Join our low-volume, announce-only Olypagans Crier list and we’ll send you an e-mail when events or classes come up! Send us an e-mail at info@olypagans.org and let us know what events you are interested helping plan and make happen. After all, upcoming events without you is spelled pcoming, and that’s just embarrassing for everyone.

You may also want to take a look at the schedules of the Seattle and Portland Reclaiming communities. Although not local, you may be interested in the Reclaiming: Bay Area Core Classes. (While the Bay Area is definitely not in the Salish Sea or the Pacific Northwest Megacity, and may or may not be in Cascadia, it is definitely part of Ecotopia, after all.)

Additionally, please consider checking out the annual BC Witchcamp, or any of the other Witchcamps.

It is good to look back and see what has been accomplished. This is a memory book, of sorts, of our past public events and rituals.

Neo-pagans, and modern pagan witches in particular, tend to follow both lunar and solar calendars. Both lunar and solar calendars are patterns of cyclical time. What has past will come around again, and what comes around has past before.

The solar calendar is generally divided into seasons, sometimes two, three or four. There is a solstice or equinox at four points along the year, and roughly connected with four seasons of winter, spring, summer and fall. At these quarter days, there are festival celebrations. The four seasons of the solar calendar correspond to many things, including the elements of earth, air, fire and water and the cardinal directions of north, east, south and west.

In addition to the four points in the calendar mentioned, there are four cross quarter days which appear roughly 52 days before or after each solstice. At these cross quarter days, there are also associated festival celebrations. Although the cross quarter days are in relation to the position of the sun, they have been mapped to days on the Gregorian calendar.

This makes eight events along the solar year which many modern pagans celebrate. Many pagans celebrate Samhain as the beginning of the new year, end of the old. The following table outlines the festivals on the solar calendar that many modern pagans observe and the dates in the northern hemisphere when they occur:

The lunar calendar is 13 moon months long. Each moon month is a full cycle of the moon phases, from new moon through full moon and back to new moon again. The moon phases also correspond to the elements and directions. While there may occasionally be a blue moon, or 2nd full moon, in a solar month, there is one full moon in each moon month.

There are also correspondences between these and the hours of a day and life processes. For example, old age is the winter of life, and night is the winter of a day; infancy is the spring of life, and dawn is the spring of a day. Therefore noon could be considered to be the summer of the day and related to the summer solstice; midnight considered winter and winter solstice. Noon can also be related to the full moon on the lunar calendar; midnight to the dark of the new moon.

It is worth pointing out that just as the cross-quarter days are not really at right angles to the cardinal points, the hours of the day, before mechanical time, varied in length as the length of the day varied through the seasons. Therefore, the spring and fall of a day are not necessarily 6 hours on a clock from noon or midnight, but could be placed at sunrise and sunsets.

Generally, the events on the solar calendar are public or community celebrations and the events on the lunar calendar are private or small group workings.