Embrace the Fall Equinox
Embrace the Fall Equinox my friends,
The Fall Equinox is the second of the three major harvest festivals. The Celtic name is Mabon: the season of storing food and preserving nature’s bounty for the coming winter months. This year it will be on September 23rd just after midnight Pacific Time, when the Sun enters Libra. It comes one week before Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.
Equinox refers to balance, with day and night roughly equal (it is complete at the Equator). My good friend Amalya chose a theme for her Mabon Goddess Celebration: “I am Light, I am Shadow, I am whole,” and I’d like to elaborate.
Ancient cultures have many stories that tell of humans descending into darkness and returning to the light and just hearing the stories helped them cope with grief and other trauma in their own lives. Many ancient rituals enacted this experience of going through the dark and returning to the light. Those who chose to participate in them (the Eleusinian Mysteries for example) felt a powerful wholeness after their experience.
Carl Jung refers to this dark aspect of the self as the Shadow, those parts of ourselves that has been shoved just outside of our awareness because they are unacceptable and filled with traumatic memories. One of the primary goals for Shamanic work is to integrate this shadow into our sense of self, allowing us to choose our paths with full knowledge, self-acceptance and forgiveness. If you are interested in this work, please email me at lindasavagephd@goddesstherapy.com
The other theme of this time is CHANGE. The Equinox is a major transition from summer to fall and the time to prepare for winter. In current times we have changes in our bodies, the rapidly changing world, and changes causing planetary imbalance. Transition is not easy, as you may have experienced many times. I hope you will renew and continue your meditation, yoga, breath work and any other practices that will connect you to your core as well as to Source in whatever way you understand it.
May your hearts be filled with light, Linda