Mabon Intro

The celebration of the Autumnal Equinox, the border between summer and autumn, is known by many Neo-Pagans as Mabon, the name of a Celtic hero from The Mabinogion, a collection of medieval Welsh mythology. In the tale “Culhwch and Olwen,” King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table must rescue the long-forgotten huntsman Mabon ap Modron (a name that means ‘the son of the mother’) from a dank dungeon in the hellish realm of Gloucester, for his special skills are needed in the quest to capture the enchanted boar Twrch Trwyth. Mabon is glad to be liberated from his long imprisonment and soon proves his valor among King Arthur’s men. The hero’s name was associated with the Autumnal Equinox in the 1970s by the American Neo-Pagan author Aidan Kelly while creating a liturgy for a California-based offshoot of Wicca with the somewhat tongue-in-cheek name the New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn. As Kelly describes in a 2017 blog post on the website Patheos, he was dissatisfied with the traditional names of northern European harvest festivals and wanted something with some Celtic cachet. He saw a parallel in the tale of Mabon ap Modron, who was kidnapped as a baby, with the tale of Persephone, whose abduction to the underworld represents the advent of autumn. Furthermore, Kelly was intrigued by similar myths of young people being rescued from certain doom, such as the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, and associated them with the autumnal equinox as well. Thus, Kelly chose to name this equinoctial festival “Mabon,” and the name was soon popularized by Oberon Zell’s journal Green Egg. However, Kelly is something of a persona non grata among more traditional Wiccans, so some of them reject his contributions to Pagan ritual.

Regardless, the Autumnal Equinox has long been celebrated as a major turning point, as it is the time when we cross the threshold back into the dark half of the year. In constructing my graphic of the Wheel of the Year, seen above, I searched for an appropriate dichotomy to mark this axis and settled on Hello/Goodbye. In this sense, “goodbye” goes beyond a simple valediction to encompass letting go of old ideas, old habits, old relationships. We find ourselves at the midway point between “heat” and “death,” where we can start the process of unwinding that precedes the coming of winter. “Goodbye” can serve as a theme for Mabon celebrations, as we get ready to retreat to our sanctuaries and turn inward for a period of restful self-reflection—but before we can do that, we need to settle our accounts, tie up loose ends, and ask ourselves, what is it time to let go of?

Mabon Ritual

Celebration for Mabon, the Autumnal Equinox

Opening Poem

Suggested reading: “Equinox” by Patricia Hooper

The Autumnal Equinox and the meaning of Mabon

Tonight we gather once again to honor the ever-turning wheel of the year. The cycles of the year, like the cycles of our lives, have neither beginning nor end. Their movement is constant, yet not repetitive. No year, no season, no day, no life is exactly like the one that came before or that will come after. Every season is unique, and every life is unique.

Like galaxies spiraling through the universe, the paths of our lives also spiral, forever moving us forward. Although the Earth circles the sun, the sun itself is circling the core of the galaxy, creating a spiral path for our planet. Everything in the galaxy follows a spiral path. Therefore, the Earth’s journey, though constant, also never repeats itself.

Twice a year, the Earth seems to pause in its journey around the sun, as it reaches the balance point between day and night. On these days, the equinoxes, we pause also, to celebrate the life-sustaining cycles of light and dark and reflect on the turning wheel of life and death. We celebrate with flame, whether the flicker of candlelight or the roar of a bonfire, to remind us of the energy of the sun and the creative spark of the cosmos beyond.

When the day and the night are of equal length, we are reminded of the equality of all living things—for they are all aspects of Gaea, our living world. From the smallest microbe to the largest redwood, we are all united in life and stand as equals on this planet. When we pause in this moment, we remember this truth, and renew our commitment to caring for the Earth, for each other, and for ourselves.

