Equinox Thoughts

It seems as though summer has just arrived, but here we are again, nearing the eve of the autumn equinox. Slightly cooler mornings, heavy dews and falling leaves after months of blistering heat and humidity, can it be?

The autumn equinox is often observed on a fixed date (September 21st), but the astronomical coordinate this time around is Monday, September 22. Like all the old seasonal festivals, the observance begins at sundown on the night before, Sunday, September 21st. South of the equator, the natural cycles are reversed, and tomorrow is the eve of the vernal equinox (Ostara).

However and whenever we choose to observe it (or not observe it), the fall equinox is a pivotal cosmic hinge, and it wears many names: Mabon, Harvest Home, Second Harvest, the Feast of Ingathering and Alban Elfed, to name just a few. Mabon is the most common of the bunch, a modern invention taken from the name of the god Mabon (Maponus), a male fertilizing principle in Welsh mythology.

The American pagan Aidan Kelly came up with the name Mabon in the seventies when he was crafting a calendar for modern pagans and noticed the fall equinox did not have a pagan name of its own. His invention has stuck, but I like to think of the festival as "Harvest Home". It has been celebrated as such for many centuries, the title expressing the grain and harvest motifs at the heart of the occasion.

And so it goes...  Monday's observance blends modern pagan practices with the rich traditions of ancient harvest festivals. Ceres, Demeter, John Barleycorn, Lugh, Tammuz and Persephone may be better candidates for a tutelary deity presiding over autumn harvest rites, but I have a soft spot for the "Great Son" of the Mabinogion, sometimes considered (incorrectly) a companion of Arthur's Round Table. Mabon may not be a harvest god, but he is a a powerful symbol of the land's bounty.

In the old Teutonic calendar, the autumn equinox marked the beginning of the Winter Finding, a ceremonial interval lasting until Winter Night on October 15, also the date of the old Norse New Year. For moderns, the date marks the end of summer and the beginning of autumn. In Christian tradition, the day is associated with St. Michael the Archangel—his feast takes place a few days from now on September 25 and is known (for obvious reasons) as Michaelmas. The autumn blooming Michaelmas daisy or New England aster with its purple petals and golden heart is one of my favorite wildflowers, and I always look forward to its blooming. 

The autumn equinox is about abundance and harvest, but most of all, it is about balance and equilibrium—it is one of two astronomical coordinates in the whole turning year when day and night are perfectly balanced in length. Like all the old festivals dedicated to Mother Earth, it is a liminal or threshold time, for we are poised between two seasons, summer and autumn.

One holds out hopeful thoughts for the autumn equinox, that skies overhead will be brilliantly blue and full of singing geese by day, that trees and vines and creepers will be arrayed in crimson and gold, that a splendid golden moon will be visible against a blanket of stars by night. This year, the moon will be just past new and probably not visible to the naked eye, but no less beguiling for all that.

An autumn wreath graces our door, and a pot of chrysanthemums graces the threshold. Sometimes the pot is adorned by leaves fallen from the old oak nearby and its companion maple. The oak is our guardian, the wreath and mums a nod to the season and a tribute of sorts. Oak, fallen leaves, wreath and blooms are cheerful things, conveying a benediction on anyone who knocks at the door, treads our cobblestones or just passes by in the street.

Autumn images tug at the heart, and I always prowl through reams of archived images looking for just the right one for this day, but I am never sure I have found it. Leaves, asters, puddles, clouds, light, geese, herons??? It's always about the light, and autumn light is absolutely and incandescently fabulous.

However, and whenever you choose to celebrate the occasion, a very happy Autumn Equinox, Harvest Home, or Mabon. May good things come to you.