The Wheel of the Year as a Spiritual Psychology for Women

Abstract

The Wheel of the Year is a name used to describe the cyclical progression of the seasons through time and most often described as part of Pagan, Goddess, and women’s spirituality and/or Wiccan magical traditions. This article introduces the author’s conceptual model of the Wheel of the Year as an earth-based psychology for women, one that is inherently feminist and also based in transpersonal psychologies. Women explore the turning points, or holydays of the Wheel, on both spiritual and psychological levels through a wide range of modalities that engage body, mind, emotion, and spirit. The Wheel provides an overarching psychospiritual framework for recognizing, understanding, and responding to experiences and processes that may occur over the course of a woman’s life.