Musings on the Equinoxes

     In the ancient saga The Voyage of Melduin, the sailors come to a strange island divided in half by a fence. On one side of the fence all the sheep are white and on the other side all the sheep are black.
     But the strangest thing of all was demonstrated by the shepherd of the island: he picked up a white sheep and threw it over the fence so that it was in with the black sheep, and immediately its hooves touched the ground the sheep turned black. To prove this was not a fluke, the shepherd then took one of the black sheep and led it through the gate into the white sheep half, and as he did so the sheep turned as snow white as all the rest.

     This is a real demonstration that nothing is 'black or white', it very often depends on where you are standing and what your view of the situation is.

     The Equinoxes are times when as Pagans we are very aware of the nature of dark and light. Equinox literally means 'Equal-night' when the length of day and night are exactly the same, but in the Autumn the darkness is growing, while in Spring it is the light which is advancing.

     Of course, this is not a one way street, as the darkness grows and strengthens each day from the Autumn Equinox until the Winter Solstice, the light grows less, the length of the daylight shortening as the nights lengthen.

     The Autumn Equinox is also a time of celebration as most of the harvests have been gathered in, so now we give thanks for our stores of food to see us through the Winter. Of course these days, to many of us in the Western world, the harvest is not even noticed as we are so far removed from food production. We don't think of the farmers watching the weather anxiously while they wait for a run of dry days to harvest the grain which will be milled into flour for the loaves we casually buy at the supermarket and toss into the rubbish bin, half eaten.
     We don't understand that those sanitised packages of meat came from living, breathing animals - or we would rather not think about it.
     Only if you have prepared meat from an animal which you have had to skin or pluck do you have some understanding of how lucky we are to be able to have whatever meat, fruit and vegetables our hearts desire.
     In many parts of the world people are not so lucky.

     This year Graham has taken up home brewing once more. This was something we used to do regularly, years ago, but we got too busy to fit it in, so all the home brew gear was disposed of. Now we are once more in production, Graham has been collecting fruit from the local woods and hedgerows and is brewing up an Autumn Wine, composed of elder berries, blackberries, rosehips and apples.
     The wine will be used to celebrate the bounty of the Earth, and will keep the blessings of the Equinox in our minds whenever we drink it.
     I am hoping that the wine will be ready for Yule. Graham remarked 'You didn't say which Yule did you?'

     Of course we are not saying that everyone has to go and pick wild fruit and make their own wine. All we are saying is: take the time to think about the blessings we all take for granted.

    We all have our own harvests, whether it is a new baby or a promotion at work, or the mastering of a musical instrument, or a new cake recipe, they do not always come to fruition around the Autumn Equinox, but now is a perfect time to thank your deities for helping you with them.

The Power of the Equinoxes

     The Equinoxes are usually thought of as times of balance. A time when the powers of light and darkness are equal, and thus a moment of harmony within the cycle of the turning year.

     At the point of the Equinoxes the length of day and night are equal.This is easily depicted as an old fashioned balance scale, the symbol of Libra (Sept 23-Oct 22) with the two pans of the balance level.

     But a more accurate analogy might be the eye of a storm. When the 'eye' of a storm passes directly overhead, there is an eerie time of peace and calm before the storm moves on and hits with its full force again.

     The wheel of the year never ceases its turning, it is constantly and perpetually in movement. If you consult an astrological ephemeris you will see that there are precise times given for the Equinoxes (and Solstices too). So rather than being thought of as times of balance, it might be more accurate to think of the Equinoxes as times of dynamic change.

     They are certainly times which are known as 'cracks between the worlds', special times of magical energy, but they are times when the emphasis or direction of those energies undergoes fundamental change.

     At the Autumn Equinox suddenly the emphasis of the energy changes from more-light-than-dark to more-dark-than-light.

     Coming up to the Equinox you can almost see this change happening every day. Each day the sun rises later and sets earlier. Each day the darkness lingers longer in the morning and closes in more quickly in the evening.

     If you are tuned in to these magical currents, as most magical practitioners are, you can feel the rising of the dark energies.

     By the way NEVER get into the mind set of light = good, dark = evil. These energies are Yin and Yang, you can't have one without the other. It is always what you do with those energies that is important. You might as well say electricity = good, magnetism = evil. They are just energies.

     BUT to a magical practitioner, often the energies of the dark half of the year are more useful and more powerful.