Keeping the Heathen Calendar
Being of Bernician ancestry, that is, Anglo-Saxon and Pictish, I have devoted a good deal of time to both the Anglo-Saxon calendar and time-keeping, as revealed to us by the venerable Bede, and the reconstructed Coligny Calendar, which is a calendar of the Ancient Celts.
I have devoted a lot of time to the Anglo-Saxon Pagan calendar, as a primary method of time-keeping in my own life. This essay is a description of that calendar, and how it can be used by modern Heathens of the Anglo Saxon/English, Bernician, or any related Germanic cultural tradition.
No words can express how deeply in touch you start to feel with the ancestors, just by “keeping time” like they did. It may just be me, but it’s a strong feeling I have. Keeping the older calendar does help you to be more “in time” with when the historical occurrence of pagan festivals and other days of numinous importance would have occurred.
It helps if you come to see this method of time keeping as your “primary” method, and start to see the modern Gregorian calendar as a “secondary” calendar, as hard as that might be in the modern day.
I am going to present a reconstruction of the entire Anglo-Saxon calendar and method of time-keeping here, with full instructions on how to use it. I am going to lay down some very basic rules and understandings, and if you read them fully and understand them AND apply them, you cannot go wrong.
Solar vs. Lunar
The Gregorian calendar that we are all used to using in the west is totally solar-oriented. The Celtic calendar that I will describe in another essay was totally lunar; it did not deal with solstices or equinoxes at all, and its months were totally determined by the phase of the moon.
As it turns out, the Germanic peoples- including the Anglo-Saxons, whose calendar we will be studying here, were “half and half”, in a way; they too were solar-oriented, with Litha and Yule (the Summer and Winter solstices) as the two “axis” days that their calendar “turned” around- however, the calendar was still lunar in the sense that the months were determined by the moon.
It seems that most ancient peoples began with fully lunar methods of time-keeping, and it really does make sense, as the moon is the most natural and easy to observe heavenly “marker” for the passage of time. A point came in history when solar methods of time keeping began to grow in importance. Some people try to associate lunar calendars and their cultures with primitive “matriarchies” and solar cultures with “patriarchies”, but I warn you against thinking in that manner, especially when dealing with the Northern Europeans; the words in Gaelic for sun are feminine, and in Germanic cultures, Sun or Sunna was a Goddess, not a God. It makes sense, on a level of thinking- the sun was the source of life, a manifestation of the “great white realm” that gave heat, warmth, and living power- and how natural that such a thing would be ascribed to a motherly force.
In Germanic Paganism, the moon was given a masculine power- he was the God Mani. Truly ancient “matriarchies”, if they ever existed, would certainly have seen the sun as the supreme display of the life-giving power of their Goddess, and the moon, who only gets his light from the sun, would be masculine, as all men drew the power of their life from their mothers.
It’s not my intention here to engage in a debate about the relative merits of seeing the sun or moon as masculine or feminine; in my personal opinion, A sun god or a sun goddess, or a moon god or a moon goddess, says nothing really at all about the sun or the moon itself. It seems that southern Europeans saw the sun as primarily masculine, and the moon as feminine, and northern Europeans saw it precisely the opposite way. The large amount of “Northern tradition” Pagans nowadays that see the sun as masculine and the moon as feminine see it this way because modern neo-paganism is heavily influenced by Mediterranean Paganism, and that is the truth of why “Celtic wiccans” still call the sun “lord”, even though the Celts never would have. The Celtic Gods (like Lugh) who were called “sun gods” by Victorian pseudo-scholars have been shown to NOT be sun gods; Lugh was and is a God of Light and of the relenting or lessening of heat (among other things) but not the sun.
1. Yule and Litha
The Motion of the sun, as it moves northwards and southwards, is the basic fact of the Heathen calendar. This solar “axis” is the axis that the whole calendar moves around; it divides the calendar into halves.
