The Autumnal Equinox: Mabon and the Day of Balance

 

I am a lover of the steady Earth and of Her waters

"Let the light be brilliant" She says,  
"for those who will cherish color."

She will rust us with blossum,

She will seal us with her Seed.

From "Verses at Powis" by Robin Williamson

Mabon is traditionally the 2nd Harvest Festival of three (Lammas in August, and Samhain in October being the other two).  It falls on the day  of the autumnal Equinox as the Wheel of the Year turns.  As leaves turn color, as the sun feels gentler and mornings cooler, as apples fall to the ground from laden trees, we can give thanks for the bounty of the harvest.  All of the harvest I believe, even those that were challenges, challenges that somehow deepened wisdom or compassion, and gave us strength.  This is a time to give thanks and celebrate all that nourishes us, be it food, companionship, or growth. The Day of Balance, for me, is a time to speak and remember what has been harvested this year, the bright Blessings and the dark Blessings as well.  On this Auspicious Day,  when day and night are the same, may we experience the peace of Balance: for ourselves, and the greater life of the world.  

Often at this time of the year I play the song I've embedded here by the true Bard, Robin Williamson, called Verses at Powis.  Because that poem, accompanied by harp, speaks so deeply for me about Mother Earth.  And this sacred day as well.

,

I've told this story before, but it's worth telling again.  

In the 80's I lived for a while in New York City, and was invited to be part of  a performance organized at a small theatre in the East Village for the Equinox.   My friend Rose asked me to do some kind of ritual for the  occasion. I couldn't think of anything,  and felt quite intimidated with the prospect of creating a ritual for an audience of New York sophisticates. 

I was visiting a friend in the country at the time, and I  happened to be standing near an apple tree.  I can still see in my mind the green grass under the tree, and a brilliant  circle of ripe, freshly fallen red apples lying in the grass around the tree like fallen treasure.  I picked up all the good ones, and hauled them back to the City with me.  

When I gave my short performance, I finished with that basket of apples.  I said something to the effect that "This is Gaia, ever generous, ever giving us what we need."  And then I invited those present to come and take the apples.  What amaze me was that the audience took every one of them,  and ate them right there!

 Many years and many  miles away from that dark little  theatre in Manhattan. But I can still taste the apple I ate that night, grateful for its sweetness, and the kind of "communion" I shared that night with that diverse audience.  Traditional Christian Communion represents the sacrificial "blood and body" of the Christ.  

But the apples of Mabon are the body and gift of our Mother Earth, lovingly and generously provided, always.

 Today I watched the sun rise over the Catalina mountains that surround Tucson, Arizona, where I live now.  I look up to  orange, magenta, violet, mauve, and a continually changing  sky, the canvas for this painting the sky ever makes, created anew twice daily.  Given and Given, like the apples of Mabon.    

This is one of my favorite songs, Robin Williamson's love song to Mother Earth.  Blessed Mabon to all!

https://youtu.be/yK5IWgsdqCg?si=SrIbBPp728FMXERs

Mabon Blessings!

I am a lover of the steady Earth
and of Her waters

"Let the light be brilliant" She says,  
"for those who will cherish color."

From "Verses at Powis" by Robin Williamson

Mabon is traditionally the 2nd Harvest Festival of three (Lammas in August, and Samhain in October being the other two) and falls on the day  of the autumnal Equinox.   A time to give thanks for the bounty of the harvest,  to give thanks and celebrate all that nourishes us. The Day of Balance,  a time to consider what we have harvested this year, to give thanks for all of that harvest, the bright Blessings and the dark Blessings from which we learned wisdom, patience, or compassion. On this auspicious day of Balance, when day and night are the same duration, may we experience the grace of Balance within our lives, and in the greater life of our common humanity.  

Apple trees in Avalon, the "Isle of Apples" (the Chalice Well garden) 2011

When I lived in the country in New York, I remember a Mabon with hot cider and new apples, and honey mead that was opened for the occasion.  

I also remember an Equinox when I lived in New York City in the late 80's, and was invited to be part of  a performance organized at a small theatre in the East Village.   She asked me to do some kind of ritual for the  occasion. I couldn't think of anything,  and felt quite intimidated with the prospect of creating a ritual for an audience of New York sophisticates. 

