The Wheel Turns: Pagan Voices for the September Equinox

Rev. Selena Fox

Rev. Selena Fox, senior minister and high priestess of Circle Sanctuary, needs little introduction to many in the Pagan community. A certified clinical psychotherapist, she has served for more than 30 years as a Pagan elder, religious freedom activist, and public spokesperson for Wicca, contemporary Paganism, and Nature religion in the United States and internationally.

Celebrating Harvest: Autumn Equinox Sunday Service

Opening Words
Unitarian Church North, Mequon, Wisconsin

We celebrate the coming of Autumn and Harvest time.

We celebrate the Cycle of Seasons, the Wheel of the Year.

We Honor the Sacred Earth and the Changing Colors of the Landscape.

We Honor the Sacred Air and Crisp Breezes and Falling Leaves.

We Honor the Sacred Fire and Autumn Bonfires.

We Honor the Sacred Water and Nurturing Rains.

We Honor the Biosphere that is Planet Earth, our Home.

And the greater Universe, the Cosmos.

We Honor the Great Spirit, the Interconnecting Sacred Source

that is within & around us.

We Honor the Circle of Nature of which we are all part.

Blessed Be.

Fox also shared her “Harvest Thanksgiving Chant,” which she created years ago, and which many have sung as part of Circle Sanctuary’s Autumn Equinox celebration, the Welcome Fall Festival, and which she led today at the Unitarian Church North service.

Lady Belladonna LaVeau

Lady Belladonna LaVeau, Matriarch of the Aquarian Tabernacle Church and  Hierophant of the Great Mother Demeter.

With Fall in the air, and the harvest coming in, I’m thinking of the season of water, death, and the passing of time. Mabon is the Harvest, and it’s also the funeral. If we are born at Ostara, at Mabon we return to the dark half of the year, to the embrace of the mother, to that which is attained at the end of desire.

In Paganism, we often are so busy rejecting the rituals of the common culture that we miss the rituals of our day. Death rituals are basically the same today as they were of old, except now they are sterile and without symbolism, often done by professionals instead of family members and shamans.

In today’s Pagan culture, we no longer actually fear that without a coin, or proper passwords, we will not arrive at our intended destination. We expect the journey to be straightforward, albeit shadowy, without fraught and fright. We expect that we will be relieved and met by ancestors who will show us the way.

Maybe that’s true, yet that’s not what Pagans of old thought. They had elaborate rituals involving washing and preparing the body, adorning it with specific symbols, herbs, coins, wrapping it possibly in salt or ash to preserve it. Then prayers were said, vigils were kept, chants and gifts were presented both for the comfort of the dead, but also for the dead to give appropriate gifts or payments when they arrive on the other side. This was followed by laying you to rest; from air burial to burial in earth, cultures found many ways to return the bodies to the gods, usually accompanied by their favorite items, or with their loved ones, if they went together.

The Egyptians had very elaborate priestly ceremonies. The Greeks were pious adherents to specific death rituals. We are no longer steeped in these today. Pagans have revived some community-wide specifics, such as writing the names of the dead in a collective coven book. Elders circulate a list of our known sacred dead that we add to each year and read around Ancestral Honorings.

As we piece together the rituals of our ancestors and decolonize our world, remember, Mabon is the season of death rituals. Let us all focus on what we would like to see die in our world and allow the season of fall and winter to cleanse us of that which no longer serves us. Honor the Ancestors and celebrate the season of Death together.

Lilith Wolf

Lilith Wolf is an author, artist, and High Priestess of the Celtic Circle of Wisdom and of Orion Foxwood’s Faeryseers, board member of the Commons of Modern Pagans and Spiritual Seekers.

Equinox Balance and a Working

The Autumn and the Spring Equinoxes are a time of balance. We find ourselves in a time when too much is out of balance. We can only do so much to balance the world we live in. We can do more to improve the balance in ourselves. The changing season is a suitable time to change our focus. The scales of energy are balancing between the pivotal shift between turning outward and turning inward. At the Spring Equinox or Vernal Equinox, we plant the seeds of our intentions for the coming year. What do we want to grow in our lives? What are our goals for the coming year? This is the time when we start turning our energies outward to the world around us. When the Autumn Equinox or Autumnal Equinox arrives, we give thanks for what we have harvested from our Spring planting. This is when we begin to turn our focus inward, shifting our energies to our own self-will.

