SEASONAL WHEEL
THE OLD CALENDAR STILL TURNS. FOLLOW THE YEAR AS THE OLD WORLD KEPT IT.
Follow the turning of the year through old festivals, forgotten customs, seasonal folklore, and ritual practice. From first frost to firelit spring, each season carries its own magic—and its own ghosts.
Fae, Forests & Midsummer Magic: What Shakespeare Knew and the Folk Remembered
A Midsummer Night's Dream is usually discussed as theater. What it is less often discussed as is folklore documentation — the specific supernatural mechanics of the midsummer tradition dressed in Elizabethan comedy. The fairy court, the enchanted forest, the night when nothing is as it appears: these were not Shakespeare's invention. They were the living beliefs of his audience. The play is set at midsummer because that is when these things happened.