On this day, the autumnal equinox, darkness and light are in balance. Behind us lies the long, hot summer; before us lies the gathering darkness of winter. The winter’s long dark nights will give us the time and the space to turn inward, to reflect, and to renew ourselves. But first, we must prepare. Trees shed their leaves. Plants let their stalks and flowers wither. Squirrels hoard acorns and nuts. Birds build sturdier nests. All around us, all living things are preparing themselves to let go of what they no longer need in order to make room for life’s essentials. We must do this, too.

The autumnal equinox is a moment for us to pause and reflect upon that which we need to release and that which we need to pull closer. What hopes, fears, relationships, habits, and beliefs are we holding onto even though they no longer inspire our best selves? Can we let go of them in order to make space for new ideas, new people, and new endeavors?

As crops are harvested all around us, we can ask what are we harvesting in our own lives? How might our past accomplishments inspire us to seek out new goals and projects? What plans might we make today, knowing that we will not see the fruits of our labors until next spring or summer? In the coming winter, what do we want to learn, to create, to nurture? This is the wonder of Mabon, to honor all that we have made manifest in our lives, and to look forward to the restful night that is yet to come.

Candle Lighting

I light this candle in the name of the Ancestors, the Guardians, and all the holy ones who walk the world. May its light guide all the kindly spirits to bless this place.

I light this candle in the name of learning. May its flame remind us to look towards the unknown with curiosity and an open mind.

I light this candle in the name of creativity. May its glow inspire us and give us the confidence to share our true selves with the world.

I light this candle in the name of friendship. May its light continue to bring us together, so that we might offer each other joy, comfort, and company.

I light this candle in the name of the sun. May its flame warm our spirit and stay with us in the months to come.

I light this candle in the name of the Earth. May it illuminate our path through the coming year and remind us to walk with peace and compassion for all Gaea’s children.

Closing Poem

Suggested reading: “There Will Be Stars” by Sara Teasdale

Mabon Reflections

By Kelly Hansen Maher


The autumnal equinox, when celebrated as Mabon, is the second of three harvest festivals. Before, at summer’s peak, we celebrated the first of the three. We blessed the loaf and the sweet corn, we enjoyed fresh peaches and ripe berries. Tonight marks the end of summer and the start of autumn. As an equinox, Mabon is a “hinge” Sabbat, when we continue to enjoy our immediate, golden bounty, but we also start to preserve, can, and store, in preparation for winter.

These days, I’ll be out apple picking. In a bumper-crop year like this, I’ll scoop up dozens of dropped apples and try to keep up with the tree. Birds and insects will pierce the apple skins, expose the seed-stars, and take up the job of passage. This year, too, black walnuts from the neighbor’s tree, enclosed in their heavy green balls, fall on our heads as we leave the driveway. We crush them with our cars and make messes. Acorns are falling by the gallon, and I rake them up, add them to the compost.

The plants have many animal helpers—like us, like squirrels and birds—whose industry assists the release and journey of the seed. Even when we harvesters try to preempt rot and preserve what is too tender to last, we are in good relation with the earth. We take what we can, so that we may nourish ourselves in times of scarcity. But we couldn’t possibly take it all. And so the wheel turns.

Equinox means equal night. The autumnal equinox, specifically, means that night’s minutes, hours will begin to overtake day’s and will do so more rapidly than at any other time of year. The earth, too, shifts from production to storage. Mold, rot, and decay will soon move over our gardens and fields, as we tilt ever closer to the next and final harvest celebration, and the death rites of Samhain.

But tonight, we perch. What if we enact the natural forces of Mabon in our own lives? Earth’s seeds, having reached peak potency, are ready to disperse. Once separated from their parent plants, they will embed anew; but it is a long wait to their next form. What must you cast off from? Also: what carries you? Do you hang on the wind, attach yourself to another’s passage, or fall directly to soil?

Shook loose, we are aloft, adrift, we hitchhike, we migrate. Like the word cleave—which can mean to attach as well as to sever, we can meet the equinox both ways. And then we launch, with the new season, into something else. Just for this time, though, can we suspend, outside of form, and honor the sacred carry?

