Your Personal Wheel of the Year

Like sunflowers in summer, we naturally follow the Sun. Sunflowers warm themselves with the rising sun, which attracts bees to support fertilization and cross pollination. For humans, Sun exposure increases natural vitamin D and lowers melatonin levels in the body, which energizes us in the spring and summer. Lack of sunlight increases melatonin levels and lowers vitamin D availability, which makes us sleepier in the autumn and dark of winter. Correspondingly, the fluctuations of light and darkness as the degree of the Sun shifts, result in the environmental variations that bring us the seasons and the Wheel of the Year.

The Wheel of the Year is not just a pagan calendar; it is also a personal almanac that can support our taking control of our lives and consciously acting towards happiness. Divining the signs of nature and the cosmos is a form of priesthood/priestessing, allowing us to be mediatory agents in the performance of rituals and daily life. The Wheel of the Year is a template for cycles in our lives, and one we can map to our personal growth. The development of a plant moves in eight cycles from seed, to sprout, to root, to leaves, to seedling, to bud, to flower, and ultimately to bloom. If you have a project or a number of projects, you can follow the trajectory of the plant growth lifecycle in the year as well as the Wheel of the Year as project management frameworks for initiating, planning, executing, and closing the process from beginning to end.

The eight-armed cross of the Sun is frequently depicted as a representation of the Wheel of the Year, as it marks the four solar events known as quarter days and four seasonal events, known as the cross-quarter days. The Solar God is born from the Goddess at Yule, the Winter Solstice; is a toddling babe at Imbolc; grows to adulthood at Ostara, the Spring Equinox; courts and couples with the Goddess in her aspect as maiden at Beltane; comes to full power at Litha, the Summer Solstice; begins to diminish at Lammas; releases ebbing power into the earth at Mabon, the Autumnal Equinox; and crosses into the underworld at Samhain.

You can match the Wheel of the Year to your own Natal cycle by coordinating the celestial Solar and Lunar cycles with your astrological birthchart.

Birthchart Calendar
Print out a copy of your astrological birthchart and get ready to calendarize it. You will need to use an ephemeris, which can readily be found online, gratis. Find an ephemeris for the year you were born and locate the symbol of the Sun, which is a circle with a dot in the middle. Next to each date of the month, you will see numbers for the degree and minute of the Sun for that date as well as the symbol for the astrology sign that begins that month. As you follow the numbers down the list, they will ascend in numerical order until they end at 29 degrees. At the next zodiacal cycle, the next zodiac sign will begin with the symbol for the next astrology sign posted at the 0 degrees.

Locate your birthdate in the correct month of the ephemeris and write that date on your printed birthchart next to the Sun. You will do the same for each of your natal planets sequentially, jotting down the date of when your Sun comes to the sign and degree of your Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. When the Sun shines light on each of your planets respectively, you are likely to experience a compatibly energetic experience in life, plus or minus three days. Use these dates for astrological magic to correspond to the planetary energies.

Sun Mercury suggests increased communication, mental activity, personal curiosity, and clarification of expression in speaking, writing, debating, or wit but also ethical fluidity and cunning. Sun Mars suggest bravery, boldness, enthusiasm, confidence, and ambition, but also ire or irritation. Sun Venus suggest collegiality, comradeship, glamour, charm, enhanced social interaction, admiration, and harmony but also languorous indolence, desire for sensation or luxury. Sun Jupiter suggests optimism, affirmation, well-being, and joy but also overindulgence and immoderation. Sun Saturn suggests increased determination, responsibility, alignment, and stability but also challenges, delays, and obstacles to be met and conquered. Sun Uranus suggests an unplanned shift, sudden drive to authentic expression, unexpected rebellious need for freedom and subsequent changes made in order to acquire liberation. Sun Neptune suggests intuition, imagination, sensitivity, empathy, awareness, healing or confusion and loosening of boundaries. Sun Pluto suggests intensity, the need to integrate personal transformation, which can be effortful and demanding, something small growing immense or something hidden coming to light.

Next, mark the date on your printed birthchart when the Sun comes to the sign and degree of the four points of the Cross of Matter in your astrological birth chart. These are powerful angles that focus energy accordingly to the significations of the houses they mark. The dark line in the circle that bisects the birth chart into upper and lower halves is the line of the horizon. Imagine you are looking at the circle of the earth and below that line of the horizon is where the Sun travels during the evening. The point where the Sun rises to the left of the chart, the east, is known as the Ascendant, and this is why the zodiacal constellation ascending at that point on the moment of your birth is considered your rising sign. The Ascendant marks the first house of the chart, which is the house of our sense of self identity and how we personally view the world around us. Mark the date on your chart when the Sun reaches this angle as this is when you should focus on the confident expression of your authentic nature.

Follow that line across to the other side of the circle, and this point is the Descendant, where the seventh house begins, the house of others, how you relate to them and partnership. Mark the date of when the Sun reaches this angle as this is a good time to focus on your relationships and collegiality. When the Sun crests this angle, these may be dates for a social event or need to be cooperative that comes to the fore.

Next locate the dark line that bisects the chart into halves, east at the left and west to the right. The top-most point is the Medium Coeli, MC, or Midheaven, the highest point that the Sun traverses the visible sky, which represents our reputation, often our career. Mark the date of when the Sun reaches this angle as a time of public life, being seen by the world and recognized our greater community. The bottom of the sky, or Imum Coeli (IC), represents our roots, our lineage, family history, and home. Mark the date when the Sun reaches this angle as a time to work on personal foundations and propitiate ancestors.

Solar and Lunar Types
Many people are Solar, and many people are Lunar. You know who you are. Do you bloom in the spring and summer? Follow the sun like a sunflower? Or do Like prefer to rage during darkness and dance under the stars when everyone else is sleeping or find yourself more easily sleepy in day hours than at night? Check out your astrological birthchart and see where the Sun is located.

Now that you know where the horizon is, look to see which half of the circle your Sun is located. If your Sun is above the horizon in any of the houses seven through twelve, then you are a Solar person. If your Sun is below the horizon in any of the houses one through six, then you are a Lunar person.

Being Solar is not better than being Lunar, although being Lunar can have you feel out of sync in modern civilization, which has fashioned itself into being a very Solar society. Fortunately, humanity is highly adaptable, and we know from evolution that it is that adaptability that creates the strongest traits of survival and endurance. Any Lunar person can learn to adapt and if you find yourself living in a Solar society, it is useful to be able to do so. Should you need support and magical guidance with this, take a gander at the amazing Llewellyn's Witch's Sun Sign Series, which spotlights each of the Sun Signs.

By transposing the Wheel of the Year to the eight Lunar Phases, we have a Lunar template to access the Solar world. The New Moon birth, emergence, and initiative begins at Yule; the Crescent Phase of expansion and exploration occurs at Imbolc; the 1st Quarter Phase goal setting and breakthrough action occurs at Ostara; the Waxing Gibbous Phase of developing, overcoming, and perfecting occurs at Beltane; the Full Moon culmination of perspective, fulfillment, and insight peaks at Litha; the Disseminating Phase of teaching, training, and instruction occurs at Lammas; the 3rd Quarter Phase of assimilating, awareness, and reorientation occurs at Mabon; and the Balsamic Phase transition to closure and preparation for the next cycle comes at Samhain.

In these ways we can respond from a place of informed knowing, rather than reacting through our lives. Being in tune with ourselves, nature, and our standing in time and place allows us to be purposive not impulsive, directing our faces to the Sun and the Moon and allowing them to support us through the cycles of our life's journey.