"Summer ends, and Autumn comes, and he who would have it otherwise would have high tide always and a full moon every night." - Hal Borland
Indeed. The world can’t stand still. It moves in cycles, lives by cycles. Light and dark, life and death, Winter and Spring and Summer and Fall. They all roll on, unstoppable, each giving way to the next in its due time.
And now that turning wheel carries us right into the middle of Autumn, the last season of the Pagan year . . . and brings us to a special day in the dance of Earth and Sun. Friday brings us to the Autumn Equinox - when day and night balance, and when Pagans celebrate the second of the three harvest festivals:
Mabon.
Read on . . .
"Through celebrations in their seasons are the deeper powers of human nature realized." - Rudolph Steiner
An equinox happens when, twice each year, the orbit and tilt of the Earth bring the Sun directly in line with the plane of our equator - the brief instant when our world tilts neither toward nor away from our daystar. It is a day of close-as-it-gets-to-perfect balance between day and night. Like the Summer and Winter Solstices (the longest day and longest night, respectively), it is a seasonal event noticed by our ancestors all over the world - studied, calculated and predicted.
Petroglyphs on Fajada Butte in Chaco Canyon marked the equinox for the Pueblo Peoples with patterns of light and shadow, and the "medicine wheels" of the American west mark it as well. The pyramid at the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza is laid out so that, on the Autumn Equinox, seven triangles of light are cast on its staircase. In County Meath, Ireland, the tomb designated "Cairn T" at Loughcrew aligns with the rising sun on the equinox, as does the South Temple at Mnajdra in Malta. The famous temple Angkor Wat in Cambodia aligns with numerous celestial events, and on the equinox the sun rises directly above the central tower. And of course the various prehistoric calendars of the world - Stonehenge being the most famous - include alignments with the equinox.
The equinox is a time of balance. Day and night are equal - or as nearly so as it can be, given the particulars of atmosphere and geography. The Autumn Equinox stands at the midpoint between Summer and Winter and, symbolically, between life and death. Mabon marks the Sun's entry into the constellation Libra - the scales, another symbol of balance. According to folklore, you can even balance eggs on their thinner ends at the equinox (good luck with that).
But - while our ancestors noted this celestial mile marker and its message of balance, its greater importance, then and now, as a time of harvest. The fields are full, the crops are ready to be brought in, and stores have to be put away for the looming Winter.
"The season for enjoying the fullness of life -- partaking of the harvest, sharing the harvest with others, and reinvesting and saving portions of the harvest for yet another season of growth." - Denis Waitley
Autumn has always been a season with an ominous edge - past the equinox, the night takes up more hours than the day. Work has to be done with ever-shrinking daylight (hence the importance of the bright Harvest Moon, which afforded our ancestors at least a few extra hours of light for working the fields). The winds are starting to turn cold. And this is when you finally found out - only after the long year of planting and tending your crops - whether you have enough to make it to the next Spring.
So, not surprisingly, when the work was done and the Winter stores safely stowed away, it was a time of thanksgiving. When the fields were bountiful, our ancestors shared in a feast. While the nights grew longer and the winds grew colder, they came together to remember what blessings they had.
The Mid-Autumn festival in China happens on the full moon closest to the equinox, as I mentioned in the diary about the Harvest Moon. So does the three-day Chuseok harvest festival in Korea.
The Chumash tribe of California celebrates a harvest festival at the Autumn Equinox, and the Iroquois harvest festival falls a few weeks past it. The Cherokee called the new moon nearest the equinox Cheno i-equa, the "Great New Moon", and it marked not just their harvest festival (Nowatequa), but their new year, as well.
For the ancient Hebrews, also, that new moon marked the start of a new civil year, beginning with the month of Tishrei and the holiday of Rosh Hashanah. A fortnight later, they observe the ancient harvest festival of Sukkot.
The ancient Persian festival of Jashn-e-Mehregān, an Autumn festival that may already have been old when the Zoroastrians adopted it in the 4th Century BC, falls around the Autumn Equinox. So does the Zoroastrian harvest festival of Paitishahem Gahambar ("Feast of Bringing in the Harvest").
The Greek festival Oschophoria - honoring Dionysus, the new grapes and wine - fell near the equinox, in early October. The Autumn Equinox was also the time initiates were brought into the Eleusinian Mysteries. The Romans used the Autumn Equinox to honor Pomona, goddess of growing things.
The Druids marked the Autumn Equinox with a harvest festival that included the burning of a great wicker figure. Caesar claimed they filled it with living men, but no evidence exists for this, beyond his own (not necessarily unbiased) account.
Catholicism incorporates a harvest festival into Michaelmas, Feast of the Archangel Michael. Held on September 29, it is a day of feasting (a "well-fattened goose", fed from the harvested fields, and bread made just for the day) and beginning the new farming cycle.
The German Erntedankfest ("Harvest Festival of Thanks") is held during the first Sunday in October . . . and of course the much younger Oktoberfest begins around mid-September.
America's own Thanksgiving holiday originally fell on October 3rd, by decree of Abraham Lincoln. FDR moved it into November (well past even the latest harvest) during World War II. And the weeks around the Autumn Equinox bring local harvest festivals of all sorts, in just about every small town where people grow things.
Pagans generally call the Autumn Equinox Mabon, though that's a fairly modern name, and some groups dismiss it. Neo-Druidic traditions call it Alban Elfed, and in some circles it's called Meán Fómhair (from the Irish name for September, "Middle of Autumn"). Others simply call it Second Harvest, or Mid-Autumn . . . and there's nothing wrong with just calling it the Autumn Equinox.
For those that observe the Oak King/Holly King duality, Mabon marks the ascendancy of the Holly King. Now he is the more powerful of the two, waxing stronger until he stands at the height of his power at Yule, the Winter Solstice.
For the rest of us, this is the time when the Goddess shifts from Mother to Crone, and it's in this aspect she's celebrated at Mabon rituals. The God grows old and tired, soon to die at the upcoming Samhain. The year is almost done. They move into old age, as they do every year. As the world does. As we all will.
Autumn, as I said, is an ominous season, and the specter of Death always looms large. The coming Winter symbolizes that inevitable turn of the Wheel, and the growing dark and the reaping of the crops are reminders of our journey towards it.
This should make us all the more mindful of what we have, and makes it all the more appropriate that Mabon should be a time of thanksgiving and joy. Gather with family and friends. Celebrate. Share. Feast.
"Once more the liberal year laughs out O'er richer stores than gems or gold: Once more with harvest song and shout Is nature's boldest triumph told." - John Greenleaf Whittier
Squash, apples, corn, grapes, figs, blackberries, fennel, leeks . . . there are plenty of seasonal fruits and vegetables to put on the menu. Recipe ideas can be found here
and here and here.
Decorate home and altar with the fruits and colors of the season - sheafs of grain, cornucopia, apples, pumpkins, corn dollies . . . browns, yellows, reds. Bob for apples, roll pumpkins, paint gourds. Or just walk together through the woods, feeling the Autumn air and seeing the trees stain with the colors of Fall.
But be together. And be thankful. Another Summer is past, another Winter lies ahead - and we all, eventually, will find ourselves in our own personal Autumn. So savor what you have, while you have it.
Blessed Be.