To our ancestors, the sun proceeded southwards, getting weaker and weaker, until the darkest depths of winter were reached- and at that point, the sun “YULED” or “Wheeled” around, to turn northwards, and start going north, making things hotter and hotter. When the sun was as far north-seeming as it would get, and the world was as hot as it would get, in the height of Summer, the sun “LEETHED” or “LITHED” meaning it “Relented”, and went back south.
In the time it took the sun to reach the point where the world was at its hottest, winter occurred, ending at Litha. In the time it took it to get back to its coldest, summer occurred, ending at Yule.
Thus, two holy “seasons” or powerful calendar times were born- YULE, when the sun “Wheeled” back north, and LITHA, when the sun “Lithed” or Relented, and went back south. Yule is the festival of Winter, Winter’s beginning, and Litha the festival of Summer’s beginning.
As the winter got deeper and deeper, the cauldron of the year was boiling down to nothing. The holy season in which the sun Yuled was of course, Yule, and the night of the Winter Solstice was when the sun Yuled. The word Yule comes from IUL, which just means “wheel”. Yule was the “new year”- the “Mother’s Nights” (as we will discuss in a moment) of Yule were literally the Mothers of the Year, and Yule itself, the “Modraniht” or “Modranect”, the “Mother Night” was the Mother of the New Year.
The Nights that followed the Winter Solstice or Yule, the “Yuletide”, were very special; they were the most holy nights of the year, in a way. These 12 nights were the awe-filled “Mother’s Nights”, when all was darkest, and the ancestral dead, along with the hordes of the unseen world, were able to enter the human world and stalk about- these were also called the “Wolf Nights”, because Wolves were not only symbols of winter and cold and death, but beasts of the Underworld- technically, they were “dead” creatures, living in this world. When a man was declared dead by the law, or made into an “outlaw”, he was called a “wolf’s head”, symbolizing the fact that he was symbolically “dead” to the law, and was no longer protected by the Law.
The dark God Odin had two fierce wolves forever by his side- the “Terrifying Sovereign” of the Northern Europeans always had Wolves as totemically sacred to him; it is worth mentioning that Hades, the God of the Dead to the southern Europeans, was pictured on tomb paintings with a wolf-skin head dress. Odin was likewise a god of the dead.
But this dark, grim time of the year was also a great time of hope, anticipation, and rebirth, for the sun Yuled- it wheeled around and went north again- the heat and light would return; the structure of the cosmos and the life of the world would be regenerated and come forth anew, again. In the darkest depths, the return of the light was celebrated. There are many lessons here, for us today, and the most extreme lesson is of course, the lesson of death and renewal- we all face death, but Nature, the great teacher, seems to tell us that at our darkest moment, we can expect the beginning of a new cycle of regenerated life, just like all things.
Darkness cannot triumph forever; the year was an eternal struggle, metaphorically, of light and dark, the legendary “Battle of Summer and Winter”. The lesson in this “dualistic” struggle was that neither side could finally win; it was the struggle itself that was important, not any permanent victory. The struggle itself caused life to arise, and nothing else; this conflict caused the cosmos to exist, eternally.
But darkness can prevail for a while, before a new cycle begins and darkness has to temporarily give way, for the triumph of light, and eventually, the light must give way, to the end of the cycle.
Notice that the cycle begins in the darkness, in the darkest depths- that is very important. The Mother’s Nights are not so called for no reason; there is an important lesson here. The Dark Void of Chaos or Ginnungagap, from which the Light and the many worlds first came at the dawn of time, was not an empty void; it was a fertile void, and in fact, you could see it as the womb of a great “Mother” for all of creation, if you wished. You would not be wrong. Her name was Holda. In the mother-Darkness, all things began, and to it all things eventually returned. From her dark womb all things appeared; back into that cauldron or womb all things eventually were resolved and disappeared, to be regenerated and re-appear, after the long “night of time” or “night of the Gods” was over. Then a whole new cycle would begin. The life and death of humans or animals was just an echo of the life and death of the seasons, the world, and the entire cosmos.
