Give Thanks and Praises! A Blessed Mabon and Equinox to You!

Hail! Journeyer of the Heavens,
Queen of Brightness, King of Beauty!
Gifts of gladness richly bringing,
Autumn sheaves and red leaves’ fall.
Generous be the heart within us,
Open be our hands to all,
Justice to be in equal measure,
Harvest thankfulness our call.
Greeting to the Autumn Equinox
by Caitlín Matthews, A Celtic Devotional

Blessed Mabon! Happy Equinox!

Hail and welcome on this celebration day of the great turning!

This morning at around 8:43, Eastern Daylight time, the Sun moves into the sign of Libra (in tropical astrology) and Her arc is directly above the Earth’s equator.

That means that today is the Equinox, taken from the Latin for “equal night.” It is the Autumnal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, and the Spring equinox below the equator.

For a brief day or so, light and dark are in balance. But from this day on, until March, in the northern lands, the night will outlast the daylight hours.

With the diminishing sunlight hours, we move from the seasons of planting and growth to the time of harvest and rest. This is the seasonal transition for the Northern Hemisphere from warmth into cold. Thus begins the inwardly focused season of endarkenment.

Today, we Witches and Pagans celebrate the Sabbat of the second harvest, the midpoint of the harvest season.

With urgency now, we in the north gather in the remaining bounty of Summer, and prepare for Winter. The final harvest at Samhain is only six weeks away.

And below the equator, our brothers and sisters are looking for signs of Spring, as their days will now stretch beyond the nighttime hours, and they will be preparing to plant seeds of real and metaphorical crops for their fertile season.

Let us wish them a most merry Ostara today!

Traditions of Mabon

Among some traditions, this date is known as the Witches’ Thanksgiving and many Earth-based practitioners call it Mabon. Some lore says this is for Queen Mab of the Faeries, or maybe the Celtic heroine Queen Maeve.

But, no, the truth is a little less romantic.

The name “Mabon” was introduced as the designation of Autumn Equinox in the 1970s by Aidan Kelly, co-founder of the New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn, as part of their systematic approach to revive and balance the modern Pagan Wheel of the Year.

He chose the name from Welsh mythology—Mabon ap Modron, whose stories are found in the Mabinogion, the ancient stories of Gods and Humans in Welsh mythology. The tales of the Mabon are the “tales of the hero.” They derive this meaning from “mabon” or “meibon” — meaning a young man or youth. It is also the name of the God named Mabon ap Modron (Mabon in Welsh means “son”). So this is a reference to the son of the Welsh Goddess Madron. She is the Divine Mother and He is, simply, the Divine Son.

Most scholars agree that the Celts did not call the Autumn Equinox by the name Mabon. However, it seems to me that the invention of this newer adaptation is in keeping with the fine ancient Celtic practice of adopting festivals, myths, and Deities from other cultures.

Many Druid traditions know this festival as Alban Elfed, “Light of the Sea.” This is so beautifully apropos (as Druidry always is), since we are bidding farewell to the season of Summer, South, and the element of Fire, and welcoming in the quarter of the year defined by Sunset, West, and the element of Water.

At this time, the Mother Goddess of the Harvest becomes the Old One, the wise grandmother who teaches us to rest after our labors. And so we honor the Goddess Demeter, who presides over all growing things, and Her daughter Persephone, who becomes Queen of the Underworld now.

As Persephone descends into the Underworld, Demeter covers her face, and darkness descends, with killing frosts and bare landscapes ahead, until Persephone returns at Ostara.

The Balance

Everything in Nature is constantly giving to and receiving from everything else. Consider, however, that balance is almost never a 50-50 equality.

Only at Spring and Autumn Equinox, only two days of the year, are light and dark exactly equal. A fifty-fifty equality is not necessarily the ideal, nor is it the natural way of things. In fact, it seems to me such a notion is a simplistic concept that can bear bitter fruit, like “an eye for an eye.”

I encounter so many well-meaning people struggling to manage their lives, their families, their work, their passions, their leisure, so they can be “in balance.” Yet — no surprise — this is a rare, temporary exception, and nearly impossible to even briefly achieve, much less maintain.

But a harmonious give and take is the natural way. This can be true in our lives as well, if we would only have the patience and perspective.

Giving Thanks — Paying It Forward

As I have learned, and you reading this surely know, there are blessings that Life Herself, and that our loved ones have given us that we can never repay equally, starting with the gift of our very being. This legacy is given, not just from our mothers and fathers, but from thousands of ancestors reaching back to the dawn of Time.

So it is right and just that we give thanks, and be grateful for all we have been given. And we repay them by paying our thankfulness forward by our deeds and how we live.

This day especially, let us think more soberly and then act with more courage on behalf of the generations to come.

For there has never, in all my seventy-one years, been a time so dangerous and potentially destructive. Not only is our democracy on an existential razor’s edge, but both the human family and all the children of our beloved Earth Herself are in desperate peril, thanks to the climate crisis.

So let this sabbat call to the hearts of each one of us, to act with fierce wisdom and passionate kindness.

As we are gathering in all the gifts and blessings of the Goddess on this holy day, let us remember to give something back, to make an offering, and to express our gratitude by doing good for others at every opportunity.

This is a moment to look back at all the things and people we have to be thankful for. It is also a time to take stock of ourselves, and see how much we have grown and changed throughout yet another extremely difficult year of profound change and challenge.

Warmest Wishes

To you and all your beloveds, I wish a splendid harvest of those qualities and blessings that nurture what is best and most precious to you. May you reap sweet abundance and goodness of every kind.

May your rites be rich, magical, and divine. May you never hunger. May you never thirst.