The Fall Equinox, also known as Mabon, marks the celebration of abundance season. All around us, the vegetable garden is pumping out an excessive amount of crops. Even vegetables we haven’t seen since Spring are once again able to pop up and produce in this cooler weather. The dog days of Summer are over. Now it’s time for your reward.
Given what is going on in nature, this is an excellent time for manifesting and goal setting. Be sure that you know what it is that you really want though. My suspicion is that the number 1 block to manifesting your dreams is not having a clear vision for what that dream is. Maybe there’s a lot of alternative futures where you could see yourself feeling just as happy and you’ve just decided to just let the universe decide which one it thinks would be best for you. Unfortunately, if you take this approach you’ll end up with absolutely nothing. The Universe can’t decide for us. We have to be the ones to do the planning and choosing. We have to be the ones to plant the seed. Always.
Originally Mabon was a feasting holiday. Not everything you harvest can be stored for the winter, and even the things you can store are not guaranteed to last. Putting on a little extra weight in the Fall was the only guaranteed way to “store” food. So people would celebrate and people would feast. This Holiday then later morphed into Oktoberfest and Thanksgiving. American Thanksgiving was originally celebrated in early October. It was changed to late November by FDR.
That being said, visiting the farmers market and planning a feast is a fantastic way to celebrate Mabon. Another tradition is to make a corn dolly out the leftover corn husks. This dolly will then be burned in the bonfire at Brigid in February.
This is also a beautiful time of year to go for a hike or go apple picking.
I think one of the exciting things about bringing back these old holidays and seasonal traditions is that they present for us an opportunity to create our own modern way of celebrating them. You can create your own traditions! If tons of feasting and drinking don’t appeal to you, you can certainly create your own rituals that have meaning.
The way that I’ve always celebrated Mabon is quite simple: I buy some pomegranates and make some kind of special sweat treat for myself and make hot spiced cider. I then do some scrying and premonition work for the coming winter.
The question is, what does this time of year mean to you? Given that, how can you honor and celebrate this changing season?