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Author Topic: Wheel of the Year in warmer (or colder) climates  (Read 3947 times)

Jenett

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Re: Wheel of the Year in warmer (or colder) climates
« Reply #15 on: May 10, 2012, 03:04:20 pm »
Quote from: Rhyshadow;53925

It's the ocean - moderates everything

<- Born and Raised in New England, now living in Minnesota - is 40 years here enough to consider me a native yet?

 
Heh. Born and raised in the Boston area, 12 years in Minnesota, now in Maine, where I understand I will never be anything other than 'from away'.

More seriously - I'm inland, almost in the mountain foothills, so the ocean isn't moderating as much as it does the rest of the state.
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Re: Wheel of the Year in warmer (or colder) climates
« Reply #16 on: May 10, 2012, 04:00:43 pm »
Quote from: Jenett;53921
My basic take on it, though, is:


Very similar to my take.

As long as there is a perceivable change in the seasons, which should be true in any temperate climate (no matter how mild or extreme), I don't worry too much about the holidays needing to align with weather-based ecological shifts.

But since my observance of the Wheel is divorced from agrarian life and relies on the amount of daylight, which falls dependably on the holidays, that probably helps. And again, the shift in day length should be perceivable in any temperate climate.

I think the OP's concern really flares up in the tropics. There isn't any real shift in length of days, and the seasons are not so much about temperature (which comes down to hot and hotter) as precipitation (rainy season vs. dry season). So tropical regions are where the Wheel of the Year becomes rather useless.
The first song sets the wheel in motion / The second is a song of love / The third song tells of Her devotion / The fourth cries joy from the sky above
The fifth song binds our fate to silence / and bids us live each moment well / The sixth unleashes rage and violence / The seventh song has truth to tell
The last song echoes through the ages / to ask its question all night long / And close the circle on these pages / These, the metamythos songs

Morag

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Re: Wheel of the Year in warmer (or colder) climates
« Reply #17 on: May 13, 2012, 07:16:22 am »
Quote from: DJ_Bonneromics;53823
By contrast, in the extreme upper Midwest or Canada there usually isn't much flower or leaf color even by Beltane, let alone Ostara.  

 
....you realize Canada is a really big country with several different climates, right? There are parts of Canada that see a lot of flower and leaf color around Imbolc. As in, say, The Sunshine Coast, named for all the sunshine.

Canada: not a monolith.


To answer your question, while the Wheel of the Year is actually fairly suited to the climate I live in, I don't use it. I celebrate the solstices because they have held significance to me my whole life; aside from that my three main holidays are Samhain, Imbolc, and Beltane, which I celebrate for the Sacred Triad I worship.
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DJ_Bonneromics

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Re: Wheel of the Year in warmer (or colder) climates
« Reply #18 on: June 02, 2012, 12:59:18 am »
Quote from: Morag;54295
....you realize Canada is a really big country with several different climates, right? There are parts of Canada that see a lot of flower and leaf color around Imbolc. As in, say, The Sunshine Coast, named for all the sunshine.

Canada: not a monolith.


 
OOOPS - I'm actually pretty embarrassed about this one.  Sorry for not being more specific!  :o

I was referring to places east of the Rockies in general.  Probably fairly near the U.S. border, as in less than 200 miles northward.  Places with a climate slightly colder than what you get in northern Minnesota or New England.

I agree with the obvious remark that the Wheel becomes pretty useless as you near the tropics.  The real question is over just how far into the *warm temperate* latitudes the Wheel makes sense.  I'd imagine that it still works reasonably well in the cooler half of the Mediterranean climate zone - places like Northern California or Southern France or the northern half of Italy.  But the warm half of California and the Med is probably getting a bit too subtropical - although the changing of daylight from summer to winter is still pretty pronounced.

SunflowerP

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Re: Wheel of the Year in warmer (or colder) climates
« Reply #19 on: June 02, 2012, 05:49:39 am »
Quote from: DJ_Bonneromics;57979
I was referring to places east of the Rockies in general.  Probably fairly near the U.S. border, as in less than 200 miles northward.  Places with a climate slightly colder than what you get in northern Minnesota or New England.

 
I resemble that remark!  Or rather, my location does.  (For some values of it - Alberta is not Ontario.  Heck, even the prairie provinces aren't a climatic monolith.)  Just east of the Rockies, two-and-a-smidge degrees north of the 49th Parallel, and I understand that Minnesota is only marginally warmer.

Here in Calgary (leaving aside chinooks, which aren't predictable more than a few days ahead so they're just "interesting thing the weather does"), the Wheel is quite usable, though it requires some tweaking.  Brigidfeast/Imbolc isn't the beginning of spring growth, by a long shot, but by that measure we don't have spring as a whole season anyway.  It makes more sense to just rename that season in my own mind, to Stirring (or, if we're blessed with precipitation, Winterfilth - a LOtR reference).

So Brigidfeast, for me, is primarily a Feast of Returning Light (and a day for honoring Brigid) - because the days are visibly lengthening, the process has begun, even though it's not otherwise visible.

By Spring Equinox, other changes are apparent - it may still be pretty cold, and/or pretty snowy, and thus superficially still winter, but the temperatures are definitely less cold, and the snow often wetter.

