Pagan / Earth spirituality question

[urbpan]

I know the various names for the days in between the equinoxes and solstices, but are there names for the half-seasons that occur within? Is there, for example, a different name for the part of spring that begins March 21st (or thereabouts) and comes to an end in a couple days to distinguish it from the time period that begins on the First of May and culminates with the Summer Solstice? I assume that there are already names in place, and I won't have to continue the process bubbling in my brain right now to come up with names for them.

Thanks in advance, Blessed Be, Do what thou wilt, I love you.

Comments

[kryptyd.livejournal.com]

You can be pretty sure that a lot of these have pre-christian origins.
http://www.namenerds.com/irish/feastday.html
Sorry I don't have specifics. I know some Irish pagans and I could ask them for you. I'm pretty sure country people in Ireland would have vague oral traditions about this stuff too, though they probably would balk at the description of "pagan" and I wouldn't ask them about it in those terms. I'm sure old farming folk would have had a lot of these days. You might get them in a farming almanac.

Sorry for being vague. I lost my (vague even at stage) faith years ago.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this. That seemed to name just about every day of the month, whereas I'm looking for a list of 8 names, for the 8 half-seasons. I tried googling "the 8 seasons" and mostly came up with stuff about television. This is an interesting dilemma, I appreciate your resource.

[kryptyd.livejournal.com]

Even AT that stage, I meant.

The limitations of google is a thing I'm constantly discovering myself these days. I'm going to ask my mate Katie for you, who is my go-to gal for all things mystical. She'd know. She's wise.

[kryptyd.livejournal.com]

Katie, the witchy one, says:-

Didn't the bloody wiccans pluck festivals from every calendar to make 8 (sabbats) in total.

I can't remember what they all are exactly. But I remember being disgusted at how bastardised the Wiccan calendar looked. There were the Celtic festivals/equinoxes, plus some other unnecessary congestion (in my opinion)

Ill see if I can find something to remind myself what I'm on about

[lizziebelle.livejournal.com]

I've been Pagan/Wiccan for more than half my life, and we've never had specific names for the seasons in that way. We just use the regular ol' spring-summer-autumn-winter thang. I'd be interested if you find anything out!

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I will definitely let you know if I learn anything! Seems really weird, since the neopagans have fifteen names for August first that there wouldn't be a name for the time period between August first and Autumnal Equinox. "Late Summer" doesn't carry any spiritual weight.

[kryptyd.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I hope that I/we don't sound snobby. Of course modern wiccanism is "reconstructed" in many ways. I have a lot of respect for all kinds of paganism, even the types that have a certain amount of modern additions.

[kryptyd.livejournal.com]

Obv you know this
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_of_the_Year

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Indeed I do, that's kind of my jumping off point. What's the word for the time period between Samhain and Yule? What do you call the time between Ostara and Beltane? (and so on)

I guess since our seasons in New England are so extreme, it seems very useful to me to break up the year in more-than-a-month less-than-a season units. Maybe I'm alone in that.

Yes, no and maybe.

[momafauna.livejournal.com]

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I seem to recall seeing names for these windows of time, but most likely in books, not on the internet. (I think perhaps the Farrar's wrote about this, but I could be mistaken.) I will see if I can tap my community for any thoughts on this as well as check in on the library. I would suppose it would very much depend upon your tradition & of course, many pagans do not adhere to the "Big 8" at all, but instead follow the lunar calendar, or something entirely different. I suspect that there are probably several different ways these periods are defined. Or not.

I used to live in western Mass. & also VT for a stint & I agree that New England has very distinct, recognizable segments to the seasons. It has been a long time since I personally lived by the neopagan high days, proper (although I still attend community celebrations & festivals). I prefer to shape my year by the signs I see about me in the land & my living world rather than what my distant ancestors on another continent did (or what some wild & charismatic dude with a goatee said they did), so I find this question quite relevant to my own process of understanding the changes of place that I try my best to honour. You have me thinking... Thank you. I like that.

