The cool down of Autumn have finally arrived and so has the peak of the harvest season. Fat pumpkins lay in fields, apple branches bend low with heavy yield and the Earth’s bounty overflows the garden and farm. This harvest begs to be enjoyed, but also preserved. Winter’s icy days draw near.
Technically speaking an equinox is a day when the Sun will spend an equal amount of time above and below the horizon. This happens twice a year, in Autumn and Spring. Autumn Equinox is the tipping point into the dark half of the year. Today we are also entering into the sunsign of Libra, her scales are a perfect echo of the light/dark balance of this equinox. Historically speaking, nearly every culture has some form of harvest festival, many celebrated still today.
Megalithic people of ancient Britain and Ireland obviously placed some kind of importance on both the solstices and equinoxes. Otherwise they would not have build stone structures like Stonehenge and Loughcrew Cairn to determine their dates. Their methods of celebrating these days has been long lost to history though.
The ancient Celts constructed a wickerman around this time of the year as well. It was ritually burned to represent the plant spirits returning to the earth to rest until Spring. An incarnation of this ancient idea has been reborn in recent years in the Burning Man Project, a yearly festival celebrated in the Autumn in Nevada. A giant wickerman is constructed and burned at the height of the week long festival.
The Mayans constructed a sacred pyramid called Chichen Itza, which acted in a similar way to the stone structures of the Megalithic people of Britain and Ireland. On the day of the Autumn Equinox a “serpent of light” descends the pyramid until it joins this a huge stone rattlesnake head at its base. (This serpent is actually seven isosceles triangles that are formed from the sunlight hitting the pyramid stairs.)
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I have recently reconnect with a couple people in my family. It feels really nice to touch base again, because one of these people has been someone I could always talk to about anything without fear of being mocked or the “I’m right and you’re wrong” debate. At the same time, this all is utterly nerve wracking.