We learn it in the early days of Paganism 101: the equinoxes are a time of balance. Day and night are equal, the sun rises due east and sets due west, and the moderate temperatures remind us that we are at a pivot point between the receding summer and the coming winter (even though Texas is still plenty hot).
And so our Fall Equinox rituals often have balance as a central theme. Neither too much nor too little, neither too fast nor too slow, everything in moderation.
Did our ancestors celebrate the Fall Equinox as a time of balance? While virtually every agrarian society had some form of harvest festival or festivals, there’s no clear evidence they celebrated the Fall Equinox at all. “Mabon” is a late 20th century name for the festival and it’s fallen out of favor. I’m disappointed it hasn’t been replaced with a better name, but I’m fine with just calling it the Fall Equinox.
In any case, it’s unlikely our ancestors marked this as a time of balance. And that’s OK. The Wheel of the Year is a 20th century invention, and it’s stuck with us because it’s meaningful to us here and now.
Our contemporary world is moving and changing – socially, politically, environmentally, technologically, spiritually – at a rate unknown in any previous era of human existence. We cannot have the balance of our ancient ancestors who lived on the same land in the same ways for hundreds and thousands of years.
But we can have the balance of a skilled bicyclist who remains upright while navigating traffic and dodging obstacles at high speed.
Living in an unbalanced time
Except these days we aren’t just trying to ride our metaphorical bicycles through the middle of a busy city. We’re trying to ride them through an angry city with decaying infrastructure where a third of the people are actively trying to get rid of the people they don’t like, a third are just trying to make sure everyone has a place to sleep, and a third are oblivious to everything blowing up around them.
You don’t need me to list all the non-metaphorical ways our country and our world are out of balance and getting even less balanced all the time. We are still in Tower Time and we are not going to be done with it any time soon.
While I continue encouraging everyone to remain engaged citizens – and I do my best to remain engaged myself – I have little hope that we will restore any semblance of balance in 2026 (though we can certainly make it less worse). We can make a big step in the right direction in 2028, but our current situation cannot be repaired in one or two elections. Of course, it’s also possible that we’ll take another big step in the wrong direction.
And that makes it all the more important that we remain balanced ourselves.
In this out-of-balance time, we need to celebrate the time of balance.
Celebrating the Equinox connects us to Nature
Our ancestors may not have celebrated the Fall Equinox, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. Unlike the fire festivals of Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh, and Samhain, the solstices and the equinoxes are not human inventions. There was a Fall Equinox long before the first humans appeared on the plains of East Africa, and there will be a Fall Equinox long after the sun begins its death cycle and can no longer support life on Earth.
There are many ways to celebrate the Fall Equinox. Some are more Nature-oriented than others, but simply celebrating the Equinox reminds us that we are a part of Nature and its rhythms and cycles. It reminds us that whatever our differences, we are all the Children of the Earth. The Earth was here before us, and the Earth will be here long after this current imbalance has burned itself out.
Celebrating the Equinox connects us to our ancestors
I’m pretty sure my ancestors (those of the Christian era and those before) didn’t make offerings to their ancestors every Monday evening. But I do, because it keeps me connected to them.
Re-creating and reimagining our ancestors’ practices is a good way to honor them. But so is coming up with our own ways to honor them. Even if the Fall Equinox wasn’t a big deal in Iron Age Britain or Viking Age Iceland, we can still use it as an occasion to call their names, tell their stories, and pour libations in their honor. In doing so, we stay connected to them and we affirm our relationships with them as spiritual allies.
Celebrating the Equinox connects us to each other
The Wheel of the Year may not be an ancient concept, but modern Pagans have found it’s a great excuse to get together for a party every six or seven weeks. That’s a good thing, and at times like these it’s a necessary thing.
Like most groups across the religious and political spectrum, Denton CUUPS struggled with attendance at our rituals and other events in the post-pandemic era. Or at least, we did until this year. Starting with Imbolc – 12 days after the Inauguration – we’ve had progressively more people at our rituals. Many of them said things like “I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but I need to be with like-minded people.” And so witches and Druids and Heathens and people who just love Nature and mythology are coming together and building a community that can support each other a lot more than eight times a year.
For all that the explosion of Paganism from the 1990s forward was largely due to solitary practitioners, and for all that each of us must do our own spiritual work on a daily and monthly basis, there is still no substitute for the community that comes out of doing the same things in the same places at the same time.
Maintaining our balance, maintaining our identity
I don’t know what the social and political future will look like. What I see – and not just in the United States – concerns me deeply. Talk of “soft secession” sounds a lot like the “national divorce” we discussed – and that I strongly condemned – two years ago. Any hope for a quick turnaround depends on changing hearts and minds, and on persuading a lot of people that their votes matter. I’m not optimistic for either.
When the rest of the world becomes more and more unbalanced, it becomes all the more important that we maintain our own balance. We can’t control what’s going on around us, but we can control how we respond to it.
Maintain your spiritual practice. Maintain your relationships with your Gods, your ancestors, and the spirits of the land where you are. Strengthen your communities: online is good, in-person is better. If you don’t have some or all of those things, now’s the time to start working on them.
Celebrating the Fall Equinox will help you remember who you are, even as the world continues to spiral out of balance.
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