I was visiting a friend upstate at the time, and I  happened to be standing near an apple tree by the road.  I can still see the green grass under the tree, and a brilliant  circle of ripe, freshly fallen red apples,  lying in the grass around the tree.  I picked up all the good ones, and took them back to the City with me.  

When I gave my short performance, I took out that basket of apples, and said something to the effect that "This is Gaia, ever generous, ever giving us what we need."  And then I invited those present to come and take the apples.  I was amazed to see that the audience took every one of them and ate them right there!

As I sit writing, the sun rises over the Catalina mountains that surround Tucson, where I live now.  Many years and miles away from that theatre in Manhattan.  I look up to  orange, magenta, violet, mauve, and a continually changing pale, cerulean sky, the canvas for this magnificent painting the sky makes, created anew twice daily.  I'm grateful indeed for this moment of Beauty, and grateful for the stories of my life.  Especially, today, those that are about Mabons.  

This is one of my favorite songs, Robin Williamson's love song to Mother Earth.  Seems a good time to share it again............  

https://youtu.be/yK5IWgsdqCg?si=SrIbBPp728FMXERs

The Summer Solstice

 

 Brushwood, Solstice 2008

The Summer Day

 Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver. 

INVOCATION by Robin Williamson at Mabon

Brushwood 2016 by Theresa Guzman

"I, the Song, I walk here."

........Lakota poem

I've posted this before..............and like a loop, it returns to my mind at this full moon Equinox,  so beautiful, this Day of Balance which was also, in olden times, Mabon, the Second Harvest Festival.  

You who will come with me

I will consider it Beauty

I will consider it

Beauty, beauty

,,,,,,Robin Williamson 

 

Every morning when I rise with the sun to water my garden, I find myself  talking to all the people that live there.  The tall sunflowers, making seeds beloved by finches and sparrows.  The desert tortoise, Augustus, who has decided to live here and occasionally makes his mysterious appearance.  My cats of course.  The green scarab beetles getting drunk on tree sap.  The bees, having a drink at the bird bath. The heavy pomogranates pulling the tree down now, the cosmos flowers as tall as I am now.  The  woodpecker loudly telling me that I need to fill the bird feeder,  butterflies and funny looking caterpillars eating holes in leaves. The morning is not so hot now, and it is tender, reminding me of some song I can't quite remember, but a Song that is infinitely sweet, with a touch of bitter sweet, like Irish music, which always seems to remember the transience of things.  

As a child, the garden was full of people.  Now, as an old woman, I seem to have returned to that happy experience.  I try, in my very little eco-system, to create Good Relationship with all My Relations that honor me by living there.  Even the ones that chew up my flowers.  

"To the native Irish, the literal representation of the country was less important than its poetic dimension.  In traditional Bardic culture, the terrain was studied, discussed, and referenced:  every place had its legend and its own identity....what endured was the mythic landscape."

    R.F. Foster

There was a time when humans thought of themselves as part of the Circle of the majestic cycles of the planet, and as part of the great family of life - when they negotiated with the animals and the elementals, when they listened to the voices of the trees and the medicine plants, when they thanked the buffalo or the reindeer or the seals for their sacrifice, when, I believe,  they celebrated the harvests and the auspicious days as part of the great Song, their voices adding to the chorus.   ("Chante:  to sing").  We can re-member ("to join")  this en-chanted paradigm,  and learn to speak to each mythic landscape again.   I feel Robin Williamson's beautiful poem so fully captures that vision.

I share it again and again because I love it, the Bard, because I want this Voice to not be forgotten.  And Oh!  As the moon shines down in its fullness on this day of quinox,  I wish all, all, all it's fullness and abundance and promise.

Found at the Chalice Well in Glastonbury, UK.

