This Friday is a pretty special date. We will start the day with an awesome Solar Eclipse, beginning at 08:22 and ending at 10:38 GMT. This rare phenomenon will see Europe have 90% of its rays blocked out temporarily, with that figure rising to 94% in Scotland and up to 100% in Svalbard Norway and the Faroe Islands. This will be the biggest eclipse that Britain has seen since 1999. The word eclipse actually comes from the Ancient Greek work ekleipsis, which meant being abandoned. It was believed by the Ancient Greeks that the Sun would abandon us temporarily if the gods were angered. In many different cultures, there are stories of how the Sun was eaten or stolen to explain away the eclipse. Among them is the Viking fable that the Sun goddess is chased by a wolf, and when the animal catches her, a Solar Eclipse happens. Korean folklore suggests that solar eclipses happen because mythical dogs are trying to steal the Sun. In China, the belief was that a dragon attempted to eat ...

   Everytime I go outside I see new flowers popping up where there weren't any before. It's so exciting! Every day it seems to get a little bit milder, and the evenings draw out for a little bit longer. I love coming home from work while the sun is still up! I go down to the beach to catch the last rays and marvel at the variety of sunsets each evening provides. The twilight hours are so magical, the birds give their last song of the day, and the foxes sneak from garden to garden. Each evening is a little bit brighter than the last. It won't be long until I'm lying on the warm golden sand, basking in the evening sun of summer. We are approaching Spring Equinox, one of my favourite times of year! It is especially fun because of all the cute decorations. I already found an Easter Tree to decorate. It's a tradition from Sweden, and is found in many Germanic-speaking countries. Another thing Germanic-speaking countries tend to have in common is the use of the word Ea...

We are currently in the lunar month of goddess Rheda, and the Spring Equinox is drawing near. The next lunar month is that of goddess Eostre, also known as Ostara. For this reason, many pagans celebrate the Spring Equinox as the festival of Ostara. Who is this mystery goddess? It was the 8th century historian Saint Bede who made written record of this Anglo-Saxon deity. He claimed that the Christian festival of Christ's resurrection became known as Easter because it falls on the first Sunday after Eostre's full moon. Her name is ultimately related to the word east , which comes from the Proto-Indo-European word for "shine" or "dawn". Therefore, we assume that Eostre is a goddess of the dawn, and the increasing sunlight which follows the Spring Equinox. There are several places in England which may have been named after the goddess, such as Eastry in Kent, Eastrea in Cambridgeshire, and Eastrington in Yorkshire. Jacob Grimm theorised that her Old Germa...

A new lunar month is upon us! This is what the Anglo-Saxons called Hrēþ-mōnaþ, the moon of the goddess Hretha, also known as Rheda. Although we have next to nothing to base our ideas on, just like the goddess Ostara, we can guess as to her role. Some have suggested that she could have been a warrior goddess, who fights away the darkness of winter, in order for the spring equinox to triumph. The Romans named this month after the warrior god Mars. March was considered the first month of the Roman calendar year, until perhaps as late as 153 BCE. England later adopted the 25th March as their New Year, until reverting back to 1st January in 1752. Another name for this month is Lentmonat , meaning the month of "spring" or "lengthening of days". This is where we get the term "Lent" from, as a spring period during which food is sparse. In England a common feature of this month is the blossoming of daffodils, which spend most of the year dormant beneath the E...

This is something I invented, because I like the idea of working through the spectrum of light as a continuous circle, moving with the seasons. I created the following diagram to illustrate this concept, and you can see that I have included the image of a human body and a lineal depiction of the colour spectrum. This is my rainbow year: Red is the lowest frequency of light that we can see with the naked eye. Its wavelengths are long and slow. In terms of sound vibrations, this would be a very low pitch. This is why it is often considered a "masculine" colour, because the vibrations are associated with the low pitch of a man's voice. As it is the lowest frequency we see, I associate it with the lowest point of the sun, at Winter Solstice. Red is a popular colour to use during Yuletide celebrations. Red is also the colour of "stop" signs, signalling the end of the year and a period of rest. Red is also associated with the Muladhara chakra. The seed mant...

The Sabbat of the Autumn Equinox is often referred to as Mabon by Wiccans, but why?  There is no ancient festival of this name, rather the festival of Mabon is a 20th century invention. It is named after a prominent figure in Arthurian mythology. Mabon is the son of Modron and a member of Arthur's war band. Before the Arthurian legends were written, Mabon and Modron were probably worshipped as deities in pre-Christian Wales. In Arthurian mythology, Mabon is an exalted prisoner who was stolen from his mother's arms when he was just three nights old. Arthur asks the oldest wisest animal, the salmon of Llyn Llyw, where he might find Mabon. The salmon carries Arthur and his men downstream to the prison in Gloucester, where Mabon can be heard singing a lamentation for his fate. Arthur and his men set about rescuing Mabon from the prison so that he can assist them in the hunt for Twrch Trwyth. Mabon is heralded as a "servant to Uther Pendragon". On the continent he is known...