THE OFFICIAL

CASSANDRA EASON

WEBSITE

Alban Elued - Autumn Equinox

Light on the Water or Autumnal Equinox for three days from sunset around 23 September, a festival of abundance and of balancing gain and loss.

Animal: Salmon.

Tree: White poplar or hazel

Herbs and Incenses: ferns, geranium, myrrh, pine and Solomon’s Seal.

Candle Colours: blue for the autumn rain and green for the Earth Mother.

Crystals: soft blue crystals, such as blue lace agate, blue beryl or azurite.

Symbols: Choose coppery, yellow or orange leaves, willow boughs, harvest fruits such as apples, nuts, root vegetables and pottery or china geese. Use also as a focus knots of corn, wheat or barley from the earlier harvest and copper or bronze coins to ensure enough money and happy family relationships.

Autumn Equinox rituals are for mending quarrels, the fruition of long-term goals, reaping the benefits of earlier input, for love and relationships, especially concerning the family, adult children, brothers and sisters, friendships and for issues of material security for the months ahead.

Agricultural significance

This is the gathering of the second or green harvest of fruit, nuts and vegetables, as well as the final grain harvest; now takes place the storing of resources for the winter, discarding any rotten produce and bartering for goods, not available or scarce, feasts of abundance and the offering of the finest of the harvest to the deities was a practical as well as magical gesture, part of the bargain between humans and deities.

Folk/magical significance

Blodeuwedd, is instrumental in the death about the death of Llew and he becomes an eagle whose physical deterioration begins as pigs, icons of Cerridwen, mother of regeneration, ate the rotting flesh as it fell to the ground. Llew will not be released from the form of the eagle until his rebirth at the Solstice.

Goronwy, the dark twin helped by Blodduwedd to murder Llew, claims and impregnates the bride, though he will not be crowned as Lord of Winter until Samhain. In other myths the God is now Lord of the Underworld and is visited by the Goddess for three days at Halloween, the time of Samhain when the world falls to misrule. In some traditions this ritual death is substituted for the death of Lugh at Lughnassadh, but some work with both, first the Corn sacrifice and then the defeat of light. The mystical John Barleycorn is also associated with this time when the barley brew of the cut down first harvest is ready for brewing and the people drink the blood of the slain God at the Harvest festival.

Ritual significance

Some Druidesses and Druids climb to the top of a hill at sunset on the Autumn Equinox day to say farewell to the Horned God, Lord of Animals as he departs for the lands of winter; it can be a powerful time on the day of equal dark and light for rites of balance and harmony, before the ascending darkness.

Deities: Blodduewedd who becomes an owl, Cernunnos and all Celtic Goddesses of the Hunt.

Personal Activities

Work by the sea at sunset and cast as pebbles into the dying light of the water all regrets, resentments, sorrows, failures and unfinished business from the previous months that you do not wish to carry forward into the winter.

• Take a bowl containing equal numbers of nuts and seeds and work outdoors. Name a success or achievement that has materialised by the Autumn Equinox and eat a nut; then name a failure or loss and cast a seed into the ground. Continue until you have eaten and shed the same number and can think of no more; bury the rest beneath a fruit or nut bearing tree.

• Sweep up autumn leaves into a pile; jump up and down in it as you did when a child, expressing joy at the promise of the coming days, naming opportunities and all you can achieve in winter. Finally scatter the leaves and let the good and the bad, the gains and the losses be carried equally on the wind.

• Prepare a feast of fruit and vegetables, of bread, cider and barely wine or fruit cup and warming soups and hold an Equinox party. Make offerings to the land of barely wine, ale, mead and bread and as you pass round a communal cup, send individual blessings to people and places where there is dearth; hold an auction of hoarded personal treasures and send the money to a charity that relieves famine and poverty.

• Contact anyone from whom you are estranged, sending autumn flowers or a plant you have nurtured or a basket of produce as a peace offering; if your reconciliatory gestures are rejected, at least you can move forward, knowing you tried. Alternatively help an organisation concerned with peace.

TOP