This is all very basic Indo-European pagan theology, and I do suggest the works of Mircea Eliade (among many others) to understand it further.
Yule had precisely the same meaning to the German peoples as Samhain had to the Celts; the two festivals are pretty much on the same theme: The end of the old year and beginning of a new one, return of ancestors, dark and dangerous spiritual forces being unleashed on the world, coldest, darkest times, and the regeneration of time and cosmos. The fact that so many modern neo-pagans mix the Celtic and Germanic calendars is one of the most tooth-gritting facts of life for the damaged new-age. There is no reason to celebrate BOTH Samhain and Yule. They are the same spiritual festival, one celebrated by calendrically lunar-oriented people, and one celebrated by people whose calendar had a partial solar orientation. To celebrate both as a religious necessity is redundant; to honor both times is fine, and to have a fine party for both is even better.
2. The Moon and the Month
The word “month” or “monath” as the Old English said, comes from the word “moon”. A “month” or a “moonth”, means, literally, “fulfillment of the moon”.
A month, to our ancestors, was the time it took a moon cycle to be fulfilled.
To the Anglo-Saxon heathens, each month began on the night that the FIRST CRESCENT of the moon appeared. This is a very important point- The night of the new moon is literally the first night of the new month. As soon as that little sliver of a moon appears, THAT is the first day of the month. The full moon would be pretty much the middle of the month, and when the moon disappears, the month is over- but the new month does not begin properly until the new sliver of moon appears in the sky.
The old English word “monath” is where we get the word “month”, and as I mentioned above, it means “fulfillment of the moon”. You will see that most of the months on the Heathen calendar end with -monath.
An example would be the month called “HALIGMONATH”, which is also called “GERSTMONATH”. This month corresponds ROUGHLY to our Gregorian month of September. But remember- ALWAYS remember- it is a lunar month, so it “floats”- it is not always perfectly lined up with the month we call “September”. It simply normally, on the average, falls around that time.
HALIGMONATH means “Holy Month” or “The Fulfillment of the Moon of Holiness”. Of course, “HALIG” (where we get “Holy” from) referred to Holy Rites and Rituals of the Pagans- so it is in reality “The Month of Sacred Rites”, or “The Fulfillment of the Moon of Sacred Rites”, or the moon-time of Sacred Rites. GERSTMONATH means “Grist Month” or “The Fulfillment of the Moon of Grist”. Grist is ground-up grain, so it was around this time that grain that had been harvested around what we would today call ‘September’) was ground up.
We will discuss all of the months, and their meanings, very soon.
On the Heathen Calendar, the month that contains Yule is called “Foreyule” or “Aeryule”. At some point (usually later) in the month of Foreyule, the Holy Night of Yule or Mother Night occurs, followed by the Mother’s Nights. Then, the month “Afteryule” or Aefteryule” begins. It is the same with Litha- There is a month called “Forelitha or Aerlitha, which contains the Holy Summer feast of Litha. At some point in that month, at some point during the fulfillment of that moon, the Summer Solstice occurs, and then, the next moon brings in the month of “Afterlitha”.
The spirit of each month, the height of the month, is when the moon becomes full. The entire poetic “force” or spirit of the month is summed up on that day- for those of you who, like me, just enjoy decorating seasonally and finding as many excuses as you can for mead, ale, celebrations, and heathen rites, the full moon of each month makes a great time for bonfires and celebrations of any kind, in keeping with the ‘power’ of the month’s theme and feel.
3. The Intercalary Month, or the Thirteenth Moon
This is the part of lunar calendars that bothers the most people. In reality, it is a very organic and simple thing, and not confusing if you pay close attention to the flow of the calendar.
When trying to balance lunar months against solar events, there is a slight problem. The moon and sun do not dance well together. To keep them in close enough alignment, close enough to where Yule and Litha fall at the proper times in the lunar year, every now and then, an intercalary month must be added.
