The Harvest Moon, High Harvest Season, and Mabon

The first hints of cooler days ahead bless my early mornings and late evenings in the Witch\’s Garden. I\’m moving slower these days, but steadily, which feels in line with this slow turning of the seasons. As with the spring season, we\’re near the balance point of the equinox, where day and night have the same length. As with the spring equinox, there\’s a sense of turbulence and tension on the wind, between blazing summer and spooky season, between the restful time ahead and the work that needs to be done now. As children\’s book author and friend Cassie Brooks phrased it in a Facebook post on Mabon:

As I reflect on this time of balance, I\’m thinking about what sparks that light inside of us. It\’s an unseen force that drives us, that inspires us, that motivates us to continue on in the things that we are pursuing. There are seasons we go through where stress and fear and busyness threaten to overwhelm us and put out that light inside us.

So what do you do when you feel like you\’re losing your light?

You find the connection in the world around you. Connection is ultimately what sparks that light. It ignites us from the inside out. It\’s what gives us that fire and passion to pursue those things in our world and in our life. It\’s what drives us forward. If you keep looking back, you won\’t find it.

As we enter into the shorter days and longer nights ahead, it\’s important that we take a moment to recognize those things will help will keep that fire inside of us alive. Don\’t let your light die out. Nurture it. The world needs your magick, and so do you.

Reminders:

• Please bring back your cloth bags with the name tag attached, so we know that you returned your bag. Each customer gets two bags for the year – one to pick up full of goodies, and one to return empty so that we can refill it for you next month. The cycle continues until the end of the year, when you can choose whether to keep both bags, one bag, or return them both for us to recycle next year. Right now we’re using a lot of paper. We’ll try to reset next month with more cloth bags, but we won’t be replacing them again this year.
• We will also re-use any glass, metal, or packing materials you return. Please help us keep costs down by letting us reuse as much as possible.
• If you have any trouble with the form, the blog, or the website, please let us know so that we can iron out any kinks.

Password Update

The password for the site is now:

TakeTheKnife

On the night of Saturday September 23, this will become:

KeyFliesIn

As always, the password is based on S.J. Tucker’s lyrics, this time from the song “September\’s Rhyme,” off the album \”Wonders\”. That album pairs so beautifully (and purposefully) with the book The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making and the related series by Catherynne Valente. Both stand alone and are brilliant works of art, but man – they take it to another level together. You can listen to (and purchase) this haunting single on Bandcamp. For all the Soojy goodness the interwebs can hold visit https://linktr.ee/sjtuckermusic.

Mabon: High Harvest

As we near the end of summer, The Wheel of the Year turns to the harvest season. Out here, meadow grasses go to seed and begin to dry. Corn is nearly ready to harvest and will be around the time of this full moon. The woods feel cooler. Every morning, the world glistens with dew. This is the time of the Harvest. In our part of the world, depending on when first frost hits, we may continue getting figs, tomatoes, or even okra into October, but those are the last fruits of the field we\’ll see this year. This is the height of the season\’s activity. As the restful energy of summer\’s sticky heat still encourages us to go slow and begin the long rest of winter, our work must reach a peak – picking, canning, freezing, and preserving the work of our year.

The Harvest Moon

We start to get the first tastes of cooler mornings and evenings here in the mid-south, but it\’s still So Hot to be thinking about fall. Still, the blooming of the goldenrod signals the glorious shift from blazing summer to spooky season – the color palette starts to shift to autumn tones and summer has its last hurrah.

The Celtic Tree Calendar

A tradition of some Celtic pagan paths, most likely arising in the 1800s but based on the historically ancient ogham writing system, relates a tree species to each lunar month. This month’s lunar correspondence is with the vine, as fall moves in and the leaves of deciduous trees begin to fade. Our grapevine, morning glory (bindweed) and honeysuckle vine are tenacious and at the height of their spread. Honeysuckle and blue morning glory are still growing and flowering late in the season, as grapevine – the strong one, the wild one, the biggest vine, with the tenacity of the deep forest and the oldest symbolism of the harvest – puts on its wild grapes. We pull vine this time of year to make wreaths, and use grapevine as stays for big baskets.