You that create the diversity of the forms:

Open to my words
You that divide it and multiply it

Hear my sounds

Ancient associates and fellow wanderers
You that move the heart in fur and scale

I join with you

You that sing bright and subtle
Making shapes 
that my throat cannot tell

You that harden the horn
And make quick the eye

You that run the fast fox 
and the zigzag fly

You sizeless makers of the mole
And of the whale:  aid me and I will aid you

You that lift the blossom
and the green branch
You who make symmetries more true

Who dance in slower time

Who watch the patterns

You rough coated
Who eat water

Who stretch deep and high
With your green blood
My red blood 

let it be mingled

Aid me and I will aid you

Silbury Hill, Wiltshire, UK

I call upon you

You who are unconfined
Who have no shape
Who are not seen

But only in your action
I will call upon you

You who have no depth
But choose direction

Who bring what is willed
That you blow love
upon the summers of my loved ones
That you blow summers
 upon those loves of my love


Aid me and I will aid you

I make a pact with you

You who are the liquid
Of the waters
And the spark of the flame:

I call upon you

You who make fertile the soft earth
And guard the growth of the growing things
I make peace with you

You who are the blueness of the blue sky
And the wrath of the storm
I take the cup with you

Earth shakers

And with you
the sharp and the hollow hills
I make reverence to you

Round wakefulness 

We call the Earth

I make wide eyes to you

You who are awake

Every created thing
both solid and sleepy
Or airy light,
I weave colors 'round you

You who will come with me

I will consider it Beauty

I will consider it

Beauty, beauty

by Robin Williamson 

Published by  WARLOCK MUSIC, LTD.

https://youtu.be/7xvIDX9gKhg

Summer Solstice 2021

Found at the Chalice Well in Glastonbury, UK.

In Ursula Leguin's Earthsea Novels,  the Summer Solstice is celebrated by dancing "the Long Dance" all night, to watch the sun rise in the morning.  Something many do on this planet as well, and still. I have done so myself.  I wish all the Blessings of the Day, and may we each find a way to  "dance the Long Dance" together in body or in spirit this sacred and most primeval day.  Here (again, and again) is the poem I share on such days, because the words and harp of the poet will always arise as I look out at the rising sun on the Solstice, the "World's Self Seen" in all of Her abundance, no matter where I am. "Every blue yonder Her brass harp rings" for those who can stop, who will listen to the deep throb of the Heartbeat, to the Harp strings sounding.    "She  will seal us with Her seed", the poet tells us, and this, strangely, is the taste of immortality I experience, each Solstice, when I stop to listen to the Song that Walks among us.

Every morning when I rise with the sun to water my garden, and especially this morning, I find myself  talking to all the people that live there.  The tall sunflowers, making seeds beloved by finches and sparrows.  The desert tortoise who has decided to live here.  My cats, and the  green scarab beetles getting drunk on tree sap.  The bees, having a drink at the bird bath, and the hummingbird. All the beings sensed and unseen, but friendly somehow too.  As  a child, the garden was full of "people" for me to visit, and now, an old woman, I seem to have returned again to that happy experience, unconcerned with what others think, and increasingly tired of all my human "identities" at last.  So much is possible by just shifting the way we see things, from an "it" to a "you".  When we "see with a Webbed Vision".  The world becomes again  conversant.  I think (again) of a story by Ursula Leguin called "May's Lion" that speaks so eloquently to that power of naming.  But let the rest of this post belong (again) to the Poet, Robin Williamson.  And the Glory of the Summer Solstice!

Summer Solstice, Brushwood, 2008

Verses from Powis

I am a lover of the steady Earth

And of Her waters.

She says:  “Let the light be brilliant, 

for those who will cherish color.”

What if there be no Heaven?

 She says: “Touch my Breasts - the fields are golden.”

Her Songs are all of love, lifelong.

Every blue yonder, Her brass harp rings.

Unlettered, in Her rivers our cherished sins

Drift voiceless in Her clouds.

She will rust us with blossom

She will forgive us

She will seal us

with Her seed.

