When was the last time you completely exhaled? Earnestly, lifted the corners of your mouth with gratitude for life? Perhaps, romanticized the first sip of your beverage, or the smell of a sun gold tomato, or other in-season food?
Mabon is approaching, marking the first day of fall and the autumn equinox. It is the pagan celebration dedicated to the practice of gratitude. Even though the name “Mabon” is relatively modern, the celebration of the autumn equinox, which falls on September 22 this year, is an ancient practice.
Mabon is known as the second harvest, or witches' thanksgiving; and unlike the cultivating, growing, and bustling times associated with the widening of the light; the autumn equinox places a palm on our shoulders and asks us to honor all that we have tended, and all that the earth has given.
Of course, this is a time for harvesting, canning, and making medicine for the upcoming winter months. But this season is slowly tucking us in... As if dimming down the light and nourishing earth and our bellies with blankets of soft fruits, hardy nuts, and sleepy leaves.
If you are feeling any grief during the lengthening of the night, shortening of the days and the green world going to bed, may I offer you a quote from the September chapter in The Herbal Homestead Journal by Brittany Wood Nickerson.
“When we look at life and life’s cycles as transformative, as part of a process, then death and decay and decomposition become part of a larger cycle that feeds and gives to life, rather than terminates it…In honor of equal sunlight and equal moonlight, may we all strive for balance and may we learn to embrace sweetness and decay in the same breath.”
The autumn equinox is an invitation to reflect on the seeds we planted in spring, metaphorically or literally, and how they have transformed.
What challenges, insights and shifts can we give thanks for, after cultivating and growing all spring and summer? How may we recognize and cleanse what needs transformation, composting, and rest? How may we celebrate the fruits of our labor, and reflect on what still needs tending?
Back in the time of Beltane, we celebrated the Hawthorn tree through their leaf & flower medicine. Today, they have transformed their bodies into bright red berry medicine. Berries offer a symbol of magical time traveling, for they contain the seed and the harvest simultaneously.
Connecting with berry medicine is associated with the month of September, and the autumn equinox. Here in the Sierra foothills we are seeing rosehip, elderberry, gooseberry, manzanita, madrone and hawthorn berries beginning to fruit.
In medicine making, creating an immune boosting syrup with berries and warming spices is a fantastic way to ground into the season, build relationships with plants, and create a nourishing and tasty medicine to prepare for winter. We source organic dried elderberry, hawthorn, and rosehip berries at the apothecary, and also an elderberry syrup kit if you feel called to make your own Mabon medicine.
Connecting with berry medicine could also look like honorably gathering berries and creating a garland symbolic of the harvest spirit to place somewhere special, or give to the land.
In old celtic lore, berries are not harvested after September, because a shapeshifting trickster being Púka has placed an enchantment upon them that marks the end of harvest season. Other stories speak to the practice of winding down harvesting at this time in order to ensure there are enough berries left in the bush to be given as offerings to the animals and spirits of the land. Agriculturally, an old pagan tradition calls for the last sheaf of harvested grain to be made into a “corn doll” and placed upon the hearth in honor of the harvest spirit, and eventually tucked back into the soil come spring to attune to interconnected cycles.
However you feel called to celebrate the season, I hope you are able to slow down, even if just for a moment, and enjoy the abundance and transformation of this time.
With care,
Hannah