Southern Hemisphere - March 21st
Northern Hemisphere – September 21st
Traditionally Mabon is celebrated on March 21st. Astrologically, this year Mabon falls on March 20th at 8.29pm. At Mabon (March), the God has died. The Earth has
received His body and given up the last of the harvest. Leaves are falling from
the trees and the Earth is preparing for the long,
cold winter without the light of the Sun.
Mabon is the 2nd of the 3 harvest festivals. It is also the Autumn
Equinox, which means that day and night are equal. This is because the earth is tilted at a
right angle to the sun, and the sun is directly over the equator. In Latin, the
word equinox translates to "equal night." After the
equinox the days begin to get shorter and the nights longer as the earth moves
into winter.
Harvest festivals are celebrated by many cultures
around the world since the beginning of time.
Symbols of the Season:
The harvest is a time of thanks, and also a time of
balance, after all, there are equal hours of
daylight and darkness. While we celebrate the gifts of the earth, we
also accept that the soil is dying. We have food to eat, but the crops are
brown and going dormant. Warmth is
behind us, cold lies ahead.
Some symbols of Mabon include:
Mid-autumn vegetables, like Pumpkins and Zucchini’s
Apples and anything made from them, such as cider
or pies
Seeds and seedpods
Baskets, symbolising the gathering of crops
Sickles and scythes
Grapes, vines, wine
You can use any of these to decorate
your home or your altar at Mabon.
Feasting and Friends:
Early agricultural societies
understood the importance of hospitality, it was crucial to develop a relationship with your
neighbours, because they might be the ones to help you when your family ran out
of food. Many people, particularly in
rural villages, celebrated the harvest with great deals of feasting, drinking,
and eating. After all, the grain had
been made into bread, beer and wine had been made, and the cattle were brought
down from the summer pastures for the coming winter. Celebrate Mabon yourself with a feast and the bigger, the better!
Magic and
Mythology:
Nearly all of the myths and legends popular at this
time of the year focus on the themes of life, death, and rebirth. Not much of a surprise, when you consider
that this is the time at which the earth begins to die before winter sets in!
Demeter and Her Daughter
Perhaps the best known of all the harvest
mythologies is the story of Demeter and Persephone. Demeter was a goddess of grain and of the
harvest in ancient Greece. Her daughter,
Persephone, caught the eye of Hades, god of the underworld. When Hades abducted Persephone and took her
back to the underworld, Demeter's grief caused the crops on earth to die and go
dormant. By the time she finally
recovered her daughter, Persephone had eaten six pomegranate seeds, and so was
doomed to spend six months of the year in the underworld. These six months are the time when the earth
dies, beginning at the time of the autumn equinox.
Inanna Takes
on the Underworld
The Sumerian Goddess Inanna is the incarnation of
fertility and abundance. Inanna
descended into the underworld where her sister, Ereshkigal, ruled. Erishkigal
decreed that Inanna could only enter her world in the traditional ways,
stripping herself of her clothing and earthly possessions. By the time Inanna got there, Erishkigal had
unleashed a series of plagues upon her sister, killing Inanna. While Inanna was visiting the underworld, the
earth ceased to grow and produce. A
vizier restored Inanna to life, and sent her back to earth. As she journeyed home, the earth was restored
to its former glory.
Shamanic and
Native American Celebrations and Traditions
Shamanism has always embraced and understood the
true nature of darkness. Shamans work
with the darkness. Journeys are usually
done with a blindfold. In some cultures shamans were even deliberately blinded,
to help them develop their other senses.
Some of our earliest evidence for people practicing shamanism comes from
cave paintings, some of which are over 35,000 years old. These paintings are deep inside caves, where
people have deliberately sought out places of total and utter darkness. In many tribal societies, shamanic rituals
and ceremonies are always performed after sunset, and throughout the night. For shamans, the darkness, by shutting off
our outer visual sense, actually allows us to 'see' the reality that lies
beneath surface perception.
The physicist David Bohm said that there are two
levels of reality.
The surface reality we live in most of the time he
called 'explicate' reality. Behind the explicate Bohn says lies a deeper
reality which he called the 'implicate', where all things are connected
together. Shamans have known this for
tens of thousands of years. Shamans the world over have similar terms; it is a
central concept of shamanism. Light, and
external sight, tends to keep us focused in this, surface reality. Letting go of light and external sight helps
us to let go into the deeper, implicate, reality.
Potentially the darkness is a place of great
richness and riches. Entering it draws
us into introspection and contemplation.
If we work with it, it brings us a stillness of mind and an opening up
of our other senses. We can open up to
what we would otherwise have overlooked and not noticed, and we can 'see' the
truth below the surface of things.
Famously of course, the psychologist Carl Jung said: 'Filling the conscious mind with ideal
conceptions is a characteristic of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation
with the shadow and the world of darkness.
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by
making the darkness conscious.' So shamanism has always embraced and worked
with the darkness.
This is not to say at all that shamanism values the
dark more than the light. In fact
shamanism (unlike the western religions) stays clear of making any such
judgments, and sees all as having its place and part in the wheel.
On a psychological level, embracing the darkness means embracing our shadow; the bits of
our self that we deny or have locked away, and which lie unresolved and
un-integrated. Most people think they can ignore the shadow
side. Many religions and new age beliefs
support this, and encourage people to focus only on the light. In fact, we can never be whole by doing
that. Instead, the shadow becomes stronger
the more we deny it. At worst, we even
project it out onto other people (hence the sky religions' willingness to judge
and persecute others). To quote Jung
again: 'Projections change the world into the replica of one's own unknown
face' (Aion, 1955). And so many people are uneasy with the dark, as in it lies
their own un-owned issues, and so they find the decent into the winter darkness
hard as it brings them into closer contact with their own unresolved issues and
emotions.
In fact, the next six months of darker energy can be a time of
great richness, growth and inner exploration. Whereas the spring equinox is a great time to
launch plans and projects that involve outer work, the
autumn equinox is a great time to set new goals that involve inner work and
exploration. It is also a great time to
renew ones commitment to one's shamanic path (or even to start one in the first
place!).So you may want to spend some time setting some new goals for 'inner'
work. It is also a good time to study
and learn – an inward process (it makes sense that
the new academic year starts around this time).
Shamanically if you want to explore
the darkness, then, along
with your usual power animals and/or guides, working with animals that are
comfortable with the darkness, such as Mole, Bat, Black Panther, Owl and Moth
can be of great help. Crow and Raven too, although they are not active in the
night as animals, know much about the hidden side of things. You can work with them through shamanic
journeying of course, and/or by taking the relevant Power Animal Essences.
Of course, the dark nights are not on us yet.
The equinox just signifies a tipping point.
What it also signals is a time to get ready. If the year were a day,
then we are only yet at early evening.
Traditionally it is a time of taking stock. What do we need to
let go of or resolve, in terms of getting ready for winter? Traditionally this was a time of making
amends; of sorting out any unresolved disputes; of getting things in order; and
of putting finances in order.
If you choose to celebrate Mabon, give
thanks for the things you have, and take time to reflect on the balance within
your own life, honouring both the darkness and the light. Invite your friends and family over for a
feast, and count the blessings that you have among kin and community.
©Ange Foster
