The four major stations
of the Sun are known as The Great Tides. These are Midwinter, Spring, Midsummer
and Harvest. They are celebrated at the solstices,when the Sun can be seen to
be at his higest point in the sky and at his lowest point, and at the equinoxes
when day and night, light and dark are evenly balanced.
These festivals celebrate the solar fire, the Light of Heaven. The keynote is
one of strength and weakness, light and darkness, youth and age. They are essentially
masculine in character.
The Celts and Druids saw within this schema a glimpse of a Divine pattern that
runs throughout the natural world. They saw the cycle of life in the fields
and in the wildwood follow the path of the Sun from season to season and they
saw in this the parable of Man’s own life cycle. They saw in the weak and
feeble Midwinter Sun the helpless newborn infant; in the Spring Sun the adolescent,
feeling his growing strength; in the Midsummer Sun the King in his prime and
power; in the Harvest Sun the aged Elder, growing weaker and more infirm from
day to day. The patterns of life on the Earth are as they are drawn in the skies
above.
The four great pastoral feasts are known as the Cross-Quarter Days. These are
specifically Celtic in character and refer to the four important turning points
of the agricultural year. They are Imbolc, the appearance of the first flowers;
Beltane, the first flowers on the fruit trees; Lugnasad, the first-fruits of
Harvest and Samhuin, the end of Harvest when the land becomes barren.
These festivals celebrate the hearth-fire, the fire that warms and cooks the
nourishing bounty of our mother Earth, the fire that gives light in the darkness.
The keynote is one of work and patience, the Earth and her bounty, investment
and reward. They are essentially feminine in character.
The Celts and Druids saw this cycle of Cross-Quarter festivals as the complement
and counterbalance to the Great Tides. These are the turning-points of the seasons
and they guide us gently through the nodes of the year as the Lady in her aspects
of Virgin, Bride, Mother and Crone guides us through our own lifetime rites
of passage. She stands behind us and supports us through times of fear and joy,
the dreaded and the longed-for, the unpredictable and the inevitable and, like
the Earth, her incarnation, she never fails.
The Celts and Druids saw the year as an intertwining, a dance even, of the Great
Tides and the Cross-Quarters. When the two systems are combined, there is a
joyous and harmonius alternation between the Lord and the Lady, the Sun and
the Earth, the male and the female. Each complements the other and each takes
it in turn to set the tone for their particular festival before giving way gracefully
as the other steps forward. Each is dependent on the other: the concept becomes
flawed if either of the two powers becomes dominant or subservient.
This is the Great Plan. This is written in the Sky above and the Earth beneath.
This is the rationale behind the great Celtic oath : “May the Sky fall
on my head, may the Earth swallow me up”.
This is more than a simple calendar, it is a plan for living. It demonstrates,
in the visible, predictable and inevitable interaction of the Sky and the Earth
from season to season and year to year how man should interact with his surroundings.
Not only in the mutual honour and respect between man and woman, but in the
attitudes towards family and clan, tribes and race and on into Mankind’s
treatment of the natural world about him, animal, vegetable and mineral.
–Coifi