Roth na Bliana
The Wheel of the Year
Four fire festivals begin the four seasons of the Irish year, and between them stand the sun’s four stations.
The eight stations
The passage tombs at Newgrange and Loughcrew were built to catch the midwinter and the equinox sunrise, thousands of years before the festivals were written down, and midsummer has its bonfires on St John’s Eve.
Setting all eight together as one wheel is a modern idea, from the neopaganism of the twentieth century: the medieval Irish texts keep four festivals, not eight. The early Irish counted nights, not days, the way Caesar says the Gauls did. Solar dates are approximate.