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walk.
    In the following chapters we will explore various activities
    that can take your personal Pagan practice to even deeper lev-
    els, but the “seven step program” will lead you to a new way of living almost immediately. The steps are very simple. Eventually you will probably elaborate on some of them—establishing
    a secondary altar, or sacralizing more of your daily schedule—
    but the initial steps are easy actions anyone can take.
    The only thing you might find difficult, especially if you
    are new to Paganism, is observing the holy tides. Depending
    on your lifestyle and environment, some of the high days may
    not seem relevant to you. In the next chapter we will look at
    the sacral calendar and how you can adapt it to your own life.
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CHAPTER TWO
THE SACRAL
    CALENDAR
    A calendar is a system for reckoning time by defining the
    beginning and divisions of a year. The secular calendar we
    all share today divides the year into twelve months of 28–31
    days, and begins the year on the first day of January. Most
    calendars define a year as the length of time it takes for our planet to orbit the sun, but there are exceptions. The Islamic sacral calendar is purely lunar, so each Islamic New Year
    begins 11–12 days earlier than the year before. Most calen-
    dars divide the year into twelve or thirteen months, based on
    the moon’s orbit around our planet.
    These divisions define the passage of time in a way that
    gives it meaning. For those of us who live in the temper-
    ate northern hemisphere, January evokes memories of ice
    and snow, June of warm afternoons, and October of crisp
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    the sacral calendar
    autumn leaves. A sacral calendar should create an even deep-
    er meaning reflecting our spirituality. It should do this, but very often the calendar fails in its purpose because of the tendency many of us have to accept and follow a generic sacral
    calendar regardless of how appropriate it may or may not be
    for ourselves.
    As a sacral calendar, the Neo-Pagan “wheel of the year”
    is a nice construct that all contemporary Pagan people can
    acknowledge when we get together with others of disparate
    paths. I like to think of it as the Esperanto of Pagan calen-
    dars; it does not belong to any one culture, but it is nevertheless a simple yet expressive way for all Pagans to measure the
    passage of the seasons. For the eclectic Pagan, the Neo-Pa-
    gan wheel of the year is as good a choice as any other for a
    primary sacral calendar.
    The Neo-Pagan calendar observes eight holy days. This
    calendar can just as accurately be called the Wiccan sacral
    calendar, because it originated with the Wiccan religion in
    the early to middle 20th Century. The calendar combines
    Celtic fire festivals like Samhain and Beltane with Anglo-Sax-
    on solstice celebrations. This amalgamation was hammered
    into a calendar of eight “sabbats” spaced five to seven weeks
    apart. Today it is used as a sacral calendar not only by Wic-
    cans, but by many contemporary Pagan groups such as the
    Church of All Worlds and Ár nDraíocht Féin.
    However useful the Neo-Pagan calendar may be, your
    own personal sacral calendar will be more meaningful to you
    if it reflects your spiritual path. Unless you follow the Wiccan religion, assuming you follow a specific path, your spiritual
    culture will have a calendar with unique emphases.
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    the sacral calendar
    As a Saxon Pagan, I observe a Saxon calendar. The early,
    pre-Christian Saxons had a lunar based calendar, but, unlike
    the Islamic calendar, the solar year was also taken into con-
    sideration. Most years have twelve months, or “moons”,
    but every few years there will be a thrilithe , which has thirteen months. The thrilithe adjusts the lunar calendar so the
    month of Solmonath always occurs around February, Hreth-
    monath always occurs around March, and so on. For the
    early Saxons, a new “monath” began at the full of the moon.
    In southern Europe—in Rome and