Seasonal Balance

This month\’s items work with the light and dark, the fullness of harvest and the desire to protect ourselves from the coming cold. We are ready to rest, feeling the desire to tuck in in front of a fire with hot chocolate or mulled mead – but there is still the most precious work to be done. We must mix intentional self care with steady work to reach the finish line. This is also the energy of Tarot\’s 10 of Wands – you are in the home stretch, finishing the task and the cycle, but weighed down with the work of plenty. This balance is the essence of Mabon and the Autumn Equinox.

Your Delivery, and Using Your Items

Everything in your box is yours to do with as you please. I don’t put together “spell kits” or provide rituals for you – you have your own path to walk, and I have mine. Instead I try to provide you with items to use in your own practice, sharing some of my own plans and ideas as inspiration. Legalese, because it’s an important thing sometimes: By using these items, you acknowledge that YOU are responsible for any and all outcomes, including any allergic reactions, and not me or The Witch’s Garden. Know thyself, witch.

So what’s in the box?

This month’s box includes a balance of fall goodies to celebrate the spirit of the equinox. Spiraling from middle/top center, deosil (clockwise): Wreath spell kit – honeysuckle wreath, sedum, decorative grasses, dried goldenrod; Protection kit – acorn, Job\’s Tears, pendant at bottom; Fire Cider – apple cider vinegar, cayenne pepper, garlic, jalapeno pepper, onion, turmeric, fresh orange slices, ginger, honey, infused and strained; fresh goldenrod; fresh apples; pendant from protection kit; Tea bag – evening primrose and oregano tea.

Wreath Spell Kit – honeysuckle wreath, twine, assorted dried fall grasses/flowers and their correspondences. Decorate your wreath with the flowers, using the provided twine in a spiral wrap to hold the flowers in place. Choose from the assorted items and correspondences below or use them all.

• Sedum – white/pink succulent with thick leaves – protection, personal growth and resilience; these plants grow well in tough conditions and are tenacious.
• Goldenrod – yellow flower – healing a broken spirit, balancing and centering in grief or shadow work, money drawing and prosperity; this brilliant fall bloomer heralds the harvest season and the turning of the year… and is a healing tonic for body and soul.
• Decorative grasses – golden grass for money drawing, pink/purple for drawing magick, love (for Brighid\’s sake use your common sense here) or wonder into our lives. Seeded grass for fruition of goals or manifestation.
• Smartweed – pink seeds/white seeds on a grass stalk. These are excellent for banishing work. The seed is our best local pepper substitute, and a little goes a long way. Also an excellent source of power for speeding spellwork on its way.

Build your spell around your desires, choosing which dried flowers/grasses to use to decorate your wreath. Do this under the waxing moon for drawing, under the full harvest moon for full fruition, or under the waning moon for banishing/binding. You can also choose to tie your chosen items to your wreath with a certain number of knots using numerology to add an element of knot magick to your working.

If you\’re drawing something to you, perform on the waxing moon for added \’ooomph\’. Leave it on your altar until the full moon and then hang in your home in an active area – your craft space, your kitchen, your family room. For fruition of long-laid plans or goals, work on the full moon and leave it on your altar for a full moon cycle until the next full moon, then hang it over your most-used door or in the \”prosperity\” corner of any room – the far right corner from the most-used doorway of any room according to Feng Shui. For banishing, binding, or protection, work on the waning moon and drop into running water somewhere away from your home. Everything in this kit is biodegradable, so this is a planet-friendly option for releasing into open water.

Protection Kit – As we prepare to move into the winter and the \”darker\” time of the year, this is an excellent time for work in protection of home, family and self. Your kit has in it an acorn, Jacob\’s Tears, and a pendant made by Raine LaMee.

