Family Herb Corner

Rituals of Autumn

Autumn is Here!

Equinox day is the official start. (This year it arrives at 9:51 a.m. GMT on Sept. 23.) Summer days of bountiful enthusiasm are over and all too soon winter days of quiet reflection will arrive. Now is the time to seek some balance and harmony in our lives. Balance permeates the season. Astronomically there are equal hours of light and darkness. The sun rises due east and sets due west and is in the constellation Libra, symbolized by a balanced set of scales. Good and evil spirits lurk about and vie with each other for our attention.

Like the Spring Equinox and Summer and Winter Solstices, we have a legacy of autumnal legends, ceremonies, and rituals from just about every culture. Many of our religious feast days and secular customs are deeply entwined with the earth-based traditions of our ancient agrarian ancestors.

Autumn is harvest festival time. Our ancestors commemorated three days. August 1st, the peak of the harvest, was the first, and for the Celts was the start of Fall. This feast honors the god of sun and plenitude and celebrates the richness of the harvest, cutting the first grain, and baking the first loaf from the year’s new crop. The second was the Fall Equinox, called Harvest Home by some traditions, and celebrates the fading of summer light and the spirit of the fallow fields, now trapped in the grain. November 1st was the third. (It actually began after dark on Oct. 31.) It’s called Samhain (pronounced Sow-en) by the Celts, honors ancestors and the dead, and is the beginning of winter and the Celtic new year.

Autumn is a time to celebrate!

Celebrating Autumn

Let’s begin celebrating Fall by connecting with Mother Earth. Go outside with your kids. Use your senses. Can you feel a difference in the air? Do the clouds look different? Are the colors different? What about scents? Sounds? What’s going on in your garden? Dig up a bit of soil or turn the compost pile. What critters are at home there? What are they doing? Go on a family excursion into the woods. Open your mind and senses. Drink in the sights, smells, sounds of the Fall forest. Remember our key word, “Imagination?” It certainly was the force behind folklore handed down to us. Fall provides a great opportunity for everyone in the family to make up stories about nature experiences that can become part of your family’s folklore legacy. Write them down in your family journal. And then let’s ponder a few autumn icons.

–M. Jane Toth

Next: Pumpkins

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