of how the Earth works.
We can assume that the most primitive of humans noticed this change in the hours of daylight, and the subsequent change in the seasons.
Prehistoric sites such as Stonehenge have clear alignments to both the Summer and Winter Solstice, and the Vernal and Autumnal Equinox. This isn’t alignments confined simply to the British Isles. They can be found the world over such as the pyramids of ancient Egypt, the cliff dwellings of the Native Americans, the temples of Peru and the ancient temples of China. The two Solstices and two Equinoxes certainly must be the oldest holidays known to us, and they were known across the planet. These four days are sometimes known as the "quarter-days", meaning they appear each quarter of the year.
The four "Greater Sabbats" or "High Holidays" of the Witches calendar may seem slightly less obvious at first. With these in place, the circle of the year begins to look like an eight-spoked wheel, which is a sacred symbol in many ancient
The animals raised the sun again and again, until it was high enough that all could survive. When the plants and animals first came to earth, they were told to stay awake for seven nights, as in the Cherokee medicine ceremony. Many of the animals stayed awake next few nights, but only the owl and panther and a couple of others stayed awake all seven nights. They were given the ability to see at night and so to hunt at night when the others are asleep. The same thing happened to the trees, and only the cedar, pine, spruce, holly and laurel stayed awake all seven nights, which is why they can stay green all year when the others lose their leaves.
A calendar marks the seasons and avails farmers to ken when to plant and harvest their grain. Like many antediluvian societies, China predicated its calendar upon the phases of the moon but then integrated extra months. This was because a solar year is not evenly divisible by an exact number of lunar months – there are about 12.37 lunar months during a solar seasonal year – so without the extra months, the seasons would drift each year. This is called a lunisolar calendar. The Chinese calendar ergo had a thirteen-month year every two or three years.
The second day God separated water into the sea and the sky. The third day God created land and plants. On the fourth day God created the sun and moon, along with the stars. On the fifth day, the Lord created fish and birds. On the sixth day, God created animals and humans.
The calendars they used represented each God. The Aztec calendar had three wheels within it: there was a 260 day cycle, a 365 day cycle and a 52 year cycle.
What I Know Before beginning the research process, my knowledge on witchcraft, Wicca, and Paganism was very limited. I gathered that Wiccans practice witchcraft and that Wicca falls under the umbrella of Paganism. I had no knowledge on witchcraft at all. I struggled to discern fact from fiction regarding the practice of witchcraft.
Freedom Summer was planned out a couple of months before the days of June because though June and March those were the days when Freedom Summer
In 1905, one summer morning, he was riding on horseback through Petts Wood when he noticed that many curtains remained drawn against sunlight. He thought that it was waste of sunlight, so he started to devise a way to enjoy more sunlight during summer and finally had an idea of moving clocks an hour forward. By 1907, he had published a pamphlet, “Waste of Daylight”, which advocated that time be advanced by four twenty-minute increments in April and reversed in
(O.I.). There is a legend that this because in order to make their months the best, Julius and Augustus Caesar added an extra day to their month from February.(O.I.) Every four years February has an extra day because of leap year (O.I.). There are also 12 months in a year (O.I.). Roads were invented by the Ancient Romans (Doc. 3).
If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It The Bible says that God created the world in six days, and as an example to us, rested on the seventh. Whether you believe this or not, it set a good framework for the appropriate length of the week. In 1793 during the French Revolution, the National Convention tried to stray from this by creating a new calendar based on the decimal system. The year still consisted of 12 months split into thirty days, but these days were split into ten hours, and these hours split into one hundred minutes, and those minutes split into one hundred seconds.
Cahokia, often called “Monk’s Mound”, was composed of hundreds of human built mounds. Cahokia was home to hundreds of indigenous and the Mayans had systematically constructed it to make it city like and accessible for trade to occur.. Large posts surrounded Cahokia for the Mayans to make astronomical findings. Their astronomical findings led to the establishment of a calendar that they used for religious
On average the sunshine coast has approximately 7 hours of sunshine a day, the seasonal variations are very minimal. The temperatures are generally warm year round with summer temperatures averaging between 17 – 28 °C, and autumn temperatures falling between 13 - 25 °C. However the coastal location benefits from cooling sea breezes on warmer days. The during the winter season the temperature ranges between 7 - 22 °C. Spring is similarly mild with temperatures reaching between 13 - 25 °C.
Because they believed the sun and moon were such holy objects, they held festivals called the New Moon festival in which they remembered all the duties of the moon and sun and how faithful they were to them in their time of need. Along with these beliefs, the Cherokee tribes also believed in an afterlife. They firmly believed in seven heavens, and a person would one day be placed in the level they deserved based on how they lived their life on earth. The levels went from one being the best, where the supreme being was, to seven being the worst where one would live a life of eternal suffering. They looked at life as a gift and knew it was something to treasure.
In life we can all relate to the feeling of longing for something. In All Summer in a Day, Ray Bradbury’s characters’ lives are clouded with rain and the only see the sun once every seven years. Bradbury uses metaphors, emotions, and repetition to express the sun’s meaning of hope to the main character, Margot, and the children of rocket men and women on Venus. Metaphors and emotions are used to help the reader relate to the connection with the sun. He describes the sun and the rain using metaphors, and uses the children’s emotions to help further the idea.
Most people don't have a clue what the Kabbalah is, though they may be aware it has something to do with a parade of stars -- from Madonna to Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher to Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton -- wearing red strings on their wrists. Kabbalah is an archaic word and
In the play Measure For Measure the year, season, and the time of day are mentioned at least once. Measure For Measure took place in 1604 (Shakespeare, 1) because of the religious ideas going around. For example; marriage being necessary to have a child, it was something that would get a head chopped off, “... It is for getting Madam Julietta with child.” (I, 1.2, 71).