• • Acorn – carrying an acorn in your pocket or purse is thought to bring good luck and longevity, as with the tree from which it fell. To actively protect oneself, balance \”wall\” type wards and protections with the remembrance of what you want to draw to you.
  • Job\’s Tears – Job\’s tears are the seeds of an ornamental grass. Found in archaeological sites dating back to at least 1000 BC, these seeds have a long-standing use as beads or charms when dried. Aromag\’s Botanica has an excellent article on their traditional and folk uses. Keep on your altar as a symbol of fall, full harvest, perseverance in the face of adversity, and the protective power of the earth. To ward against illnesses of the head, neck, throat, and respiratory tract, use a needle to pierce these and string them as beads, and wear around your neck. Carry them in your purse or wallet to protect against poverty and bring good luck.
  • Pendant – filled with one of Elm\’s protection blends – cedar, rosemary, sage, and bay. The star charm is made of the protective superstar hematite, and the black bead (a traditionally protective color) is obsidian, a volcanic glass with strong ties to the warding energy of earth and fire.

Use this in ritual as you please, then carry the beads and pendant on your person and keep the acorn on your altar throughout the fall, as a symbol that the Oak King and the light of Spring will return in their time.

Fire Cider – A classic fall tonic first popularized by Rosemary Gladstar, who is a lifelong dedicated herbalist and recently published Fire Cider!, a book of variations on her classic fire cider tonic.

Fire cider is the bottled spirit of Mabon. This is the time to harvest roots, when they have grown and stored the energy of the season and most flowers are spent. This is apple season, and when hot peppers come in in full force. Garlic and horseradish, harvested in July and dried, then crushed and chopped, are mixed with honey from our bees, fresh onion and ginger root, and a mix of fresh and dried hot peppers. Citrus (we used oranges) and spices (turmeric, cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice) are added both for their healing/anti-inflammatory properties and to help extend the shelf life of the blend.

Raw apple cider vinegar, which includes naturally-occurring yeasts that haven\’t been strained out, are poured over the blend and steeped for at least 6 weeks. Once strained, we\’ve added processed apple cider vinegar that *will not* have fresh yeast, and kept some of the turmeric and spice in each individual bottle, to prioritize preservation and extend the shelf life of your fire cider. You can keep in the refrigerator for long term storage (up to a year, as long as there\’s no visible evidence of mold), or keep at room temperature if you intend to use it within a month.

Use your fire cider to stimulate digestion, warm the body, and jumpstart the immune system against fall colds. You can take a shot in the morning to help start your day with a kick, mix a tablespoon with other vegetable juices as a drink, pour into water to dilute the flavor before drinking, or even drizzle a little over a salad with good olive oil. I used a variation on the recipe published by Rose Mountain Herbs here.

Fresh Goldenrod – vibrant yellow and the queen of fall foliage, goldenrod can be used in myriad ways. A symbol of the season, keep in water and place on your altar as long as it stays fresh – or leave off the water and allow it to dry on your altar through the full moon. The dried flowers will last for years if covered and cared for in storage.

You can also create a witch\’s besom once dried – you can find pictures online for inspiration. If you\’re in an urban environment, a dowel from any home improvement store can work as your broom handle. If you have access to a forested environment, any branch or wood that speaks to you, either through shape or the correspondences of particular woods, can work as a broom handle. Either glue on dried goldenrod or use kitchen twine to bind it to your handle. You can add any of the decorative grasses/flowers from your wreath kit, any other herbs you\’ve dried this year, or items from a craft store, or keep it plain. Goldenrod is a fall staple, bringing calm and healing to the home when placed over doorways. Hang your broom over an external door (on the inside, out of the elements) to encourage peace and health for those who enter, or over an internal room that may need an infusion of peace and ease – such as your craft space, a living area used by the whole family, or a bedroom.

If you like making your own medicines, goldenrod makes an excellent fall tincture or tea. For tea, mix one tablespoon of fresh herb or one teaspoon of dried with enough water to fill your mug. Let steep and drink at least once daily, more if needed. For tincture, fill a glass container and cover with high-proof alcohol. Steep for at least a month, shaking daily (or as often as you can remember) and then strain. Use a few drops in water or tea when needed – daily for allergies. Start light, and experiment to find the dose that works best for you. In addition to being anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial, and helpful in moving lymph through the body, goldenrod is a remedy for seasonal allergies, blooming at the same time as the ragweed that can cause so much suffering and sniffling.

