13/07/2026
The familiar image of the ‘Celtic wheel of the year’ (swipe left) became more alive for me after in a conversation with my friend Gary Llewelyn, a practicing druid. He shared that while the solstices and the equinoxes are astrologically fixed, the cross-quarter festivals (Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasa and Samhain) are not - you need to look out for them; to meet them as they arrive. Spring comes when the Snowdrops arrive, not because the calendar says it is the first of February. Beltane belongs with the Hawthorne Blossom, which is celebrated in the garlands of the May Queen, and Lughnasa when the Harvest is in, which is down to the Farmers knowing exactly when the crop is ready. Finally Samhain he explained as the Blood harvest: historically the hard decisions that are taken before winter, based on taking inventory after the harvest, and making judgements as to which animals can be fed over winter, and which need to be killed, since there isn’t enough food for them. These festivals have been closely tied to an agricultural way of life, and met in lived relationship with the land.
What matters here is not fixed names or times, but these frames offering us patterns to support our active participation in seasonal reality.
This is an extract from my piece about moon names on Substack. If you’d like to read it please hop over via the links in my bio!!
