Autumnal Equinox
Click to viewA cold fall wind blew over the Divide and through the valley yesterday, continually and briskly, dipping overnight temperatures down to 36 degrees-- almost freezing. It is clear and chilly this morning at about 40 F. For once, the sun cycle and the weather agree: Fall is here!
This is Autumnal Equinox, Harvest Home. The celebration of the fullness of the year's crops. A friend delivered a bounty of zucchini, yellow squash, tomato, and peppers yesterday. Bless him! Yesterday my wife made a beautiful buffalo roast, with the season's vegetables, and a homemade pie of blackberries and blueberries :-P~~ And of course ripe plums from my sister's tree!
To Celtic-inspired neopagan paths such as Wicca, this turn of the Wheel of the Year is popularly called "Mabon" (after the divine child Mabon ap Modron), the second of the three harvest festivals formalized in the 1970s:
-Lammas (Lughnasadh), when the first wheat of the year is baked into the first loaves, and it is the end of the heart of summer...
-Mabon, when the harvest is at its height and fullness, fall rushes in, and the cold/dark half of the Sun's journey begins...
-Samhain (Halloween), when the last of the harvest is gathered, livestock are slaughtered for winter, and the Dead return to Earth for a visit.
The Celtic Druidry folks know it as "Alban Elued," "The Light of the Sea," named for the Sun's descent in Ireland and the British Isles into the western Sea (the Atlantic). This is when the life that poured into the Earth in the Spring flows outward again in the fruits of the Earth.
To the Germanic-Norse worlds, it is Skeidentimanod, "Closing of Summer" (Irminic/Germanic), Winterfinding for Asatruar, or just plain old "Harvest Home" for German-Americans and Anglo Saxons.
We Ioways called this time of year, Nato Xwanyi, "the Leaves Fall."
Here in Montana, none of the tribes were agricultural so they did not mark the solstices or equinoxes to the degree agricultural peoples did.
For the Blackfeet, fall was a time of great activity in preparation for the coming winter.
At the time when "leaves are yellow and the time of first frost" the chief would announce that it was time to move to where the choke-cherries were ripe. The women would pick the fruit, then pound it with a stone maul, pits and all, and then dry it. This was usually mixed into soup or with pemmican. Bull berries, a favorite fruit, were ripe at the same time.
About the time "when the geese fly south" was the most important buffalo hunt of the year. The fall was also a time to go to the hills and mountains for lodge poles. While men were busy with their activities, the women processed meat and berries and made pemmican for the winter. Robes were also prepared for trade.
Once the white traders were established in Blackfeet country, the men hunted for wolves, badgers, skunks, antelopes, and buffalo at this time of year so they would have hides and pelts to trade. The trading fort was part of their seasonal round, and they all looked forward to the goods that would be acquired through trade." (http://www.trailtribes.org/greatfalls/camp-life-and-seasonal-round.htm)
Here in Montana, fall is hunting season. It is bowhunting season now but in a few weeks, rifle-hunting begins.
I look forward to going out to the hills with my father and brother in the next month or two, just to get out in the Land for a few days. I personally don't talk about particulars...it's an old belief among traditional hunting and fishing peoples not to "talk big" because you never know "who" might be listening...and nature doesn't like braggarts. All we are doing is going to "look around." If nature and our four-legged relatives take pity on me, I will be happy and thankful. If not, I will be happy and thankful anyways :-)
Tomorrow is the pivot of Autumnal Equinox, and we begin the cold/dark half of the year, when the Sun spends more than half the day in the Underworld (for those mythically-inclined) or below the Horizon (for those more scientifically-inclined)... get ready for the coming of Old Man Winter.
And now for some more of those yummy tomatoes and plums!