Sabbats

The Mystica Encyclopedia · All entries · Rewritten September 2026

Sabbats at a glance

The witches' sabbath in history

During the fifteenth century, theologians and judges in the western Alps and neighboring regions developed the idea that witches were not isolated sorcerers but members of a secret sect that met at night to worship the Devil. Trial records and demonological treatises described flights to remote meeting places, homage to Satan, feasting, dancing, sexual rites and the plotting of harm. Contemporary sources usually used words such as "synagogue" or Latin terms for gatherings; the word "sabbath" became common later, and scholars have noted that both names reflected hostile stereotypes borrowed from anti-Jewish polemic.

Such descriptions were typically extracted through leading questions and torture, and historians find no reliable evidence that these gatherings took place as described. Ronald Hutton calls the sabbath as popularly imagined an essentially modern construction assembled by scholars and writers. Its imagery nevertheless fed the witch trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and inspired art such as Francisco Goya's paintings of witches and the he-goat, as well as the Walpurgis Night scene on the Brocken in Goethe's Faust.

Scholarly interpretations

In the early twentieth century the Egyptologist Margaret Murray argued in The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921) that the sabbath reflected a surviving pre-Christian fertility religion. Her thesis influenced popular culture and early Wicca, but later historians rejected it for its selective and misleading use of sources. The Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg, in Ecstasies (1989), proposed instead that some elements of sabbath testimony echoed older folk beliefs about night journeys of the spirit, with possible shamanistic parallels. Others have pointed to hallucinogenic plants in so-called flying ointments. Most scholars agree that the classic sabbath was chiefly a product of learned demonology interacting with folklore. The related fantasy of a blasphemous ceremony is discussed under Black Mass, and the mark supposedly given at such meetings under Devil's mark.

The modern Wheel of the Year

In the mid-twentieth century, British Pagan groups turned the old word into a positive name for seasonal festivals. Gerald Gardner and his coven at Bricket Wood, in contact with the Druid revivalist Ross Nichols, combined the four Celtic-derived cross-quarter festivals with the solstices and equinoxes to form a cycle of eight. The phrase "Wheel of the Year" was in use by the mid-1960s. The Wiccan writer Aidan Kelly is credited with names such as Litha and Mabon around 1974, which spread through American Pagan publications. The eight sabbats are commonly listed (for the Northern Hemisphere) as:

• Samhain, about October 31 to November 1, often regarded as the Witches' New Year and a time to honor the dead.
• Yule, the winter solstice, around December 21.
• Imbolc, about February 1, associated with the goddess and saint Brigid.
• Ostara, the spring equinox, around March 20-21.
• Beltane, about May 1, a festival of fertility and summer.
• Litha, the summer solstice, around June 21.
• Lughnasadh or Lammas, about August 1, a first-harvest festival.
• Mabon, the autumn equinox, around September 22.

Southern Hemisphere Pagans often shift the dates by six months to match their seasons.

Sabbats and esbats in practice

In Wicca, sabbats are distinguished from esbats, the regular (often full-moon) meetings of a coven devoted to worship and magic. Sabbat celebrations usually combine ritual, seasonal symbolism, storytelling, feasting and sometimes public gatherings. Many Wiccans connect the cycle with a mythic drama of the Goddess and the God, for example the birth of the sun god at Yule and his death or descent at harvest. Rituals may include casting a circle and raising a cone of power, as described by writers such as Janet and Stewart Farrar in Eight Sabbats for Witches (1981).

Historical roots of the festivals

Some of the festivals draw on genuine historical observances: Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasadh were major dates in medieval Irish tradition, and midwinter and midsummer festivities are widespread in European folk custom. Historians such as Hutton caution, however, that the eight-fold wheel as a unified system is a modern creation rather than a continuous ancient calendar, and that claims of an unbroken pagan tradition are not supported by evidence. For many Pagans this does not reduce the festivals' value as a way of living in tune with the seasons (see also Celtic mythology and Druidism).

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