Yes, this means that many years will have twelve months, but every few years, you will have 13 months. The Intercalary month is added into certain years, to keep the sun and moon pretty much in order with each other.
At this point most people run for the door- but listen longer. There is nothing confusing about this. If you pay attention to the moon, the moon itself will tell you when to add the extra month.
A normal year will have 12 months- but every so often, you will have the heathen equivalent of a “leap year”- a special month will appear, making thirteen months for that year. The intercalary month on the heathen calendar is called THORNRILITHA. It means “Third Litha”- and it occurs in the same place on the calendar, on any year that calls for it. A year that has a Thornrilitha or an intercalary month is called a THRILITHI year, or a year of Three Lithas. You will see why when we look at the actual calendar months below.
Here’s how you know to add the intercalary month to your year: You watch the moon, and watch for the days that the first crescent appears. (Luckily, today, we have internet sites that tell us the perfectly calculated days when all moon phases will occur).
There is a month on the calendar called “AFTERLITHA” or “AEFTERLITHA”. We will discuss it in detail below.
If the first crescent moon that begins the month of AFTERLITHA appears on or before July 4, that is to say, If the first crescent moon that begins the month of AFTERLITHA appears on or before the eleventh evening after the summer solstice, then the next month- the month that follows “Afterlitha” will be the Intercalary month. So every year, when the month of Afterlitha begins, you will know if the next month will be the normal next month, or if it will be the intercalary.
If that sounds too complicated for you, there is another way to tell.
There is a month on the calendar called “AFTERYULE” or “AEFTERYULE”. We will discuss it in detail below.
You will always know that the next summer of the next year will have an intercalary month if the first cresecnt moon that begins the month of AFTERYULE is seen during the 12 Mother’s Nights, or the Eves of Yuletide- anywhere from December 24 to January 4. You will see examples of this soon.
I will give a full working calendar for this year, and for the next year, after we discuss the calendar; I promise you will not be confused after you have seen the whole thing in detail, and tried it out for yourself.
The Heathen Calendar in Detail
1. AFTERYULE
- The first month of the year, roughly (but not always) corresponding to our January is AFTERYULE.
- Afteryule is also called AEFTERRA GEOLA, AEFTERGIULI,AEFTERYULE, and AFTEYULE.
- Taken all together, it means “The Month After Yule” or “The Fulfillment of the Moon After Yule”.
2. SOLMONATH
- The second month of the year, roughly (but not always) corresponding to our February is SOLMONATH.
- Solmonath is also called SUHLMONATH.
- Taken all together, it means either “The Cake Month” or “The Plow Month”; “The Fulfillment of the Moon of Cakes” or “The Fulfillment of the Moon of Plowing.” Either will work.
- Sometime in the period between the First Crescent moon and the Full Moon of Solmonath will be the closest this calendar can come to pinpointing the time of the Celtic festival of Imbolc.
3. HERTHMONATH
- The third month of the year, roughly (but not always) corresponding to our March is HERTHMONATH.
- Herthmonath is also called HLYTHMONATH. “Hlyth” seems to refer to Purifying or Cleansing.
- Hertha was the name of the Great Earth-Mother Goddess; “Hertha” is an old world for “Earth”.
- Taken all together, Herthmonath means “Hertha’s Month” and Hlythmonath means “The Purifying Month” or “The Cleansing Month”. We could say “The Fulfillment of the Moon of Hertha” or “The Fulfillment of the Moon of Purifying”, depending on which form of the month-name you want to use.
- I’ve always seen an interesting connection here with the old wives’ custom of “spring cleaning”, considering the Spring Equinox- March 20-23- occurs (usually) in this month.
4. EOSTREMONATH
- The fourth month of the year, roughly (but not always) corresponding to our April is EOSTREMONATH.
- Eostremonath is also sometimes just called Eostre.
