The Pagan annual wheel for 2022 represents a cyclical and nature-centered approach to marking the passing of time. Paganism is a spiritual practice that celebrates the rhythms and cycles of the Earth, and the annual wheel is a way to honor and connect with these natural cycles. The wheel is comprised of eight major festivals, known as Sabbats, which are spaced evenly throughout the year. Each Sabbat represents a different phase in the agricultural and seasonal cycles, and they are celebrated with rituals, ceremonies, and gatherings. The main idea of the Pagan annual wheel is the recognition of the interconnectedness of all things and the belief that the cyclical patterns of nature mirror the cycles of human life. The wheel reminds Pagans to be mindful of the changing seasons and to appreciate and connect with the Earth and its diverse manifestations.
Christian Holub is a writer covering comics and other geeky pop culture. He's still mad about 'Firefly' getting canceled.
It s a perfectly told and deservedly famous story, but it can hit trans kids and artsy kids and kids who require assistive technology in very much the wrong way. Then I realized as I kept reading that it was supposed to be kind of a queer love letter that Anderson had written to a friend of his who was a straight man who got married to a woman who was also a friend of theirs.
The wheel reminds Pagans to be mindful of the changing seasons and to appreciate and connect with the Earth and its diverse manifestations. The wheel begins with Imbolc on February 2nd, which marks the start of spring and the return of light and life after the darkness of winter. This is followed by Ostara on March 20th, which celebrates the vernal equinox and the balance between day and night.
The Magic Fish
Or—in a less colloquial, wordier way—The Magic Fish is everything I want at the moment in a graphic novel, especially in one meant for both kids and adults to read. This first narrative work from the accomplished Minnesota-based illustrator Trung Le Nguyen folds European and Vietnamese fairy tales (among them “Cinderella” and “The Little Mermaid”) into a braid that also includes realist stories about a second generation immigrant childhood; about parents who do their best and still sometimes fall down; about middle-school friendships that (amazingly) work out; about modern and wartime Vietnam; and—not to be forgotten—about kisses, love stories and happy endings, some of which are gay as all get out. And that’s without even mentioning the line art or color. Nguyen’s debut flew—or swam in the air—from my hands to the very small shelf of all-ages graphic novels I buy in multiples and give to everybody, alongside Laura Lee Gulledge’s Page by Paige and Tillie Walden’s On a Sunbeam. Like them, it’s a thing of surpassing, sweet, credible beauty, at once realistic in its treatment of human emotions and out-of-this-world in terms of what readers can see. Its happy endings (and there are several) could warm up a frozen room.
The Magic Fish begins as a pair of alternating stories. One, told in black and white line art with red backgrounds, follows thirteen-year-old Tiên Phong, who attends middle school with his best friend Claire and their jock friend Julian in 1998. At home, Tiên reads fairy tales to his hardworking, kind, attentive mom, who wants to improve her English; she came to the U.S. as an adult, and now works at a costume rental (modeled on Minneapolis’s Guthrie Theater). Tiên has—Claire realizes—a big crush on Julian: will Julian reject him as a friend, return his love? Can Tiên ever come out to his immigrant mom, and will he get in trouble as a gay kid at their Catholic school?
While panels in red follow Tiên’s story, panels in black, white, and indigo follow the fairy tales that Tiên reads. All concern mermaids or magic fish, and all concern girls magically tied to the sea who make their way, and fall in love, on land. One is “Cinderella,” another “The Little Mermaid,” and another still has debts to “The Juniper Tree.” The first and longest concerns a girl in a Shakespearean boy-disguise and the boy who wins her love. All involve children and grandmothers, aunts, magic helpers, and older antagonists; all speak to the ocean, and to the generation, that separates immigrants both from their culture of birth and from their more Americanized children. They also evoke the spells, the determination, and the compassion that come with the right kinds of love.
If The Magic Fish were nothing but what its first third promises—red realist childhood stories and blue fairy-fish stories—the book would end up good enough to recommend, not only for its sensitive storytelling pace, its lovely, expectant faces and tender poses, but for the way that Nguyen deploys ink and monochrome color. One particularly expressive panel where Claire comforts Tiên uses at least five intensities of red, from Claire’s dark skin to the pale-pink of Tiên’s much-mended and plot-relevant jacket. Nguyen’s line art, meanwhile, is its own pleasure: his many sinuous curves and filigree traceries bring exceptional beauty to long hair, fish fins and tails, waves, and showers of magic stars from a twilit sky, but he is also more than capable of following them with cartoony middle school kids, whether they’re credibly happy or quietly angsty or, in one case, sweaty.