Fresh Apples – Apples are sacred fruit, associated with ripening, fullness, and beauty. The are also associated with the Mysteries of Avalon in some varieties of paganism. Cut across the mid-section of the apple, cutting through the core, and you\’ll find a five-pointed star or pentagram – symbol of magick, protection, and the elements. They are also associated with tipping points: Think of Eve, the serpent, and the tree; or of Athena and the golden apple introduced by Eris/Discordia, Greek goddess of disharmony; or basically any time an apple is picked from a tree in an orchard in fairy tales. There is also Pomona, the uniquely Roman goddess of fruiting trees. Apples, symbols of knowledge, imply the consequences of that knowledge.

These are organic apples grown in our orchard, from trees planted by hand over the last decade. They will have spots. Any localized bad spots can be cut off, but we\’ve hand-selected the best of the last harvest for you. These were picked by hand at dusk, with the crescent moon in the sky and the sun just at the horizon, during the waxing crescent moon. Picking these for you was a beautiful, solitary experience for me, ending with thanking the trees and blessing the orchard for its coming sleep as the harvest season came to a close.

Evening Primrose and Oregano Tea – Together, these two herbs can help fight off the pain and symptoms of the common colds and minor infections that can plague us during fall. This isn\’t a replacement for a doctor\’s care if you have a major infection, but try it if you\’re suffering the irritating symptoms of the common cold. If you\’re around young kids who have gone back to school, you know what I\’m talking about. This tea is for you, not your kids. Not recommended for those under 18.

• • Evening Primrose: Edible and medicinal, I harvest our common evening primrose early in the morning, among the late summer/early fall dew, before its blossoms close. Also known as fever plant or cure-all, it\’s a central element of an apothecary but must be cared for and tended so that it doesn\’t take over a garden space. A source of gamma-linoleic acid, (GLA, an omega-6 fatty acid), Evening Primrose is a recognized by the medical community as a pain reliever for intractable cases like multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis, and is also used for troublesome skin conditions like psoriasis.  Contraindications: Do not use this tea – or any evening primrose – if you have a blood disorder or use blood thinner medications, if you\’re within 2 weeks of having surgery, or if you have epilepsy or schizophrenia.

• • Oregano: A well-known culinary herb, oregano also has multiple uses in herbal medicine, as well as magickal correspondences. Oregano can help to reduce cough, as well as fighting off both bacterial and viral infections. Contraindications: Do not use this tea – or any medicinal oregano – if you have allergic issues with basil, hyssop, lavender, marjoram, mint, and sage (in the Lamaciae family of plants), or if you\’re within 2 weeks of having surgery. Like evening primrose, oregano can increase the risk of bleeding in large doses.

Make it Your Own

If you want to use your items in ritual, here\’s a suggested order of things… but your rit, your rules: Dress your altar with the fresh goldenrod in a vase, with or without water, and other ritual items as you prefer. Call your circle if that\’s a thing you do. Begin by cleansing an apple, the acorn, Jacob\’s tears, and pendant in the smoke of incense or by passing over selenite, and offer them (or at least the acorn) to your deities. Do the same with your goldenrod if you intend to dry and keep it, or make your broom/besom as part of a full moon ritual. Continue with your wreath/cord working.

If you have property or a space to bury a finished spell, cut an apple crosswise. Write your intention to bless your home on paper. Fold and stick the paper to the flesh of the apple with a whole clove. Press the apple closed around your paper and clove, and tie it with twine or red thread.

Finish with a session of communication with the spirits of harvest or your deities, however that best appears to you. That may be meditation, scrying, runes, oracle cards, tarot, or other divination that sings to you. Share food and drink (your other apple and fire cider in your favorite preparation?) with others gathered with you or symbolically with the God(s) you\’re working with. Close your circle and thank your deities. If you used the apple spell suggested, bury the apple on your property, near your most-used door if possible, as a fall blessing on hearth and home.

As Cassie said, \”May you be blessed and find balance that you can carry with you in the months ahead.\”

Happy Mabon, beloveds. May Mystery and Divinity find you everywhere you go. Blessed Be.