Beltane, then, is the beginning of Growing - the grass is well into greening by then, but the leaves aren't out.  One has to dress warmly (though not generally in full winter gear) to do so, but it's usually possible to celebrate outdoors (with a Plan B for moving indoors, but that's a wise idea in these parts no matter the season).  Shortly after Beltane - anywhere from a few days to two or three weeks - branches that had been bare appear to be surrounded by a faint green haze, which grows less faint with each successive day and in a week or less has become in leaf.  And by the end of May, if not sooner, we're likely to be experiencing temperatures that are definitely summer temperatures.

So Midsummer is Midsummer, the peak of the season I tag Growing.  And we're northerly enough that, near the solstice, we get looooonnnggg lingering twilights and never do get full astronomical dark, the nights have a magical quality well-suited to the time.

Lammas begins Harvesting - I particularly like to go by the saskatoon berries, which come ripe here almost exactly in tune with the Wheel.  Grains are not yet ripe for harvest, but soon will be.  And autumn=fall=what the leaves do will begin before the month is out.

By Fall Equinox, the grain harvest is pretty much done (but so it would be for agricultural people:  when it's being harvested, there's no time to celebrate), and the trees are at or past their color prime and starting to look a bit nakeder.

Samhain is the final harvest festival and the beginning of Winter/Sleeping; it's the last point at which outdoor ritual is a suitable Plan A.

And Yule/Midwinter is, well, midwinter, longest night, all that.  (Solstices and equinoxes are easier to fit to local conditions anyway, since they're primarily solar not agricultural.)

So, really surprisingly little adjustment for a place that, climatically speaking, is so very very not southern England.

My perspective is that of Eclectic neoPagan religious Witchcraft, not Wicca (though Wicca is one of the sources from which I derive my stuff) - Wiccish though my Wheel is, it's probably more Feri-derived, or anyway Starhawk-derived ("here's the general concept of the WotY.  Now go look at your own local conditions and adapt that Wheel as much as necessary to fit") with the Wiccish parts being because that was useful to the adapting.  TC does have a member who's Gardnerian and in Calgary, though I haven't seen her around in a while; I'm kind of hoping she happens by and notices this thread, because I'd love to hear how her Trad Wicca perspective differs from or is similar to mine.

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Re: Wheel of the Year in warmer (or colder) climates
« Reply #20 on: June 02, 2012, 07:36:06 am »
Quote from: fjfritz;53892
Yep, that's what my coven found here in Virginia Beach as well. We also changed our cardinal points/elements to reflect our geographic location. It makes more sense to us and the energies raised are more reflective of where we are. (North = Air; East = Water; South = Fire; and West = Earth).


The Wheel as we know it originated here in England, which is at the same latitude as Labrador but actually does have four seasons (although most of the rest of the world doesn't agree on the summer bit).

My stepmother/mentor clued me in to the modified element directions: North = Air (the northern wind is nothing to sneeze at, especially up in Yorkshire), East = Earth (the landmass of Europe), South = Fire (the torrid zone), West = Water (the Atlantic).
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DJ_Bonneromics

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Re: Wheel of the Year in warmer (or colder) climates
« Reply #21 on: September 13, 2012, 03:30:37 am »
Quote from: Chatelaine;58003


My stepmother/mentor clued me in to the modified element directions: North = Air (the northern wind is nothing to sneeze at, especially up in Yorkshire), East = Earth (the landmass of Europe), South = Fire (the torrid zone), West = Water (the Atlantic).

 
East = Earth:  This is interesting because here in the Pacific Northwest, I've always associated Fall with Earth - early in the season it's the harvest, later in the fall it's decay, burial and heavy stagnant air due to inversions.  It also happens to be the time of year when we get a lot of east wind, due to the cooling North American continent.  

West = Water:  Most of the Water in our Winter storms comes in from the Pacific Ocean to our West.

North = Air.:  Kind of tough because I associate the element of Air with Spring, a time of year when the wind comes mainly from the west yet the season has traditionally been associated with the direction of East.

South = Fire = Summer:  Now this one makes PERFECT sense!

Rhyshadow

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Re: Wheel of the Year in warmer (or colder) climates
« Reply #22 on: September 13, 2012, 06:04:25 am »
Quote from: DJ_Bonneromics;73759
East = Earth:  This is interesting because here in the Pacific Northwest, I've always associated Fall with Earth - early in the season it's the harvest, later in the fall it's decay, burial and heavy stagnant air due to inversions.  It also happens to be the time of year when we get a lot of east wind, due to the cooling North American continent.  

West = Water:  Most of the Water in our Winter storms comes in from the Pacific Ocean to our West.

North = Air.:  Kind of tough because I associate the element of Air with Spring, a time of year when the wind comes mainly from the west yet the season has traditionally been associated with the direction of East.

South = Fire = Summer:  Now this one makes PERFECT sense!

 
I did a writeup years ago (10....12....?) for the local Pagan newsletter that switched them for our location as such

North=Air - most of our winter 'quicky' storms are called Alberta Clippers, come out of the North riding cold, descending currents from the Arctic

East=Water - from my location, the closest large bodies of water are the Great Lakes, and they're all East of me

South=Fire - Even in high summer, the sun is still 'south' of us

West=Earth - Almost all the fields of corn, wheat, soybeans and sugar beets grown here in MN are West of me; fertile lands indeed

My position back then was to associate the elemental directions based on major, local features/events.  Don't base it on what was developed for Britain when Gerald set it up, but make it personal

YMMV of course

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