Mabon: The Balance Point of the Year

Mabon falls on Tuesday, September 22 this year, at six minutes past eight in the evening. That is the exact moment the sun crosses the equator, when day and night stand very nearly equal before the balance tips. It is the second of the year’s two equinoxes, and the older name for it, Mabon, marks the beginning of the dark half of the year.

A threshold, not a celebration

Most of the turning points on the wheel are festivals. Mabon is quieter than that. It sits at the point of the harvest where the work is mostly done and what is gathered is what there is, and the honest question underneath it is not what more can be brought in, but what is enough.

That is why it has traditionally been kept as a season of thanks and of setting down. The old harvest customs are full of small acts of release: last sheaves left standing in the field, doors opened, debts settled before winter. The year is asking you to stop adding.

The moon that keeps company with it

The full moon nearest the equinox is the Harvest Moon, and this year it arrives on Saturday, September 26, four days after Mabon. It is the only moon named for a human activity rather than for an animal or a season, because its light is what let the harvest continue after sundown.

It also behaves differently from every other moon of the year, rising only twenty five to thirty minutes later each night instead of the usual fifty, so it stays low and full looking for the better part of a week. If you want to read more about how the moons are held here through the year, the year of moons at Ohm Dome gathers them in one place.

Three ways to meet the balance point

None of these need anything you do not already have.

Sit at dusk on the evening of the equinox, if you can, near a window or outside. Notice that the light and the dark are the same length that night. Breathe in for four counts and out for six, and let the exhale be the longer of the two. Six or seven rounds is plenty.

Write down two lists. What came in this year, and what you are carrying that has finished. The second list is the point. Many people find the act of naming a thing as complete does more than deciding to let it go.

Set something on a windowsill that came from outside. A few grains, an apple, a stem of wheat, a stone. It does not have to mean anything to anyone else.

A gathering at the turn

Jenny holds the Moonlit Mavens circle for Mabon on the evening of Tuesday, September 22 at The Magical Cottage, which puts the gathering inside the final hours of summer. It is a women’s circle, with ritual and sound and time to sit with what the season is asking. Bring a blanket and something comfortable to sit on.

If the Wheel of the Year is new to you, the piece on Moonlit Mavens and the eight turns of the year is the place to start. You are welcome at the circle either way, and there is no wrong way to arrive.

We are honored to hold space for you at the balance point, whether you come to the cottage or simply sit with the light from your own back step.