Category Archives: Mabon

Blessed Mabon


Hurrahing in Harvest

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, willful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?

I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And, eyes, heart, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

And the azurous hung hills are his world wielding shoulder
Majestic as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet! –
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet

~Gerard Manley Hopkins

Picture found here.

May Your Hand Hold the Scythe With Strength


This October, it will be seven years (a magical number if there ever was one, or, well, if there ever was an infinity) since I moved into this little cottage and I'm beginning to hatch plans for an all-night ritual of thanks, celebration, and renewal with this house and this land, including all the various spirits of both. (And, oh, Mama, do they both have spirits and astral presences! Do they ever.) When I first moved into this bungalow surrounded by very old oaks, the sound of acorns ricocheting off the roof would make both me and Miss Thing jump, make us start awake in the night, make us stop and wonder if something was wrong. Now, acorns are one of the sounds that I look forward to hearing in the Fall, almost as comforting as rain on the roof or crickets at dark.

Coming into Mabon, I've been madly harvesting the bounty of this less-than-a-quarter-acre-of-land: basil, thyme, sage, lavender, marigold blossoms (both for salads and for the Day of the Dead), parsley, more basil, dill, rosemary, peppermint, lemongrass, chocolate mint, sunflower seeds, lemon mint, apple mint, more basil, spearmint, oregano, more basil (I've taken to just showing up at work and at the homes of friends and family with bags full of basil and going "Pesto in a bag!" I've still got a ton of basil out there and enough pesto in the freezer to last for a year. I can hear them saying, "Oh no, here she comes again with her basil bombs," but what's a girl to do? Next year, I'll plant less.) , and, above all, beauty, stored in my eyes, and heart, and mind -- lush beauty to feed my soul through the elegant but stark coming months of November, January, and February.

And, I've been thinking a bit, here in my sixth decade, about harvesting. Harvesting, and, hence, Mabon, isn't for the weak. You have to go and take away from either a living animal or a living plant its life, its source of nourishment and/or its sexual organs, children, roots. You have to make decisions, often while tired, overworked, in a rush: Will this bit rot and rot everything around it, or will it preserve nicely and get me through the lean times? Will these seeds go bad or will they sprout, come Spring, and bring me an even more bountiful harvest? Should I leave this job and take this other one? What if I move? What will I do with this degree? How can I use my new-found knowledge? Who will buy this if I make it? Will this relationship bear fruit or poison? When I edit this paragraph, will the new ideas be better than the old?

One of our family rituals -- and the thing that most marks "Autumn" for me -- is our annual trip to the Maryland Renaissance Festival. I've been taking Son even since before the festival found its current (magical) location. Last year, drunk on Redwall movies, G/Son was enchanted w/ the notion that there really is somewhere on Earth where one can buy candied nuts. We bought a paper cone full of cinnamon-sugared almonds and ate them all through the Faire. We meant to buy some more on our way out, but we were tired and forgot. All Winter, G/Son would say to me, "Nonna, the candied nuts you made are good, but we should have bought more on our way out of the Renaissance Festival." This year, just before we were ready to leave, we left his 'rents having crabs and meade, and ran back to the place selling candied nuts. We bought what G/Son called our "Winter Supply," -- six extra cones full. G/Son explained to me in the car, "In Winter, we can't find too much food, so it's good to have a Winter supply of candied nuts." I could not agree more. I could not agree more. I could not agree more. G/Son speaks for me.

We all need something -- candied nuts, dusty bottles of meade, dried thyme, a knitted blanket, a song, a poem, a circle, a recipe for soup verte, a cellar full of cider and wine -- that helps us to believe that we will make it through the Winter nights of brilliant stars, freezing fingers, and empty stomachs, into the coming (surely it's coming, of course it's coming, it always comes, please Goddess, let it come) Spring. To me, that's the difference between Mabon and Samhein. Mabon's about the hope. Samhein's about facing the other possibility.

That hope is what those hard-nosed harvesters buy for all of us when they steal the life from the hart, the hare, the seed pod, the turkey, the pumpkin, the potato, the turnip, the chestnut, the kale. May the Goddess guard them. May their spirit be strong in us. This is my will. So mote it be.

Picture found here.

Days Before Mabon, Waxing Moon


No doubt about it today; Summer's coming to a graceful end and Autumn is peaking through the veils, ready to usher in glorious death.

What do we know?

I wonder. To wonder takes time. I walk in the hills behind our home. The leaves have fallen, leaf litter, perfect for the shuffling of towhees. The supple grasses of summer have become knee-high rattles. Ridge winds shake the tiny seedheads like gourds. I hear my grandfather's voice.

All sound requires patience; not just the ability to hear, but the capacity to listen, the awareness of mind to discern a story. A magpie flies toward me and disappears in the oak thicket. He is relentless in his cries. What does he know that I do not? What story is he telling? I love these birds, their long iridescent tail feathers, their undulations in flight. Two more magpies join him. I sit on a flat boulder to rest, pick up two stones and begin striking edges.

What I know in my bones is that I forget to take time to remember what I know. The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy. Daily prayers are delivered on the lips of breaking waves, the whisperings of grasses, the shimmering of leaves. We are animals, living, breathing organisms engaged not only in our own evolution but the evolution of a species that has been gifted with nascence. Nascence--to come into existence; to be born; to bring forth; the process of emerging.

Even in death we are being born. And it takes time.

I think about my grandfather, his desire for voices, to be held as he dies in the comfort of conversation. Even if he rarely contributes to what is being said, his mind finds its own calm. To him this is a form of music that allows him to remember he is not alone in the world. Our evolution is the story of listening.

