Autumnal Equinox ~ Mabon
The autumnal equinox occurs when the sun crosses the equator on its apparent journey southward, and we experience a day and a night that are of equal duration. Up until Mabon, the hours of daylight have been greater than the hours from dusk to dawn. But from now on, the reverse holds true.
Mabon marks the middle of harvest, and for the moment nature is in balance. It is a time to reap what you have sown, of giving thanks for the harvest and the bounty the Earth provides. For finishing up old projects and plans and planting the seeds for new enterprises or a change in lifestyle. Mabon is a time of celebration and balance.
This is the time to look back not just on the past year, but also your life, and to plan for the future. In the rhythm of the year, Mabon is a time of rest and celebration, after the hard work of gathering the crops. Warm autumn days are followed by chill nights, as the Old Sun God returns to the embrace of the Goddess.
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~Happy Fall Equinox~
September 22, 2014
Gather! Create your own circles of whatever size to celebrate this potent "acupuncture point" of perfect balance on Gaia's Turn of the Wheel!
As we sit in this moment of perfect balance of light and dark on Fall Equinox, recognize and celebrate that as the story of the chaotic appearance on the screen of life seems to be escalating, an equally compelling new story is arising. It is a lot of responsibility to recognize that we are the ones who are assisting in creating the outcome to this new story called "Awakening" on the screen of life. But what other position is there to take, capitulation to entropy? I don't think so. Recently, I read an excerpt from a book called The Gene Code by Richard Rudd that I feel brilliantly illuminates our position presently in this regard.
"To understand the true nature of the coming Awakening, one can find a beautiful parallel in the life cycle of the dragonfly. Dragonflies spend much of their early lives underwater. As underwater insects they are known as nymphs, and unlike most pond insects they do not have to come to the surface for air.
For most of their lives, nymphs live totally underwater, where they are highly successful predators, feeding on anything from leaf litter to small fish. During this stage of its life, the nymph goes through a series of molts, stages of maturity, in which it sheds its skin but still remains as a nymph. These stages of the insect's life can last several years, and during this time it has no idea whatsoever of what kind of future lies ahead. It is undergoing a series of hidden mutations. Then, one day, all of a sudden, some sleeping gene deep within is triggered and the nymph does something totally out of character, it finds the stalk of a nearby plant and climbs out of the water. For the first time in its life, it tastes air and direct sunlight.
Once the nymph has left the safety of its underwater environment, the sunlight begins to work on it, catalyzing what will be its final molt. It is at this stage that the true magic occurs, as the advanced creature hidden within the nymph cracks the outer larval skin. Over a period of several hours, four crumpled wings appear and the distinctive slender thorax begins to uncurl. What is of great metaphorical relevance at this stage concerns the element water. As the emerging dragonfly rises out of the element of water and prepares to be reborn into a new life in the element of air, the water that still lies within its body becomes the key to the transformation process. Through a process of hydraulics, the water within the nymphs body is pumped into the emerging wings and thorax, causing them to unfurl and spread out for the first time. In other words, the dragonfly assumes its aerodynamic shape by means of the water from its old life. This water is what drives its mutation from nymph to dragonfly. As soon as all the water is expended and the dragonfly is fully extended, it takes to the air and begins its new life.
The life cycle of the dragonfly is a perfect metaphor for the Awakening. Raw energy becomes the vehicle for the unfurling of your future awareness, and once that awareness is born, your life exists forever on a higher plane. This metaphor also shows us that as a species, we must dive deeply into the emotional field (of shadow) where we will go through a series of mutations of which we are generally unaware. As long as we exist in the world of emotions, we will have little inkling of the life that lies ahead of us. At present, in relation to the dragonfly metaphor, (collectively) we are in the stages of climbing up the stem out of the water and into the sunlight."
- Written by Ariel spilsbury