Robin Williamson

Invocation

You that create the diversity of the forms:

Open to my words
You that divide it and multiply it

Hear my sounds

Ancient associates and fellow wanderers
You that move the heart in fur and scale

I join with you

You that sing bright and subtle
Making shapes 
that my throat cannot tell

You that harden the horn
And make quick the eye

You that run the fast fox 
and the zigzag fly

You sizeless makers of the mole
And of the whale:  aid me and I will aid you

You that lift the blossom
and the green branch
You who make symmetries more true

Who dance in slower time

Who watch the patterns

You rough coated
Who eat water

Who stretch deep and high
With your green blood
My red blood 

let it be mingled

Aid me and I will aid you

I call upon you

You who are unconfined
Who have no shape
Who are not seen

But only in your action
I will call upon you

You who have no depth
But choose direction

Who bring what is willed
That you blow love
upon the summers of my loved ones
That you blow summers
upon those loves of my love


Aid me and I will aid you

I make a pact with you

You who are the liquid
Of the waters
And the spark of the flame:

I call upon you

You who make fertile the soft earth
And guard the growth of the growing things
I make peace with you

You who are the blueness of the blue sky
And the wrath of the storm
I take the cup with you

Earth shakers

And with you
the sharp and the hollow hills
I make reverence to you

Round wakefulness 

We call the Earth

I make wide eyes to you

You who are awake

Every created thing
both solid and sleepy
Or airy light,
I weave colors 'round you

You who will come with me

I will consider it Beauty

I will consider it

Beauty, beauty

by Robin Williamson 

Published by  WARLOCK MUSIC, LTD.

https://youtu.be/7xvIDX9gKhg

"Invocation for Mabon" by Robin Williamson

Brushwood 2016 by Theresa Guzman

The Equinox approaches, the bright and darkening liminal day of Balance.  I thought this morning of this poem by the wonderful Scottish Bard Robin Williamson, as I also remembered so many sweet memories of Fall back east, moonlight in Vermont, fallen apples in rural New York, drinking mead with friends as we celebrated Mabon.  

One of my first ritual performances was an event devoted to the Great Mother, organized by my friend Farusha, in New York City.  It took place in a "black box" theatre in the East Village, but what I brought to share with the audience was a basket of apples I found lying in the green grass around an apple tree in upstate, rural New York.  To see those fallen apples was the utter truth of the great Generosity of Gaia, of our Mother Earth, always given.  After I finished my performance I told the story of the apples I gathered, and offered them.   I expected very few of that sophisticated urban audience would take any - to my great surprise, they took every one, and ate them right there in the theatre.

There was a time when humans thought of themselves as part of the Community of life - when they negotiated with the animals and the elementals, when they listened to the voices of the trees and the medicine plants, when they thanked the buffalo for their sacrifice, when they joined in the great Song of life, a part of the chorus.  We urgently must reclaim this en-chanted paradigm, and I feel Robin Williamson's beautiful poem so fully captures that vision.

With great gratitude, may the Day of Balance bring Balance into all our lives.

You that create the diversity of the forms:

Open to my words
You that divide it and multiply it

Hear my sounds

Ancient associates and fellow wanderers
You that move the heart in fur and scale

I join with you

You that sing bright and subtle
Making shapes 
that my throat cannot tell

You that harden the horn
And make quick the eye

You that run the fast fox 
and the zigzag fly

You sizeless makers of the mole
And of the whale:  aid me and I will aid you

You that lift the blossom
and the green branch
You who make symmetries more true

Who dance in slower time

Who watch the patterns

You rough coated
Who eat water

Who stretch deep and high
With your green blood
My red blood 

let it be mingled

Aid me and I will aid you

I call upon you

You who are unconfined
Who have no shape
Who are not seen

But only in your action
I will call upon you

You who have no depth
But choose direction

Who bring what is willed
That you blow love
upon the summers of my loved ones
That you blow summers
 upon those loves of my love


Aid me and I will aid you

I make a pact with you

You who are the liquid
Of the waters
And the spark of the flame:

I call upon you

You who make fertile the soft earth
And guard the growth of the growing things
I make peace with you

You who are the blueness of the blue sky
And the wrath of the storm
I take the cup with you

Earth shakers

And with you
the sharp and the hollow hills
I make reverence to you

Round wakefulness 

We call the Earth

I make wide eyes to you

You who are awake

Every created thing
both solid and sleepy
Or airy light,
I weave colors 'round you

You who will come with me

I will consider it Beauty

I will consider it

Beauty, beauty

by Robin Williamson 

Published by  WARLOCK MUSIC, LTD.

https://youtu.be/7xvIDX9gKhg