The Occult Calendar

January

Nothing marked.

February

1. 1–2 February

   Imbolc

   Wheel of the Year

   Also Imbolg · Candlemas · St Brigid’s Day · Oimelc

   One of the four quarter days named in medieval Irish sources, marking the beginning of spring and the start of the lambing season. It was absorbed into the Christian calendar twice over, as the feast of St Brigid on 1 February and as Candlemas on 2 February, and the modern Pagan festival takes its content from both. Hutton finds the Irish festival genuinely early and most of the attached folk custom considerably later.

   What the conspiracy literature says

   The Cutting Edge list gives 1 and 2 February as “Candlemas and Imbolg” and marks it one of the nights it says require human sacrifice.

   • Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford University Press, 1996)
   • Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford University Press, 1999)
2. 15 February

   Lupercalia

   The Satanic Temple

   The Satanic Temple describes it as a “celebration of bodily autonomy, sexual liberation, and reproduction”. The name is taken from the Roman festival of mid-February, with which it shares the date and little else; the modern observance is a political one.

   • The Satanic Temple — Holidays

March

1. 20 March14:45 UTC4 traditions

   Ostara

   Wheel of the Year

   Also Spring equinox · Vernal equinox · Eostre

   The vernal equinox, and the point at which the sun crosses the celestial equator going north. The name is modern: Aidan Kelly attached it in 1974, reaching for the goddess Eostre whom Bede reports as the namesake of the Anglo-Saxon month Eosturmonath, and it spread through the Pagan press from there. The astronomical event is the old part; the label is fifty years old.

   What the conspiracy literature says

   Marked in the Cutting Edge list as “Goddess Ostara” on 21–22 March and named as a sacrifice night. The list’s dates are a day or two late — the equinox has not fallen on 21 March since 2007 and will not again this century.

   • Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford University Press, 1999)

   Feast for the Equinox of the Gods

   Thelema / O.T.O.

   The O.T.O. holds this feast on the northern-hemisphere vernal equinox each year, commemorating what Thelemites date as the founding of Thelema in 1904 and beginning the Thelemic year. Because it tracks the equinox rather than a fixed date, the civil date of the Thelemic new year moves.

   • O.T.O. U.S. Grand Lodge — Gnostic Mass and holy days
   • O.T.O. U.S. Grand Lodge — Thelema

   Feast for the Supreme Ritual

   Thelema / O.T.O.

   Observed on 20 March, commemorating Crowley’s Invocation of Horus in Cairo in 1904, the rite Thelemites treat as opening the present aeon. It sits next to the Feast for the Equinox of the Gods and is sometimes merged with it; the O.T.O. lists them separately, one on a fixed date and one on the moving equinox.

   • O.T.O. U.S. Grand Lodge — Gnostic Mass and holy days

   The equinox ceremonies

   Hermetic orders

   The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the orders descended from it hold a ceremony at each equinox, at which the temple’s officers are installed and the password for the coming half-year is given. It is the structural hinge of the working year rather than a feast, which is why the equinoxes appear on this page three separate times under three different traditions.

   • Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford University Press, 1999)

April

1. 8–10 April

   The Three Days of the Writing of the Book of the Law

   Thelema / O.T.O.

   Also Feast for the Three Days

   Observed on 8, 9 and 10 April, “beginning at noon on each day”, for the three hours across three days in 1904 in which Crowley says Liber AL vel Legis was dictated to him. Each day belongs to its chapter, and the usual observance is to read that chapter aloud. Together with the equinox it closes a twenty-two-day Thelemic holy season.

   • O.T.O. U.S. Grand Lodge — Gnostic Mass and holy days
2. 14 AprilMid-April; the date is set anew each year

   Tap Night

   Societies

   The night on which Yale’s senior societies — Skull and Bones among them, founded 1832 — extend and accept membership offers, at the end of a week of “tapping”. There is no fixed date: a council of the societies sets it each year, and recent Tap Nights have fallen anywhere between 9 and 18 April. The anchor above is mid-April and is marked approximate because that is genuinely all it is.

