Mabon - Time of fruits and plenty

Happy Mabon! 

It's one of the lesser known festivals in the pagan Wheel of the Year (see here) but it's one that rightly deserves to be celebrated.

Mabon marks the Autumn Equinox when day and night are the same length. It's the gateway into the darker days of Winter and occurs sometime between the 21st and 24th of September every year (it's the 23rd this year). 

It's also known as Harvest Home, the Feast of the Ingathering, Meán Fómhair, An Clabhsúr, or Alban Elfed. It's a time of thanksgiving for the fruits of the earth and recognition of the need to conserve food for the coming Winter (of course, in the Southern hemisphere it's the Spring (vernal) equinox that corresponds with Ostara/Easter).

The name Mabon is actually quite modern, being coined by Aidan Kelly around 1970 and references Mabon ap Modron, a character from Welsh mythology. But the festival of the equinox is much older.

And it's not just a British thing. 

The equinox marks an Iranian festival called Jashne Mihragan, or the festival of sharing. In Japan Autumnal Equinox Day (Shūbun no hi) is a public holiday. It's also a Buddhist holiday called Higan and, in Korea, it's a major harvest festival and a three-day holiday called Chuseok. The Jewish Sukkot usually falls on the first full moon after the northern hemisphere autumnal equinox, and Dożynki is a Slavic harvest festival. In America, archaeologists and First Nation peoples have reconstructed the Cahokia Woodhenge, a large timber circle located near Collinsville, Illinois. It is the site of annual equinox and solstice sunrise observances and Mississippian people gather at the site to watch the sunrise. 

Interestingly, after the French Revolution in 1789, the People's Republic attempted to install a new calendar and chose the Autumn Equinox as 'New Year's Day'. The calendar was in use from 1793 to 1805. 

And, of course, in the USA Thanksgiving is a massive celebration. And although it's in November and more to do with the peaceful union of the Pilgrim Fathers and the First Nation Wampanoag, it's nevertheless still a time of great feasting and thankfulness for the bounty of late Summer and early Autumn.

Artist unknown

But, to return to the UK, the traditional harvest festival in the United Kingdom was celebrated on the Sunday of the full moon closest to the September equinox. And so Wiccans, Druids and other Neopagans now observe the equinox as a cardinal point on the Wheel of the Year. 

The symbol of Mabon is the Cornucopia. It represents balance -  day and night, male and female (both phallic and hollow and receptive). The term Cornucopia comes from the Latin cornu copiae - literally 'horn of plenty'. The 'corn' element - which we also see in unicorn (one horn) - is why my home county of Cornwall is so named. The Romans believed it to be a horn-shaped piece of land and referred to the local Celtic people as the Cornovii ('horn people'). To this the Anglo-Saxons added Wealas meaning 'foreigners' (this is also the derivation of the name 'Wales'). 

I quite like the fact that I'm a Cornishman - a 'horny foreigner'. And the surname Colgan means 'swordsman'! Fnar.

Photo: Zuzana Randlova at Dreamstime

The other great symbol of Mabon is the apple which represents the fruit harvest. The apple figures significantly in many sacred traditions. It is a symbol for life and immortality, of healing, renewal, regeneration and wholeness. For pagans the tree is sacred and the ancients believed that when they died they travelled to the Vale of Avalon, which mans the Isle of Apples. 

The apple also contains a 'secret' - cut it widthways and it reveals a pentagram of seeds. The five points represent the elements of Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Spirit, and also the directions of East, South, West, North and Within. The circle around the pentagram formed by the flesh and skin represents wholeness, and the eternal circle/cycle of life and nature. 

Mabon is also a time for clearing out the clutter and to complete unfinished projects before things get too cold or too dark. Plant bulbs for the Spring, and tidy up the house and garden. Go foraging for wild fruits ... but leave plenty for the wildlife as they are in for a tough few months.

To quote a popular TV franchise and book series, Winter is coming.