The Northern Hemisphere Versus Southern Hemisphere Debate

The original Wheel of the Year, or the liturgical calendar for
Wiccans, was generated for a northern hemisphere seasonal cycle. The
celebrations and festivals in the Wheel of the Year celebrate the
passage of the sun across the sky and the passing of the seasons within
a mythological framework of ritual and traditions. That's easy to
follow but the problems begin to arise when we understand that Wicca
comes from England so its calendar follows the fact that Winter and its
related festivals happens over November, December and January while
Summer and its festivals occurs in the middle of the year. So you say,
let's just swap the whole thing over for Australia so that the
festivals for Winter occur in the middle of the year here and those for
Summer occur through December. Well, it's not quite that simple!

Depending on where you live, you may or may not in fact have exactly
the opposite seasons to those of England. So you might not be able to
just swap them over. For example, in northern Australia, it's pretty
much either hot or even hotter! While in the more southerly areas of
the country, there may be a little more resemblance to the four
seasonal regime albeit opposite to the UK. For example, in the tropical
regions of Australia, unlike in England, the rains come in Summer so
while the English suffer through the dark, wet and chilling cold of
their Winter, Darwin and the tropical regions of Australia bathe in the
glory of the warmth and peace of a tropical Winter. By comparison,
while the English Summer might bring forth the odd day of 23 degrees,
warm breezes, crops growing and baby lambs developing, the tropical
Summer brings stifling heat, torrential rains, plant life dying under
the strength of a killer sun and animals scurrying for shelter! Just to
make things even more confusing, meanwhile in Tasmania, the Summer
brings relief from the cold and the crops are developing nicely thank
you very much. Begin to get the picture? Australian seasons can simply
be transposed onto an opposite cycle to that of the northern hemisphere
because depending on where you live, that simply may not be
appropriate.

The Circle of Oak and Mistletoe's Wheel of the Year

Here in Adelaide however, we are lucky to follow a fairly simple
pattern in opposite to the UK so for our Circle, it's quite easy to
work with an exact opposite of the northern hemisphere Wheel of the
Year. Thus the calendar presented below works well for us. I urge you
to consider though that dependent upon where you live, you may need to
reconsider the pattern in which you celebrate the Wiccan festivals.

For the festivals (or Sabbats) of the Circle of Oak and Mistletoe we
focus on two things at each event; the seasonal relevance of the date
and the underpinning mythological stories synonymous with that
celebration. To celebrate those two factors, we participate in rituals
and practices that symbolise both the seasonal relevance and
mythological stories so that we can better understand how important
each Sabbat really is for us as Wiccans