As we grow into the dark times, the Autumn Equinox gives us a chance to re-evaluate what we planted in the Spring and a time to release what we no longer need. One way we can do this is to burn something. We’re Pagans; we burn stuff, often lots of stuff: releases and petitions, prayers and requests. Not just anything, but small pieces of paper or fallen leaves burned in your censer or cauldron or burning bowl in a well-ventilated room.

Do not burn the building or vehicle of a person who wronged you. This is bad Karma, and you don’t want that revisited on you. Also, this act is not really celebrating the balance between light and dark, good and bad; it’s baneful, and you don’t want that kind of energy lingering in your life.

Gather your papers or leaves or paper leaves and something that will write on your chosen material. This work will be done in three parts. For the first part, think of your life not just since the Spring Equinox but back to the Autumn Equinox. Remember and celebrate yourself and your coven mates, family, friends, whoever you are with, for a job well done. Think about how you have improved our community, too. Write down what you are celebrating and put them into your Happiness Jar to read later as a reminder of what you HAVE done.

For the second part, write down everything that was left undone from this year. Think of weeding out what you planted in the Spring that just never grew. You can use multiple papers or leaves instead of trying to fit everything onto a tiny, little bit of material. This task represents the unfinished wants and desires we are letting go of. Once you have written down everything you are letting go of, take the time to charge your papers/leaves with pure energy, not positive or negative, just energy you no longer need to devote to those wants and desires. When you are ready, take your papers/leaves to your cauldron and burn them, releasing the energy back to the Universe/deity/Goddess/God/Earth. As the paper/leaves burn, say or think,

“We think on the things that have been left undone.
We cast them aside for now, in hope that their loss will create space for the new things that will be.”

For the third part of this working, go back to your unburned papers or leaves and write down everything that has started and is growing, budding for harvest, actually manifesting, but not here yet. These you will place on your altar or where you can see them often, to remind you to continue to give energy to them as they reach completion. Each time you see these pending goals coming to fruition, give thanks and hope for the continued growth.

Jim Sayer

Jim Sayers (he/him) is a third-degree Wiccan High Priest with New Aeon Church International, a member of the Fellowship of Isis, and a folk herbalist shaped by his Appalachian family heritage. His practice draws from earth-centered ritual, Kemetic spirituality, contemplative mysticism, and a lifelong commitment to community care. He is the founder of The House of Life and lives in northeastern Ohio with his husband, daughter, and a houseful of beloved animals.

The Presence That Remains

For many years I understood Mabon through the language of balance. There was equal light and darkness. The harvest was gathered in. The Wheel turned toward the darker half of the year. I still value that language. This year I am hearing it differently.

My spiritual life has been changing. I have been drawn toward the understanding that there is one true Power and one enduring Presence. I call that God/dess: the Love within which all life unfolds. I wondered if this understanding would pull me away from the Wheel of the Year. Instead, it has helped me see more deeply into its turning.

At the equinox, day and night are briefly balanced. Then the nights begin to lengthen. I no longer see light and darkness as powers struggling for control. Darkness is not the enemy of light. The shortening days do not mean the Divine is withdrawing. The earth draws inward and rests.

Mabon invites gratitude. It also asks for honesty. Not every seed grew. Not every hope ripened. The harvest includes what we celebrate. It also includes what difficulty has taught us.

I learned that personally this year. A lingering health problem left me uncertain about what my body could manage. At work, a project I had counted on was canceled. I had to reconsider my finances and the direction I thought my life was taking. I spent months revising plans and wondering if I was moving forward or simply trying not to fall behind. Some days did not feel sacred. They simply felt hard.

During one quiet prayer, I said only, “Here I am.” There was no grand revelation. I did not hear a voice giving me answers. There was only a quiet awareness that God/dess was there. I realized that feeling alone was not proof that I was alone.

My harvest this Mabon is not filled only with victories. It includes better health and a new direction. It also holds the limits I had to accept and the plans I had to release. I am grateful, but I also recognize that I cannot control every outcome.

Perhaps Mabon asks us to give thanks without pretending nothing was lost. We can honor what has ended without calling it failure. We can enter the darker half of the year without treating darkness as a spiritual threat.

I still honor the turning Wheel. I still notice the changing light. But I no longer believe the Divine departs as darkness grows. The forms change. The seasons turn. Presence remains.

Many forms. One Presence.

