Let’s face it, I was never going to write about mandrakes. What the heck do I know about them? Nothing, that’s what.
So, Mabon. IE, the Autumn Equinox, according to the Neo-Wiccan wheel of the year. It’s tomorrow, officially.
I don’t follow the WotY, but I do. It’s this sort of weird…thing. Solstices and equinoxes have always been important to me, from well before my finding paganism and Wicca. The most important one was Winter Solstice, because there was a giant festival of light on Granville Island, where I used to live. (Technically I lived in False Creek, but my place was literally like 20 feet from Granville Island SO close enough.)
So when I was growing up the solstices and equinoxes were basically secular holidays; the crowds mom and I were hanging out in were hippie enough that they were the main holidays that people celebrated together that had some sort of shared meaning. The solstices and equinoxes remain almost-secular for me, while the fire festivals have become the four festivals of the religion I’m building.
Ie, I sort of do celebrate the WotY and I sort of don’t. I celebrate all the holidays, but not in a Neo-Wiccan context.
And in the past several years, I’ve lost the sense of meaning the equinoxes and Summer Solstice once had for me. Winter Solstice remains strong, but the remaining three? I have no idea why they matter.
I was supposed to go to a Mabon ritual today and I had to bail because of the huge amount of work pressing down on me today. I have a big publishing order going out, so I need to finish those files, and I’ve got the ARC of Stranger Skies to get ready by Monday eve/Tuesday afternoon.
(Before anyone comments about my blogging when I should be working…this post took me 10 minutes. Going to ritual would take at least four hours. One is the length of my break. The other is not.)
I was hoping to sort of…re-discover what Mabon/Autumn Equinox meant to me, today. I don’t know that it would have happened at the ritual, but I figured going to a ritual would make it more likely.
I guess tomorrow I’ll spend some time reflecting and trying to figure out why the autumn equinox matters to me.
Time for some good old-fashioned omphaloskepsis.