In the evening by firelight in their caves and rock shelters, the Neanderthals sometimes relaxed to the sound of music after a hard day at the hunt. They took material at hand, a cave bear's thigh bone, and created a flute. With such a simple instrument, these stocky, heavy browed Neanderthals, extinct close relatives of humans, may have given expression to the fears, longings, and joys of their prehistoric lives. (John Noble Wilford, "Playing of Flute May Have Graced Neanderthal Fire," The New York Times)

A bone flutelike object was found at Divje Babe in northwestern Slovenia recently, dated somewhere between forty-three thousand to eighty-two thousand years old. Dr. Ivan Turk, a paleontologist at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences in Ljubjana, believes this is the first musical instrument ever to be associated with Neanderthals. It is a piece of bear femur with four holes in a straight alignment. Researchers say the bone flute may be the oldest known musical instrument.

I wonder about that cave, the fire that flickered and faded on damp walls as someone in the clan played a flute. Were they a family? Neighbors? What were their dreams and inventions? Did they know the long line of human beings that would follow their impulses to survive, even flourish in moments of reverie?

Returning to my grandparents' home, I notice the fifty-foot antenna that rises over the roof. I recall Jack telling us as children how important it was for the antenna to be grounded in the earth, that as long as it was securely placed it could radiate signals into the air all over the world. Transmit and receive. I walk into his dim room and place my hand on my grandfather's leg. Bone. Nothing lost. Overcome by something else. Ways of knowing. My fingers wrap around bone and I feel his life blowing through him.

John H. Tempest, Jr., passed away on December 15, 1996, peacefully at home in the company of family.


~from Listening Days by Terry Tempest Williams

What music is Autumn going to play upon your bones? Are you grounded enough for signals to radiate all over the world?

Picture found here.

The Witch of "This" Place


Suddenly, the nights are noticeably longer and there are, in fact, leaves falling on the lawn. The CSA is delivering acorn squash, and apples, and mushrooms and I'm thinking of soups. I've been able to turn off the air conditioning and open up the windows. In a few days, the Wheel of the Year will have turned all the way around to Mabon, the second of the three Harvest Feasts. (For the first time in years, I'll be out of town, away from my amazing circle of women, celebrating on my own, due to a court schedule beyond my control. I'm working on a plan to commune with some new nature so that I don't wind up making a sad little altar in my hotel room and feeling (too!) sorry for myself.)

Having three harvests is a pretty neat thing. It goes back, I think, to a time when monoculture was unheard of. If you grow different fruits and vegetables and raise different animals (as any sane people would do unless they lived in an incredibly hostile environment), they mature at different times. And you have different harvests, which come in an almost rolling cascade: radishes and asparagus giving way to too many tomatoes, the tomatoes giving way to too many zucchini, the zucchini giving way to the first autumn squashes and winter greens. In my herb garden, the tarragon is finished and the basil is warning me that if I don't "get around" this weekend to making it into pesto to be frozen in ice cube trays for the winter, I'll be out of luck. One thing about harvests is, when the food is ready to be picked, it's ready to be picked. We have to stop, pay attention, do what the plant requires of us when the plant requires it. That's part of what it means to be "in relationship" with the land.

It's traditional among many Wiccans to view this time of year as a time when we "harvest" other things, as well. If you set goals for yourself last Samhein, and if you've worked on those goals and been blessed with good health and good luck, you may be close to reaping the rewards of your work, whether spiritual, magical, financial, emotional, physical, or educational. And, if you're not, now's a good time to figure out what you can salvage and what happened to get in your way, all in preparation for the final harvest feast of Samhein.

I find it a good time of year, as well, to take stock. What have you got to carry you into the cold and difficult part of the year? What might you need to focus on now, that may have gotten lost in the heat of summer, the long days laboring in the threshing field?

If you consider yourself to be a member of a Nature Religion, I'd like to suggest that one of the areas you consider is your relationship with Nature. Do you have a relationship with -- not just a vaguely benign feeling for -- your landbase, your local watershed, some particular plants, or animals, or places near to where you live? If so, what can you do to improve that relationship? We Witches say that power follows attention. If not, what can you do to begin to actually live your Nature Religion? We Witches say that power follows attention.

By now, you know that I don't believe that, "Well, but I live in the city," is a good excuse. Most Pagans in America today live in cities. And the landbase of every city in America is crying out for relationship with its humans. You don't have to have a yard. As I've noted before, cities are full of deserted spaces, almost custom made for a Witch's attention and connection. (And devotee of Hers that I am, I can't help but mention that it is in just such deserted, liminal spaces that Hecate often resides.) In Last Child in the Forest: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, Richard Louv writes about the work of Robert Michael Pyle, who described his relationship as a child with "a century-old irrigation channel near his home. The ditch . . . was his 'sanctuary, playground, and sulking walk,' his 'imaginary wilderness, escape hatch, and birthplace as a naturalist.'"

Louv:

"These are the places of initiation, where the borders between ourselves and other creatures break down, where the earth gets under our nails and a sense of play gets under our skin," Pyle writes. These are the "secondhand lands, the hand-me-down-habitats where you have to look hard to find something to love." Richard Mabey, a British writer and naturalist calls such environments, undeveloped and unprotected, the "unofficial countryside." Such habitats are often rich with life and opportunities to learn; in a single decade, Pyle recorded some seventy kinds of butterflies along his ditch.


What "unofficial countryside" is your countryside? The crisp Fall days are perfect for walking around, looking, and listening. Tell me what you find.

Picture found here.