🌿 Why I Had to Create a New Almanac: Beyond the Wheel of the Year
There comes a moment in any meaningful path when inherited frameworks no longer suffice—not because they are wrong, but because they are no longer whole enough to hold what we know, what we feel, and what we are becoming. Juniper Season was born from such a moment. It was not a rejection of the old, but a return to something older still—something quieter, more elemental, and less entangled in the scaffolding of myth, religion, or identity.
The traditional Wheel of the Year, with its sabbats and solar festivals, has long offered a beautiful rhythm for those attuned to the Earth’s turning. But for me—and for those who walk the Juniper path—it was not quite the right vessel. It spoke in a language that was close, but not ours. It carried symbols and stories that, while rich, were not resonant. And so, I created a new almanac. Not to replace, but to reimagine.
🌱 A Path Before the Path
Junipers are not witches, though a witch may feel at home among us. We do not worship gods or goddesses, though we honor the sacred in all things. We do not follow a religious path, though our lives are deeply devotional. What we are doing is older than doctrine and freer than dogma. It is a remembering—a return to a time before names, before systems, before the sacred was sorted into pantheons and hierarchies.
This almanac was necessary because we needed a space that honored the cycles of the Earth without the overlays of mythology or metaphysics that no longer speak for us. We needed a way to mark time that felt both ancient and alive—rooted in the soil, not in the stories of gods we do not follow.
🔄 The Whole Cycle, Not Just the Festivals
The Wheel of the Year often centers on the sabbats—eight spokes of celebration that punctuate the solar calendar. But life is not lived only in festivals. There is sacredness in the in-between, in the quiet days, in the slow unfurling of a season’s mood. Our almanac embraces the full cycle: the subtle shifts, the liminal thresholds, the unnamed moments that carry just as much magic as any solstice or equinox.
We honor the whole year, not just its highlights. We listen to the land, not just the lore. And in doing so, we create a rhythm that is both more intimate and more expansive.
🕊 A Space Free from Stigma
It was also necessary to create a space free from the assumptions and associations that often accompany paganism and witchcraft. While we respect those paths, we do not walk them. And yet, because we honor the Earth, the moon, the seasons—because we speak of sacredness and cycles—we are often mistaken for something we are not.
Many of us, myself included, once tried to find belonging in those traditions. We reached for the language of paganism or witchcraft because it was the closest thing we could find. It offered ritual, reverence, and rhythm. But over time, it became clear: we were trying to fit a circle into a triangle. The shape was close, but not quite right. The philosophies, the deities, the frameworks—they were beautiful, but they were not ours.
This almanac is a declaration of distinction. It says: we are not that, and we are not lesser for it. We are something else—something sovereign, something subtle, something still taking shape. We needed a language and a structure that could hold that truth without distortion. A space where we could honor the sacred without having to translate ourselves into someone else’s cosmology.
This is that space. Quietly radical. Gently defiant. Unmistakably our own.
✨ A Home for the Sacred Without Labels
Ultimately, this almanac is a home. A home for those who feel the pull of the seasons but not the pull of religion. A home for those who find the sacred in the scent of rain, the hush of snow, the first green shoot of spring. A home for those who want to live in rhythm with the Earth without having to adopt a title, a tradition, or a theology.
It was necessary because we needed a place to belong. And when no such place existed, we built it.