   What the conspiracy literature says

   The claim that Skull and Bones descends from the Bavarian Illuminati comes from Antony Sutton’s writing on the society and rests on a single account of a founder’s year in Germany. No evidence has been produced connecting the two organisations, and Yale’s own histories date the society to 1832 without it.

   • Yale Alumni Magazine — Open Secrets, on the societies and who sets the tap dates
3. 19 April

   19 April

   Claimed only

   This date is on the page because of its absence: it is not a festival in any tradition documented keeping one, but the Cutting Edge list opens a window on it — “April 19 – May 1: Blood Sacrifice To The Beast. Fire sacrifice is required on April 19” — and it has stayed in circulation ever since.

   What the conspiracy literature says

   What gave the date its grip is that two of the deadliest days in modern American domestic history fall on it: the fire that ended the Waco siege on 19 April 1993, and the Oklahoma City bombing exactly two years later on 19 April 1995. The sequence is documented and the second was explicitly a response to the first — Timothy McVeigh chose the anniversary, which is a motive established at trial, and the opposite of an unexplained pattern. The claim that the date was selected for ritual reasons has had no evidence produced for it.

   • Kenneth V. Lanning, Investigator’s Guide to Allegations of “Ritual” Child Abuse (FBI Behavioral Science Unit, 1992), NCJ 136592
   • U.S. Department of Justice — Report to the Deputy Attorney General on the Events at Waco, Texas (executive summary)
4. 30 April2 traditions

   Walpurgisnacht

   Church of Satan

   Also Walpurgis Night · Hexennacht · May Eve

   The Church of Satan calls 30 April “the Spring climax and the anniversary of the founding of the Church of Satan”, in 1966, and says it is “generally noted”. The name comes from the eve of the feast of St Walpurga, an eighth-century English missionary to Germany; German folklore independently made the same night the one on which witches gather on the Brocken, which is what drew LaVey to it.

   What the conspiracy literature says

   The Cutting Edge list runs 30 April into 1 May as “Beltaine Festival, also called Walpurgis Night”, calls it the highest day of its calendar and says human sacrifice is required. The Church of Satan’s own answer to that family of claims is published in the Conspiracies section of its F.A.Q.

   • Church of Satan — F.A.Q.: Holidays

   Hexennacht

   The Satanic Temple

   The Satanic Temple keeps the same night under its German name, as an “occasion honoring those who fell victim to superstition and pseudoscience, whether by witch hunt” or otherwise. Where the Church of Satan reads the date as a seasonal climax, this reads it as a memorial.

   • The Satanic Temple — Holidays

May

1. 1 May2 traditions

   Beltane

   Wheel of the Year

   Also Beltaine · Bealtaine · May Day

   The Gaelic quarter day opening summer, when cattle were driven to the summer pastures, in early sources between two bonfires. It is one of the four dates on the Wheel with a solid early attestation, and the pairing with Samhain six months opposite is part of what the medieval Irish material actually records.

   What the conspiracy literature says

   Named in the Cutting Edge list as the second most sacred date of its claimed calendar, requiring human sacrifice.

   • Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford University Press, 1996)

   The founding of the Bavarian Illuminati

   Societies

   Adam Weishaupt, professor of canon law at the University of Ingolstadt, founded the Order of the Illuminati on 1 May 1776. This part is ordinary documented history: the order grew through Masonic lodges, Bavaria banned secret societies in 1784, and it collapsed within a few years of that. The date’s coincidence with Beltane and with the later international workers’ May Day is the hinge of an enormous amount of subsequent writing.

   What the conspiracy literature says

   That the order survived its suppression and continues is the founding premise of the modern Illuminati genre, and the reason 1 May carries the weight it does in the claimed calendar. No evidence has been produced for a continuous organisation after the 1780s.

   • Encyclopædia Britannica — Illuminati
2. 8 May

   White Lotus Day

   Theosophy

   The anniversary of Blavatsky’s death in 1891. Her will asked that friends gather yearly to read from The Light of Asia and the Bhagavad Gita; Henry Steel Olcott issued the order naming the day in The Theosophist in May 1892, and the society has kept it since, extended to remember all theosophical workers who died during the year.

