• Tag Archives Mabon

  • Following the Old Religion

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    Lughnasa                                            Full Back To School Moon

    Summer has three endings:  Labor Day which marks the end of summer vacation for many school children; and, for many adults like myself, kicks us into serious mode as all those years of conditioning continue to affect our attitude;  Mabon, or the Fall Equinox, which comes tomorrow, that point when day and night balance each other, neither claiming dominance, though the trend matters and at this equinox, the balance tips toward night as the darkness increases, pulling us toward the longest night, the Winter Solstice on December 22nd and Samhain, or Summer’s End according to the old Celtic calendar which divided the year in half, Beltane-Samhain or the growing season, and Samhain-Beltane or the fallow season.  Samhain comes on October 31st and, like all Celtic holidays lasts a week.

    The growing season has this triple farewell reflected too in the holidays of Lughnasa, the festival of first fruits, Mabon, the peak of the harvest and harvest home, and Samhain, the end of the harvest season and the end of the growing season.  No matter how you notice or celebrate it these real changes in the agricultural year still happen, they still have critical importance for our human community, and they still deserve our attention.  Why?  Because our ages old relationship with agriculture is what separates us from the hunter-gatherers.  Agriculture allows us to live in villages, towns and cities by producing surplus food on farms in much the same way that the honeybee produces surplus honey while still making enough for the colony to survive on throughout the winter.

    Without those who farm, there would be no surplus food.  With no surplus food we would have to revert to subsistence agriculture, growing what we needed every year or hunting and gathering.  This would prove daunting since most of us have forgotten or never been taught how to grow food, how to hunt, how to identify edible plants.

    This is the great hidden reality for many, if not most, urban dwellers, who make up, since 2008, over half of the world’s population, a projected 5 billion people by 2030.  Without  a healthy eco-system, one that can support intense tillage, that is, sustainable tillage, the world’s urban dwellers will be bereft of something they cannot do without:  food.  Add to that the pressure on the world’s fresh water supply and two fundamental sustainers:  food and water are at peril.

    Granted following the holidays of the Great Wheel will not work magic–sorry to all my Wiccan friends–but it would remind us all, 8 times a year, of the source of our sustenance.  That would help.  Naming our days after these holidays (I do it in the upper left of each post) keeps that reminder fresh.  Our sustainers, mother earth and father sun, do not require us, do not need anything from us, yet they will support us if we live within their limits.  These holidays began when our ancestors realized the need to remind themselves of the delicate, fragile harmony required for human life to flourish.

    Over the course of the years and centuries and millennia since, hubris has lead us further and further away from the old religion; we have replaced it with  idols, fetishes, really.  We will, at some point, pay the price for our blasphemy as we upset that harmony, creating an environment that will no longer sustain human life.  Only if we step back from our profligacy can we ensure our survival.

    Knowing the rhythms of the natural world, of the agriculture that feeds us, of the systems that keep water fresh and available, is our only chance to avoid apocalypse.  Will we do it?  I don’t know.


    📂This entry was posted in Commentary on Religion Faith and Spirituality Great Wheel Great Work permaculture 📎and tagged

  • A B- Garden

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                              Full Grandchildren Moon

    Lugnasa, August 1, the Celtic first fruits festival heralds the beginning of the harvest cycle of holidays.  Lugnasa, Mabon (Fall Equinox) and Samain, October 31st, carry our sacred calendar though the bread made from the first wheat to the last of the crops gathered into storage.  This means that the tenor of the year, changed at the Summer Solstice, has begun to gather force, no longer is the emphasis on growing and nurturing, but on collecting and senescence.   At least in the vegetable garden and at Artemis Hives.

    The flower garden still has a few licks to get in yet as the chrysanthemums, monk’s hood, fall blooming crocus, clematis softlily250and asters preen themselves as the light begins to fade from the sky and the air cools.  Right now the hemerocallis are going strong, creating a lively dance of color in the perennial beds.

    Truth in writing disclosure:  this has not been the best gardening year.  I’ve not put in the amount or quality of labor I have in the past and the garden shows it.  I’ve had trouble keeping my focus focused, my priorities prioritized.  This is a fact for me in the best of times, but when I don’t pay close attention my center can shift often.   Elsewhere I’ve called this the valedictory life, that is, a life in which I try to get an A in everything I do, instead of settling for a B or a C once in a while.

    To make the valedictory life more challenging I find the world has many things that fascinate me, as any reader of this blog will have learned by now.  Right now, at very best, I’d give the garden a B- this year.  Sad to say.

    On the other hand, I can make it better and that’s what I’m going outside to do right now.


    📂This entry was posted in Faith and Spirituality Garden Great Wheel 📎and tagged

  • Mabon (Fall) 2009

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall                               Waxing Blood Moon

    Equinox.  Today is the fall equinox.  In spring we celebrate the shift towards yet more light and warmth as the trend toward lengthened days sees daylight overtaking the night.   Now the shift has a different, more somber direction.  At the Summer Solstice the hours of daylight began to shrink in relation to the hours of darkness.  At this equinox the night begins to predominate, an acceleration that will reach its peak at the Winter Solstice.