And yet—for all the delights its first segments delivers—The Magic Fish is far more than that. There’s a third storyline colored in tangerine: yellow-orange panels, beginning less than halfway through the book, denote flashbacks, mostly to Vietnam and the days when Tiên’s mother and her new husband became refugees. Now that the Phong family have become US citizens, Tiên’s mother can go back to visit her family, and once there, she learns other, Vietnamese fairy tales, linked by motif to the Western versions her son has told her before. These tales, in turn, illuminate Tiên’s coming out story at home and his wish for a romantic happy ending. That wish finds support in the way that his mom, her relatives in Vietnam, and, by extension, Nguyen himself self-consciously tweak, transform, and reinvent matters of heritage so that they can inform, rather than contradict, modern, queer lives.
Nguyen keeps these optimistic, queer-positive, kid-friendly claims aloft not just through his plots, but also through deft nets of elegant symbols. Mending clothes—as Tiên’s mom does all the time—is like adapting folktales. Patches are like peaches. Adapting folktales is like translation. Translating is like baking, but also like what Claire does at school, serving as a trustworthy go-between. And all these enterprises are like the larger enterprise of fixing a life, picking yourself up after a rent or a tear or a disaster—say, a war—and learning to go on. Fantastic visions meet their counterparts in the careful realist stories that link Nguyen’s generations, that link the troubles of immigrant parents to the emotional questions tweens (and not only gay tweens) try to handle. “I feel,” Tiên tells Claire, “like everybody’s problems are so much bigger than mine.” He’s not wrong. But his problems are real.
artwork from The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen
As the braided tales inform one another, fairy marine princess to immigrant mom to stressed-out, crushed-out kid, the colors do too: in one of Nyugen’s signature effects, single objects and then panels on pages with one color incorporate another—first the red peaches in the blue tale of Alera, then panels of tangerine or indigo inside pages of red. Asking “How can I return to a place I’ve never been” about the fierce ocean, looking brave and vulnerable in her blanket and cloth cap, young Alera echoes Tiên’s questions about his own relationship to Vietnam. His mom’s resolution, like Alera’s Happily Ever After, proves worth the wait.
Astonishingly beautiful all on its own, Nguyen’s story will still make sense to kids who have read few or no graphic novels before. It’s likely to be the first long story with an Asian, and especially Southeast Asian, protagonist that some of those kids have perused. Comparisons to the deservedly über-popular Raina Telgemeier, to Tillie Walden, or to Jen Wang’s also-elegant The Prince and the Dressmaker might prove hard to avoid.
Comparisons to the best-known comic about insecure Asian kids—MacArthur Fellowship winner Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese—show a welcome variety of difference. Graphically, panel by panel, the two are nothing alike (and, if it needs saying, China is not Southeast Asia). Structurally, they resemble each other. Nguyen’s volume, like Yang’s, brings together multiple narratives, one about a kid and one built from folktales. Yang tells an emphatic story about accepting the heritage, and the body, you’re given. The Monkey King comes all the way from legendary China so that Yang’s protagonist can stop his fits of self-hate, his futile attempts to be someone else (someone white), someone other than what he was at birth. It’s a perfectly told and deservedly famous story, but it can hit trans kids and artsy kids and kids who require assistive technology in very much the wrong way.
Nguyen hits us the right way. “It feels as though I’m not whole,” his Little Mermaid figure tells her elaborately drawn, marine-magical grandmother, who cautions the girl: “This is transgressive. Your yearning desire to be other than what you are may well be your undoing.” But, as we know and Tiên learns, that desire might instead build your best self. Your wish to dress different, to look different, to change your friends or your habits or your body or your pronouns, might be a culpable wish to run from yourself (as in Yang) but it also might be your way to become who you need to be, who nobody else knew you were. Self-acceptance can also be self-transformation, and that’s a lesson everybody—not only middle school second-gen kids—could use.