   • The Theosophical Society in Australia — White Lotus Day

June

1. 21 June08:24 UTC

   Litha

   Wheel of the Year

   Also Summer solstice · Midsummer

   The June solstice. Of all eight festivals on the Wheel, the solstices are the ones Hutton credits with genuinely ancient observance in Britain — the monuments align to them. The name Litha is not ancient: like Ostara and Mabon it was supplied by Aidan Kelly in 1974, from Bede’s name for the midsummer months.

   What the conspiracy literature says

   Listed as a sacrifice night in the Cutting Edge calendar.

   • Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford University Press, 1996)
   • Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford University Press, 1999)
2. 24 June

   The Feast of St John the Baptist

   Freemasonry

   Also Midsummer Day · St John’s Day

   The senior of the two feasts of the Holy Saints John, Freemasonry’s traditional patrons. The Grand Lodge of England was constituted on St John the Baptist’s Day, 24 June 1717, and its annual feast stayed on that date until 1725. When and why the two Johns became the craft’s patrons is, in Masonic historians’ own accounts, unresolved.

   • California Freemason — The craft’s patron saints

July

1. 12 JulyOpens mid-July, runs over two weeks

   The Bohemian Grove encampment

   Societies

   Also Cremation of Care

   The Bohemian Club’s annual encampment at its grove near Monte Rio, California, opens in mid-July and runs more than two weeks. The first night stages the Cremation of Care, a theatrical ritual in which an effigy representing care is burned before a forty-foot stone owl. The club does not publish its dates, so this entry is approximate. What makes the encampment a fixture of this subject is not the ceremony but the guest list, which has included sitting presidents and cabinet officers.

   What the conspiracy literature says

   The ritual is often presented as evidence of occult religion among the American elite. The ceremony is real, filmed, and about as literal an allegory as a script can be; no evidence has been produced for anything beyond it.

   • Peter Phillips, A Relative Advantage: Sociology of the San Francisco Bohemian Club (dissertation, 1994)
2. 25 July

   Unveiling Day

   The Satanic Temple

   The Satanic Temple marks it as a “celebration of religious plurality and shedding archaic superstition”, for the unveiling of its Baphomet statue in Detroit on 25 July 2015 — an object commissioned to be installed beside a Ten Commandments monument on public land, which is the argument the holiday is actually about.

   • The Satanic Temple — Holidays

August

1. 1 August

   Lughnasadh

   Wheel of the Year

   Also Lammas · Lúnasa · Lughnasa

   The Gaelic quarter day opening the harvest, named for the god Lugh and associated in early Irish material with assemblies, games and fairs. The English Lammas — hlāfmæsse, “loaf-mass”, a Christian blessing of the first bread — falls on the same day from a separate root, and modern practice has largely fused the two.

   What the conspiracy literature says

   Given as “Lughnasa, Great Sabbat Festival” and a sacrifice night in the Cutting Edge list.

   • Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford University Press, 1996)
2. 12 August

   Feast for the First Night of the Prophet and His Bride

   Thelema / O.T.O.

   Observed on 12 August for the wedding night of Crowley and Rose Edith Kelly in 1903. It belongs on the list because of what followed: it was Rose, on their honeymoon in Cairo the next spring, who delivered the messages that led to the Invocation of Horus and the writing of Liber AL.

   • O.T.O. U.S. Grand Lodge — Gnostic Mass and holy days

September

1. 22 September00:05 UTC2 traditions

   Mabon

   Wheel of the Year

   Also Autumn equinox · Harvest Home

   The September equinox. The name has the best-documented invention of any festival on the Wheel, because the man who coined it wrote down why: Aidan Kelly, naming the pagan calendar in 1974, found “autumn equinox” too plainly descriptive, went looking for a myth to match the season, and settled on the Welsh figure Mabon. Hutton’s objection is that the name means roughly “son” or “boy” and suits an autumn harvest festival poorly.

   What the conspiracy literature says

   Named in the Cutting Edge list as a sacrifice night, dated to 21 September.

   • Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford University Press, 1999)

   The equinox ceremonies

   Hermetic orders

   The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the orders descended from it hold a ceremony at each equinox, at which the temple’s officers are installed and the password for the coming half-year is given. It is the structural hinge of the working year rather than a feast, which is why the equinoxes appear on this page three separate times under three different traditions.

   • Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford University Press, 1999)

October

1. 12 October

   Crowleymas

   Thelema / O.T.O.

   Also Feast for the Life of the Prophet

   Crowley was born in Leamington Spa on 12 October 1875. Liber AL calls for “a feast for life” and Thelemic practice reads the prophet’s birthday into it; the informal name is the one in common use.

   • O.T.O. U.S. Grand Lodge — Thelema
2. 31 October – 1 November3 traditions

   Samhain

   Wheel of the Year

   Also Samain · Hallowe’en · All Hallows’ Eve

   The Gaelic quarter day ending the harvest and opening winter, and the best-attested of the four: early Irish literature sets a remarkable share of its supernatural episodes at Samhain, on the premise that the boundary between worlds is briefly passable. The Christian calendar placed All Saints on 1 November and All Souls on the 2nd; whether that was an accommodation of the Gaelic festival or a coincidence of two separate reforms is argued, and Hutton treats the usual confident answer with suspicion.

   What the conspiracy literature says

   The Cutting Edge list calls 31 October “the Illuminati’s highest day of human sacrifice”. It is the single most repeated assertion in this literature and the one the FBI guide addresses most directly.

   • Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford University Press, 1996)
   • Kenneth V. Lanning, Investigator’s Guide to Allegations of “Ritual” Child Abuse (FBI Behavioral Science Unit, 1992), NCJ 136592

   Hallowe’en

   Church of Satan

   The Church of Satan describes 31 October as “the Fall climax”, a day that “may be celebrated as a time when one’s inner-self might be explored through the use of a costume, or one might recall those of importance in one’s life who have died”. Its F.A.Q. is explicit that none of its holidays is required of anyone and that there are “no hard and fast traditions or rites associated with them”.

   • Church of Satan — F.A.Q.: Holidays

   Hallowe’en

   The Satanic Temple

   Listed by The Satanic Temple as a “holiday to celebrate indulgence and embrace the darkness and its aesthetic”. Three of the traditions on this page observe 31 October for three unrelated reasons, which is most of why the date carries what it carries.

   • The Satanic Temple — Holidays

November

Nothing marked.

December

1. 1 December

   The Greater Feast for the Death of the Prophet

   Thelema / O.T.O.

   Liber AL calls for “a greater feast for death”, and the O.T.O. keeps a Greater Feast at the death of any member. For the prophet himself the date is 1 December 1947, at a boarding house in Hastings.

   • O.T.O. U.S. Grand Lodge — Gnostic Mass and holy days
2. 21 December20:50 UTC

   Yule

   Wheel of the Year

   Also Winter solstice · Midwinter

   The December solstice, the shortest day and the other of the two festivals on the Wheel that Hutton credits with real antiquity in Britain. The name is the old Germanic midwinter season, geol, which the Christian calendar overwrote with Christmas and which survives in “yuletide” and the log.

   What the conspiracy literature says

   The Cutting Edge list opens its year here, with 21–22 December as a sacrifice night, on the reasoning that the sun’s return was read as proof the Hallowe’en sacrifices had been accepted.

   • Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford University Press, 1996)
3. 25 December

   Sol Invictus

   The Satanic Temple

   The Satanic Temple marks 25 December as a “celebration of being unconquered by superstition and consistent in the pursuit and sharing of knowledge”. The name belongs to the Roman cult of the Unconquered Sun, whose late-December festival is the traditional candidate for what Christmas was placed over.

   • The Satanic Temple — Holidays
4. 27 December

   The Feast of St John the Evangelist

   Freemasonry

   The junior feast of the Holy Saints John, on 27 December. It is the less widely kept of the two — Masonic writers put that down to the date, which falls inside Christmas week. The Grand Lodge of England moved its annual feast here in 1725 before the Baptist’s day reasserted itself.

   • California Freemason — The craft’s patron saints