    Contemporary Wiccans (some at least) call this equinox Mabon and see it as the final harvest festival.  My own understanding and practice sees Mabon as the second of three harvest festivals:  Lughnasa (ended yesterday), Mabon and Samhain (Summer’s End).  Here on the 45th latitude the gardening year does begin to wind down now.

    On farms, however, the corn harvest lasts well into October and even in our garden we have carrots, parsnip, garlic and potatoes still in the ground.   In the ancient British Isles the end of summer meant deciding how much livestock you could feed through the winter.   If there was too little food for your herd, a certain number of animals would be slaughtered and their meat prepared to sustain the family over the winter.

    In either case though the fall equinox is the moment when the Great Wheel takes a decisive turn toward darkness.  That shift, along with the senescence in the garden and in the trees and fields, makes this an appropriate time for taking stock.  Kate and I are in the midst of preserving through canning, drying and storing the fruits of our summer’s work.  Grain and corn gets driven to the cathedrals of the plains in open trucks filled to the brim with yellow or golden seeds.  The elevators fill up as does our newly built store room.

    On a personal level this turn of the Great Wheel offers us a similar opportunity, that is, a time to take stock of the summer, the last year, even the course of our life.   Experience the joy of taking in to yourself the fruits you have harvested as a result of your own hard work.  Yes, money may be a part of that, but it is not the most important.  How have you increased in wisdom?  Have you and a significant other grown in your relationship?  Has a relationship that needed to come to an end done so and allowed you to move into a new phase of life?

    This is a wonderful festival for gratitude.  In fact, if you do nothing else to acknowledge this transition, take a moment to make a list of people and things for which you are grateful.  You could take this one step further and make others in your life aware of your gratitude.

    Finally, on a life level, the Great Wheel’s turn at Mabon symbolizes the autumn of our lives.  If this is where you are on your ancient trail, Mabon prompts you to consider the gifts and lessons we have embraced along the way.  The Great Wheel turns toward the final harvest, that day when we will be gathered up into the abundance from which we came and to which we return.  Present to us now that the years ahead are fewer than the ones behind this knowledge can enrich these autumnal days.  Life becomes more precious, an experience to be savored, lingered over, greeted with joy hour by hour, day by day.

    In the end the Wild Hunt comes for all of us, the just and the unjust.  The Great Wheel teaches us that even after it comes, life will go on and that, in some fashion, we will all be part of it.  Come to think of it, this may be my best answer to the question about the after life.


    📂This entry was posted in Faith and Spirituality Great Wheel Myth and Story 📎and tagged

  • Tending to Plants and Animals, So They Will Tend to Us.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    79  bar rises 29.79  0mph WNW dew-point 64   Sunny and warm

    Waxing Gibbous Thunder Moon

    Finished The Thief of Baghdad last night.  This movie, a 1940’s special effects pioneer, has its roots, loosely, in the Arabian Nights.  Just occurred to me that the same title might be used for a documentary on the Bush years in Iraq.  It is an engaging story,  though the actor playing Ahmed, a co-star with Sabu, who plays the thief,  Abu, didn’t seem heroic enough to me.  My favorite character was the Sultan of Basra (this movie has many contemporary reference points), who has a Wizard of Oz like persona.  He loves mechanical toys.

    I bought the Criterion Collection discs.  This is all in my hit and miss attempt to educate myself as a cineaphile.  I have a small library of books on cinema.  It has books on theory, history, technique and genre, but I’ve done little with them as a group.  The most I do now is watch the occasional old movie, like the Thief of Baghdad.  My 60th birthday present was 50 films chosen by the Janus Corporation as the most influential art films distributed by them in the last century.  I’ve watched 4 or 5.   I have to figure out a routine for watching more movies and I find that difficult because it interferes with my TV jones.  Problems, problems, problems.

    Don’t know about you, but some residual collective memory got triggered by the photograph of folks lined up outside the IndyMac bank to withdraw their savings.  A bank run signals danger to this child of depression era parents, a danger sign I didn’t know existed until I saw this picture.  The older man sitting on a metal folding at the front of the line, thick soled black shoes, gray trousers and a white shirt, worried look.  Ooff.

    Kate’s in food preservation mode.  She bought a pressurized canner to complement her older, hot water canner.  She’s been busy making jams and preserves, canning green beans and in general wiping her hands on a calico apron while waving a wooden spoon in the air.

    As the crops begin to mature, we are both more focused on how to preserve what we have grown and the lessons we have learned from this year’s crop.   Fewer onions next year, for one.  Do not know why I got so carried away on planting onions.  More beets and carrots.  About the same on beans and peas.  Garlic again, descaping this time.  Add some crops, though what, I do not know.  Harvest is the fun part.

    On August 1st we celebrate Lughnasa.  This is a first fruits festival that provides a festival around the time of the first maturation of crops.  There are three harvest festivals:  Lughnasa, Mabon (Fall Equinox) and Samhain, the Celtic New Year on October 31st.  A full quarter of the year has the harvest as a dominant theme and idea.  An old acknowledgment of the value and necessity of tending to plants and animals, so that they will, in turn, tend to us.


    📂This entry was posted in Cinema and Television Faith and Spirituality Great Work Holidays Writing 📎and tagged