- Eostremonath means “Eostre’s Month” or “The Fulfillment of the Moon of Eostre”.
- Eostre was a spring and dawn goddess, and a goddess of Fertility, perhaps the Earth Goddess appeared to the world in her “renewed” form, after the Spring Equinox. I have always heard that hares- themselves prime symbols of fertility- were sacred to Eostre.
5. THRIMILC
- The fifth month of the year, roughly (but not always) corresponding to our May is THRIMILCHE.
- Thrimilc is also called THRIMILCHE, DRIMILCHE, THORNRIYIL, and THORNRIMILCHI.
- Thrimilc/Thrimilche means “Three Milkings” or “The Fulfillment of the Moon of Three Milkings”. Thrimilc and Drimilche mean the same. Thornriyil means “Three Yields”, and refers to three yields of milk. Thornrimilchi also means “three milkings”.
- The New Moon that begins Thrimilc tends to signal the Celtic Feast of Beltane.
6. FORELITHA
- The sixth month of the year, roughly (but not always) corresponding to our June is FORELITHA.
- Forelitha is also called just “Litha” or “Aerlitha”.
- Forelitha means “Before Litha” or “The Fulfillment of the Moon Before Litha”. It really fully refers to the “fulfillment of the moon before the sun relents.”
- Litha, the Summer Solstice, the day when the sun “Liths” or Relents, occurs during this month. The addition of semi-regular intercalary months pretty much ensures that this remains the case.
7. AFTERLITHA
- The seventh month of the year, roughly (but not always) corresponding to our July is AFTERLITHA.
- Afterlitha is also called “Aefterlitha” or “HEGMONATH” or “MAEDMONATH”.
- Afterlitha and Aefterlitha both mean “After Litha” or “The Fulfillment of the Moon After Litha”.
- Hegmonath means “Hay Moon” or “The Fulfillment of the Moon of Hay”.
- Maedmonath means “Mead Moon” or “The Fulfillment of the Moon of Mead”.
- If the crescent moon that starts this month appears on or before July 4, or within eleven evenings after the Day of Litha or the Summer Solstice, the next month will NOT be Wedmonath, as listed next, but instead it will be the intercalary month of Thornrilitha, and only after the Thornrilitha is finished will Wedmonath start, and the year will continue normally. In other words, the space between Afterlitha and Wedmonath is where you insert the Intercalary month, if there is going to be one. Thornrilitha, as you know, means “Third Litha”, or “The Fulfillment of the Moon of the Third Litha”.
8. WEDMONATH
- The eighth month of the year, roughly (but not always) corresponding to our August is WEDMONATH.
- Wedmonath is also called “WEODMONATH” or “WYRTMONATH” or “THUNORMONATH”.
- Wedmonath and Weodmonath both mean “Weed Month” or “The Fulfillment of the Moon of Weeds”.
- Wyrtmonath means “Wyrt Moon” or “Wort Moon”, which literally refers to it being the “Herb Moon”, “The Fulfillment of the Moon of Wort” or “The Fulfillment of the Moon of Herbs”.
- Thunormonath means “Thor’s Month”, but more literally “Thunder Month”- “The Fulfillment of the Moon of Thunder”.
- Sometime in the period between the First Crescent moon and the Full Moon of Wedmonath will be the closest this calendar can come to pinpointing the time of the Celtic festival of Lughnasadh. The Beginning of this month was the feast of Hlafmas or Lammas- also called Hlafmaestyd, the feast or mass of bread loaves.
9. HALIGMONATH
- The ninth month of the year, roughly (but not always) corresponding to our September is HALIGMONATH.
- Haligmonath is also called “GERSTMONATH”.
- Haligmonath means “Holy Month” or “The Fulfillment of the Moon of Holiness”. Of course, “HALIG” (where we get “Holy” from) refered to Holy Rites and Rituals of the Pagans- so it is in reality “The Month of Sacred Rites”, or “The Fulfillment of the Moon of Sacred Rites”, or the Moon-time of Sacred Rites.