Lawrence of Etruria

Near the end of his life, the British novelist D.H. Lawrence traveled with his friend Earl Brewster to Tuscany to tour tombs and ruins of the ancient Etruscan civilization. The resulting book, Etruscan Places, published posthumously in 1932, is largely a rumination on the state of Italy under Benito Mussolini’s fascist government, which Lawrence compares unfavorably to the Etruscan culture as depicted in elaborate frescos found within the ancient tombs. However, Lawrence also makes several observations about the Etruscan religion, as he conceptualizes it, which reveal an intriguing sensibility on his part that could be described as Gaean, as it definitely reflects the ideas about Gaean Spirituality discussed in previous posts.

In the second chapter, “Tarquinia,” Lawrence displays a receptivity to the belief in a near-universal prehistoric nature religion, even suggesting that it predated the concept of discrete divinities.

There was never an Etruscan nation: only, in historical times, a great league of tribes or nations using the Etruscan language and the Etruscan script—at least officially—and uniting in their religious feeling and observances…. It is probably to a great extent the language of the old aboriginals of southern Etruria, just as the religion is in all probability basically aboriginal, belonging to some vast old religion of the prehistoric world. From the shadow of the prehistoric world emerge dying religions that have not yet invented gods or goddesses, but live by the mystery of the elemental powers in the Universe, the complex vitalities of what we feebly call Nature (p.43).

In the next chapter, “The Painted Tombs of Tarquinia,” Lawrence picks up the thread again, describing the Etruscan religion as one that saw the Planet Earth as a unified living organism, existing in an animistic universe. People and other animals, while discrete entities, are part of the larger system—not separate from it. Lawrence clearly admires the idea of the living world, Gaea, though he wouldn’t have called it that.

To the Etruscan all was alive; the whole universe lived; and the business of man was himself to live amid it all. He had to draw life into himself, out of the wandering huge vitalities of the world. The cosmos was alive, like a vast creature. The whole thing breathed and stirred. Evaporation went up like breath from the nostrils of a whale, steaming up. The sky received it in its blue bosom, breathed it in and pondered on it and transmuted it, before breathing it out again. Inside the earth were fires like the heat in the hot red liver of a beast. Out of the fissures of the earth came breaths of other breathings, vapours direct from the living physical underneath, exhalations carrying inspiration. The whole thing was alive, and had a great soul, or anima: and in spite of one great soul, there were myriad roving, lesser souls; every man, every creature and tree and lake and mountain and stream, was animate, had its own peculiar consciousness. And has it to-day. The cosmos was one, and its anima was one; but it was made up of creatures. And the greatest creature was earth, with its soul of inner fire (p.89).

The fourth chapter describes how classical civilization moved away from and suppressed the Gaean consciousness, replacing the original ecofeminist understanding of the cosmos with a patriarchal, mechanistic system. An integral part of this new system, Lawrence contends, is the concept of hell—a sort of “anti-nature”—which was alien to the Etruscan way of thinking.

The old religion of the profound attempt of man to harmonize himself with nature, and hold his own and come to flower in the great seething of life, changed with the Greeks and Romans into a desire to resist nature, to produce a mental cunning and a mechanical force that would outwit Nature and chain her down completely, completely, till at last there should be nothing free in nature at all, all should be controlled, domesticated, put to man’s meaner uses. Curiously enough, with the idea of the triumph over nature arose the idea of a gloomy Hades, a hell and purgatory. To the peoples of the great natural religions the after-life was a continuing of the wonder-journey of life. To the peoples of the Idea the after-life is hell, or purgatory, or nothingness, and paradise is an inadequate fiction (p.131).

Here we see the same basic ideas later expounded on by late 20th-century Neo-Pagan writers such as Oberon & Morning Glory Zell and Anodea Judith, so the roots of Gaean Spirituality clearly go deeper than the counterculture movement of the 1970s. D.H. Lawrence was responding to the same need for a radically different conception of the cosmos in the 1920s that would inspire the later Pagan resurgence.