But I’m getting away from my initial claim. So let me call your attention to the striking, Art Nouveau-ish, transoceanic beauty on every page of The Magic Fish, which also tells sweet and credible stories about a girl in disguise and her peach tarts, a spectacular mentor who can’t leave the ocean, a mom and her kid and their family in Vietnam, a kid and his dad and his crush and their best friend. Ultimately, though, you have to read it yourself, because The Magic Fish is everything.
And yet—for all the delights its first segments delivers—The Magic Fish is far more than that. There’s a third storyline colored in tangerine: yellow-orange panels, beginning less than halfway through the book, denote flashbacks, mostly to Vietnam and the days when Tiên’s mother and her new husband became refugees. Now that the Phong family have become US citizens, Tiên’s mother can go back to visit her family, and once there, she learns other, Vietnamese fairy tales, linked by motif to the Western versions her son has told her before. These tales, in turn, illuminate Tiên’s coming out story at home and his wish for a romantic happy ending. That wish finds support in the way that his mom, her relatives in Vietnam, and, by extension, Nguyen himself self-consciously tweak, transform, and reinvent matters of heritage so that they can inform, rather than contradict, modern, queer lives.
Beltane on May 1st is a celebration of fertility and new beginnings, while Litha on June 21st commemorates the summer solstice and the peak of the sun's power. These two Sabbats represent the height of the growing season and are associated with joy, abundance, and the vitality of life. Lughnasadh on August 1st marks the beginning of the harvest season and is a time to show gratitude for the fruits of the land. Mabon on September 22nd is the autumnal equinox and a time of balance and reflection as the days grow shorter. Samhain on October 31st is perhaps the most well-known Sabbat, as it is associated with Halloween. It is a time to honor ancestors, remember the dead, and embrace the thinning of the veil between the physical and spiritual realms. Finally, Yule on December 21st celebrates the winter solstice and the rebirth of the sun. It is a time of introspection, renewal, and hope for the return of light. The Pagan annual wheel provides a structure for Pagans to connect with the natural world, honor the changing seasons, and celebrate their spiritual beliefs. It is a reminder to live in harmony with the Earth and to recognize the cycles of life and death that are inherent in all things..
Reviews for "Spiral of the Seasons: An Introduction to the Pagan Annual Wheel in 2022"
1. Sarah - 2/5 - I was really disappointed with "Pagan annual wheel 2022". While I appreciate the effort to create a comprehensive guide for pagans, I found that the content was lacking depth and substance. Many of the descriptions and explanations were overly simplistic and didn't provide any real insight or understanding. Additionally, I was hoping for more in-depth rituals and activities, but they seemed really basic and didn't offer anything new or unique. Overall, I felt like this annual wheel was more of a beginner's guide rather than something that would truly enrich my pagan practice.
2. Michael - 1/5 - "Pagan annual wheel 2022" was a complete letdown for me. I was excited to explore different pagan celebrations and rituals throughout the year, but this book just fell flat. The information was at a very surface level, and I could have easily found it on the internet for free. There were no new insights or perspectives offered, and the repetitive nature of the content made it difficult to stay engaged. I was hoping for a comprehensive guide, but this felt more like a rushed and unoriginal compilation of basic information. I would not recommend it to anyone looking for a meaningful exploration of pagan practices.
3. Emily - 2/5 - I was hoping that "Pagan annual wheel 2022" would provide me with a deeper understanding of the pagan calendar and its significance. Unfortunately, I found the book to be quite shallow in its content. The descriptions of the seasonal celebrations and rituals felt superficial and lacking in detail. Additionally, the book didn't offer any practical guidance or suggestions on how to incorporate these celebrations into daily life. Overall, I felt like it was a missed opportunity to really delve into the richness and complexity of pagan traditions. I would not recommend this book to anyone seeking a more profound exploration of paganism.
4. David - 1/5 - "Pagan annual wheel 2022" was a huge disappointment. The information provided was very basic and didn't offer anything new or insightful. I was expecting a comprehensive guide with in-depth explanations of the various pagan traditions and their significance, but this book fell short. The writing style was also quite dry and lacked enthusiasm. It felt like I was reading a textbook rather than a book meant to inspire and engage. Overall, I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone looking for a meaningful exploration of paganism.