Changing seasons. Unchanging Love.

Aline “Macha” O’Brien

Macha NightMare (Aline O’Brien) is a Witch at Large in Northern California.

Harvest Home for Me

Witches’ work is turning the Wheel,

And round the Wheel doth turn.

~Steven Posch

My friend Steve Posch offers this verse to remind us of our sacred work.

The Autumn Equinox, which some call Mabon, is a time that I call Harvest Home.  I think of it as the time of the year when we human inhabitants of this holy Mother Earth are in full harvest.  We are reaping the land and orchards of their bounty in preparation for the coming darker and leaner months.

I love the song “All Among the Barley” and its evocation of John Barleycorn.  In one of many ways, his transformation from ripe hanging grain in the fields into beer and whiskey shows how, when we consume certain plants in one way or another, we can have a direct personal experience of the sacred being who lives in the plant. (I hasten to note that for some individuals, particularly with extended overuse, this experience can be toxic.).  As Robert Burns describes it:

And they hae taen his very heart’s blood,
And drank it round and round;
And still the more and more they drank,
Their joy did more abound.

John Barleycorn was a hero bold,
Of noble enterprise;
For if you do but taste his blood,
‘Twill make your courage rise.

In today’s world, however, most of our population is urban or suburban.  Many of us have no fields, nor even yards where we ourselves can grow a few things, not even a juicy red tomato, to eat.  We have little awareness in our immediate surroundings of the ripening of grains in the fields.  We buy our bread pre-baked in the grocery store.  So what is it that brings my awareness to this time of harvest and balance?

The Sun illuminates the entire planet.  Unless we live in a cave or hide out in our basements, we cannot help but be aware of the Sun.  For me, what signals the coming of the dark time of the year is the angle of the light.  In Midsummer, the high Sun illuminates everything.  All is revealed; nothing can be hidden.  But the angle of sunlight at the Autumn Equinox shows everything in sharp relief, in light and shadow, something similar to the visual revelations of the Dutch Masters’ paintings.  This annual phenomenon is a gift from the Sun to life on our precious Earth Mother.  In observing this liminal time, neither Summer nor Winter, neither light nor dark, we Witches are performing our sacred observance of turning the Wheel.  I wish you all a blessed and bountiful Harvest Home!

Manny

Manny Tejeda y Moreno, CoG, currently serves as National First Officer of the Covenant of the Goddess.

Disclosure: Tejeda y Moreno is the editor-in-chief of The Wild Hunt. His comments on behalf of the Covenant do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of TWH and are reviewed by an independent editor.↩

The Good, The Bad, and The Balance

The September equinox has many names attached to it. Mabon and Harvest Home are among them in the North; Ostara, or simply the Vernal Equinox, in the South. But beneath those names, one meaning that repeatedly rises is balance, and we can choose balance no matter what we are celebrating.

We can also choose to make the equinox a moment of silence in a world of noise. Simply turning on the news can bring another barrage of suffering, injustice, anger, and reasons for alarm. Those things deserve our attention and, often, our action. But we can rise to meet them more effectively when we are rested, grounded, and attentive not only to what is wrong, but also to what remains good.

Gratitude is not denial, complacency, or toxic positivity. It does not erase injustice or ask us to look away from suffering. Instead, gratitude asks us to take stock: to recognize kindness, connection, safety, beauty, abundance, and the people who sustain us. It interrupts the endless pursuit of the next thing, the next achievement, the next higher high, and allows us to savor what we already have.

When the daily news cycle feels like an endless succession of crises, we can easily become accustomed to living in a state of alarm. Our attention narrows toward threat, and eventually we become exhausted. Gratitude can help widen that field of vision. It reminds us that alongside the things that frighten or anger us are people helping one another, communities gathering, relationships deepening, and moments of generosity and grace. Those things are real, too.

More importantly, gratitude need not turn us inward. It reminds us what is worth protecting and can inspire us to extend to others the blessings we ourselves have received. Rest, gratitude, and stillness do not prevent us from confronting injustice. They can replenish the strength we need to do so with clarity, resilience, and compassion.

Whatever your path, the season of harvest is upon us in the Northern Hemisphere, while the season of promise begins in the South. The equinox offers us a moment to be still, take stock of our blessings, strengthen our hopes, and gather our fruits. Then, renewed, we return to the work of protecting, supporting, and inspiring our communities.

May the new season bring you many blessings.

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