A section from the journey
The Wheel of the Year
The Hindu year is a wheel. It turns through twelve months, each with an old name, and through six seasons, two months apiece. The seasons follow the monsoon land: spring, summer, the rains, autumn, the cool dews, and winter. Festivals are spread around this wheel like lamps along a road, so that no season passes without its own joy.
We have looked closely at the single day. Now let us step back and watch the whole year turn. The tradition pictures it as a great slow wheel, rolling from one spring around to the next.
The wheel is marked in two ways at once. The first way is the twelve months. Each month has an old and lovely name. They are not numbered, the way ours are. They are named for the stars. A month takes its name from the star-house the full moon stands near while it lasts.
The year often opens with the month called Chaitra, in spring, and turns on through Vaishakha and the rest, all the way round to Phalguna, when Holi is kept. If the names sound like music, that is no accident. The poets loved them, and wove the months into their verses about love and longing and the turning seasons.
The second way the wheel is marked is by season. And here is something fitting for this land. The tradition counts not four seasons, but six. This is a monsoon country, and four would not be enough to hold its weather. Each of the six is called a , and each lasts about two months.
The six come in a clear round. First spring, when the land flowers. Then the hot season, when the earth waits and thirsts. Then the rains, when the monsoon breaks and the world turns green. Then autumn, clear and cool after the rain. Then the season of dews, crisp and misty. And last, winter, before spring returns and the wheel begins again.
There is one more great division. The year is also cut in half by the sun itself. For half the year the sun seems to climb northward in the sky, day by day. For the other half it sinks back south. The tradition gives these two halves names and treats the bright, northward half as especially favourable for sacred acts.
Now picture the festivals set around this whole wheel, like lamps placed along a road. There are harvest festivals at the reaping, when the grain is gathered and thanks is given. There are festivals of light in the dark months. There are festivals of water and colour in the heat. The wheel is never bare.
That is the gift of the festal year. No season is allowed to pass without its own remembrance. The cold has its joy, the rains have theirs, the harvest has thanks. The year does not merely pass. It is celebrated, turn by turn, as a living thing.
Imagine a year in which every season carried its own festival, so none slipped by unmarked. Which season of your own year passes you by unnoticed? What might it mean to give it, too, a small celebration?
Step back from the single day now, and look at the whole turning year. The tradition sees it as a wheel. It is divided in two ways at once, and both are beautiful. First, into twelve months, each carrying an ancient name taken from the star the full moon stands near — Chaitra, Vaishakha, and on around to Phalguna. Second, into six seasons, the ritus, two months to each. Because this is a monsoon land, the seasons are not four but six: spring, the hot season, the rains, autumn, the season of dews, and winter. The whole year is also halved by the sun's swing, into the bright half when the sun climbs north and the darker half when it sinks south. Around this wheel the festivals are placed like lamps along a road. Harvest festivals at the reaping, light festivals in the dark, water festivals in the heat. The year is never empty. Each season is given its own remembrance and its own joy.
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