I will let you know if I learn anything that might be useful to you. Always a pleasure to visit your blog.

~ Lurker Moma

Re: Yes, no and maybe.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much! I really appreciate you putting this much effort into it. :)

[urb-banal.livejournal.com]

Well, the equinoxs and then the venable (sp?) equinoxs and then ONE of the betweens is the one celebrated in "mid-sommer" which I know is an old english tradition...

Beats me! Good luck with that, love to hear what you find out!

[uneko.livejournal.com]

I love you too ;)

I'm no Pagan or Wiccan, but I am a blackbelt in google-fu. so let's see what I can find... I tend to type as aI figure things out, so I may contradict myself, be flat out wrong, or share a lot of 'thought process' here.. :) So bear with me. I'm also goign at this with a more 'historical 'opinion then a newage one. <3

http://pendragon343.com/sabbats-ext.html this has a lot of information about the celebrations at each sabbat and what it signified... and while reading it.. I think you might be approaching your thinking a little backwards. It's not "what's this part of spring called between Ostara and Beltane?" but perhaps it should be simply considered "after Ostara" or "Before Beltane" .. those are as valid words as "late spring" or "early summer"... they wouldn't nessicarily need a 'fancy word' to describe the time period, any more then we would need a separate "late summer" word... if you consider the idea that the wheel divides the year into 8 sections of 46ish, that's not too far off from a month.

Indeed, some other research shows some interesting details. the wikipage for Beltane says it "is the anglicised spelling of the Goidelic name for either the month of May" (or the festival held on may 1st)... Goidelic is the Gaelic Languages... I immediately thought about the fact that WE call May 1st "May day".. so perhaps the whole "time period" being called Beltane isn't so strange.. this is further reenforced by this note further down the page: "In Irish Gaelic, the month of May is known as Mí Bhealtaine or Bealtaine, and the festival as Lá Bealtaine ('day of Bealtaine' or, 'May Day')."

That said, I can't find evidence of that same idea on the other holidays, so that may be more coincidence or conjecture onmy part..

I've also found http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coligny_calendar -- which is basically a tablet we found in france that was made back around the 2nd centure AD, and we believe that it was the recording some druids made to preserve their time keeping in an era when the Julian calendar was being imposed everywhere. Though there is some evidence of this already being 'tainted' by the julian calendar, I think...

As we can determine (summarizing wikipedia :) ) - It tried to syncronize solar year and lunar months. The basic unit was a "fortnight", that was 14/15 days long. Two fortnights made up a month. (first fortnight was 15 days, the second was 15 half the months and 14 the rest of the time). There were 12 months in a year, but every 2.5 years, they added in an extra month.

http://caeraustralis.com.au/celtcalmain.htm is another webpage that goes into more detail, describing in detail the debate over when the year starts and began while also offering other 'month names'... including a nice chart where they break down that they likely had words or names roughly equivalent to "First month of summer" "month of middle summer" and "month of end of summer" I belive anyway. the page is a bit too long for me to read in depth and fully 'get'... nto without spending more time then I have available to me this busy monday afternoon.

But the short of it is.. they probably had month names and used those, much like we would. :) this isn't a deeply shocking or revolutionary things as a great many ancient cultures had calendars with months or month like time periods. (the ancient egyptians has 12 months of 30 days, plus 5 days at the end of the year, with 3 weeks of 10 in each month. :)... the mayans had a very complicated little calendar made up of 18 months of 20 days.. and.. I'd ramble about that, but you can read my ramble about it here: http://drgrumpyinthehouse.blogspot.com/2013/03/and-i-feel-fine.html in the comments section of you're interested. :) )

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for the love, and for the long and well-researched response! I may go ahead and name my demi-seasons or octomonths or whatever they are.

[uneko.livejournal.com]

:D

There's probably more information out there to be found, but it's a really broad scope. :) Butif it's for any sort of personal/spiritual reason.. then.. Do what feels right. I like the idea of octomonths :D