- Gerstmonath means “Grist Month” or “The fulfillment of the Moon of Grist”. Grist is ground-up grain, so it was around this time that grain that had been harvested around what we would today call ‘September’) was ground up.
- The Autumn Equinox occurs in this month, normally, around September 20-23.
10. WINTIRFILLETH
- The tenth month of the year, roughly (but not always) corresponding to our October is WINTIRFILLETH.
- Wintirfilleth is also called “WINTERFILTH”, “WINTIRFYLLETH”, “WYNMONATH”, or “HAERFAESTMONATH”.
- Wintirfilleth, Winterfilth, and Wintirfylleth all mean “Winter filling” or “Winter full”, or “Winter fulfilling”, and they refer to the fulfilling of preparations for winter, perhaps filling storehouses or larders in preparation for the coming winter. Bede said that “Wintirfillyth” meant “Winter Full Moon”, but that is not terribly coherent. It is very likely that the full moon of Winterfilleth did strongly signal the coming of winter, but to call it “The fulfillment of the full moon of winter” is clumsy, and makes less sense because Winter’s true “full moon”, the full moon that actually started winter, would be the full moon of Foreyule. I go with the notion that “winterfilleth” refers to “Winter filling”, that is, preparing, and recognizing that winter was finally upon us.
- Thus, Wintirfilleth is “The Moon of Winter Filling”. If you just had to, you could call it “Winter Full Moon”. The choice is up to you, as long as you remember that this moon did not begin winter, as much as signal its very close approach.
- “Wynmonath” means “Joy Month” or “The Fulfillment of the Moon of Joy”.
- “Haerfaestmonath” means “Harvest Month” or “The Fulfillment of the Moon of Harvest.”
- Either of these names can be used in the place of Wintirfilleth.
11. BLOTMONATH
- The eleventh month of the year, roughly (but not always) corresponding to our November is BLOTMONATH.
- Blotmonath is also called “WINDMONATH”.
- Blotmonath means “Blood Month” or “The Fulfillment of the Moon of Blood”. This of course refers to the blood of sacrificed animals- and to the religious act of sacrifice in general, called a “Blot” in modern heathen reconstructionism. It is assumed that animals that wouldn’t survive the winter (or the animals ear-marked for food) were slaughtered in this month, to make food stores. Heathens would have made this into a religious undertaking, as well, it is thought. Either way, the calendar does take a “darker” turn as winter swiftly fills the world and approaches.
- Windmonath means “Wind Month”, or “The Fulfillment of the Moon of Wind.”
- The Crescent moon that starts this month tends to be as close to the Celtic Feast of Samhain as you can get using this calendar.
12. FOREYULE
- The twelfth month of the year, roughly (but not always) corresponding to our December, is FOREYULE.
- Foreyule is also called just “Yule” or “AERYULE”, or “AERRA GEOLA”.
- Foreyule means “Before Yule” or “The Fulfillment of the Moon Before Yule”. It really fully refers to the “fulfillment of the moon before the sun wheels.”
- Yule, or “Mother Night”, the Winter Solstice, the day when the sun “Yules” or wheels around and goes back north, occurs during this month. The addition of semi-regular intercalary months pretty much ensures that this remains the case.
- The Twelve “Mother’s Nights” or the “Eves of Yuletide”, the Dreaded “Wolf Nights” occurred during this time, following the day of the Winter Solstice. This was the darkest time of the year, the dissolution of all things into the darkness that proceeded regeneration and rebirth and return of the light and order and summer. This was the most awe-filled time of the year, the most mystically powerful to the Germanic peoples.
- So, we have presented the twelve calendar years, along with the intercalary, the “Thornrilitha” month, the Month of the “Third Litha”, which appears at times between Afterlitha and Wedmonath, to keep it all working. Now, let’s look at some real-life examples, and see how easy it all really is.