The Eight Sabbats Are Not Enough
You’ve likely heard the names before:
Samhain. Yule. Imbolc. Ostara.
Beltane. Litha. Lammas. Mabon.
They’re often described as “the Wheel of the Year”—eight seasonal holy days rooted in pre-Christian Europe and reclaimed today by witches, pagans, mystics, and spiritual seekers alike.
These sabbats are important. Sacred, even.
But they are not enough.
A Year Is Not Just Eight Days
The problem isn’t the sabbats themselves. It’s how we’ve come to use them.
We treat them like holidays on a spiritual calendar. A reason to light a candle. Post a spell. Maybe pull a card.
But the Earth doesn’t move in holidays.
The Earth moves in layers. Cycles. Sensations. Micro-seasons.
She doesn’t celebrate the turning of the Wheel—she is the Wheel. And so are we.
To truly live in tune with the seasons means we must stop treating sabbats like checkpoints and start treating them like thresholds—invitations into longer, deeper phases of transformation.
Beyond the Sabbats: The Sacred In-Between
There are 49 days between most sabbats.
That’s 49 days of soft changes.
Of shifting light.
Of emotional tide and biological response.
Of harvests that don’t happen on cue.
Of deaths that take time.
These in-between spaces are where most of our real spiritual work takes place:
The waning weeks when summer starts to decay into autumn
The bare-boned days after Imbolc, when hope feels like a discipline
The liminal pause after Beltane, before the heat really begins
The stripped-down dusk of post-Mabon, when nothing is blooming and yet nothing has fully died
If you only show up for the sabbats, you’re missing the sermon.
Seasonal Living Is Not a Performance
This is not about perfectly timed rituals or showing your devotion online.
This is about observing your life as part of nature—seeing your own emotions, energy levels, and inner changes as part of a larger ecological process.
It’s about understanding that:
You are allowed to wilt with the flowers.
You are allowed to feel lost in the dark of winter.
You are allowed to peak too early in spring and have nothing left for summer.
You are allowed to need the pause between sabbats just as much as the sabbats themselves.
You are not here to hit spiritual milestones.
You are here to move with the season in its entirety.
Honor the Full Year
Here, we don’t celebrate sabbats in isolation.
We honor the entire sacred year.
The known and the unnamed.
The light and the rot.
The seasonal pulses too quiet for mass recognition—but just loud enough for the initiated to hear.
This is your invitation to listen.
To stay.
To step beyond the eight and into the full rhythm of the year.
You belong to more than a calendar.
You belong to the entire procession of time.
