TWV Presents...



Popular Pagan Holidays

[Show all]

Views: 7,924,875
Holiday: ...
 Well, You Don’t Celebrate Christmas...
 Autumn: The Croning Time
 Daily Goddess Awareness
 Imbolc: Traditional Celebrations for a Modern Time
 Samhain: A Time for Introspection---and Activism
 Anti-Witch Bigotry: Still As Popular and Deadly As Ever
 The Dark Half of the Year
 The Halloween Witch: Sense of Humor or Sense of Ire
 Ah...To Be A Witch...
 Traditional Yule: Make your Own Homebrewed Mead
 Winter Solstice By Any Other Name
 The Beltaine Storm
 Spiritual Aspects of Yule
 Yule and the New Year
 Lughnasa: Festival of the Harvest (A Druid's Perspective)
 Lughnasadh: The Deeper Meaning
 A Celtic View of Samhain
 A Meditation on Samhain: How Lucky You Are.
 The Solstice Flame: A Yule Story
 Alicia Meets Grandmother Autumn: A Children’s Story
 Witches Lost in Halloween
 Samhain and the 'Witch Questions'
 Winter: A Joyous Holiday Season
 The Best Thing About Death
 A Summer Solstice Primer
 Imbolc...or As The Wheel Turns
 A Story For Autumn
 Thanksgiving Memories of a Native American Witch
 The Samhain Experience
 Imbolg - A Lesson of Positive Change
 A Yule Story for Children ~ The Tiniest Fairy ~
 Bealtine: Blessing the Summer In
 Imbolc Musings: We're All Broken
 The Summer Solstice: A Time for Awakening
 Mabon..Balance and Reflection
 Yuletide Thoughts, Life and Death
 At Samhain, Meet Bilé, God of the Dead of Ireland and the Danu, the All -Mother
 Brighid's Healing Sword: Imbolc
 The Blood is in the Land
 Parting the Veils and Opening to Ancestral Wisdom
 Lascivious Lupercalia: Why Valentine's is a Vital Pagan Holy Day for the Modern World
 Yules Lessons from Days of Yore: Perfect Love, Perfect Trust
 "The Horn of Plenty": A Pathworking for Lammas
 Lammas: The Sacrificial Harvest
 The Call of the Crone
 Sandy Was The Name Of the Dark Goddess This Samhain
 Opening to the Anima Mundi – The Gift of the Equinox
 Thanksgiving Memories of a Native American
 The Light Within the Shadow of the Winter Solstice
 The Serpent's Kiss: Beltane's Fire
 Back to Basics: Imbolc
 The Lover's Flame-Beltane
 Parting the Veils of Beltane's Quickening
 Ode to Ostara
 Yule-Tide Reflections
 Gaia's Mantle:The Greening of the Earth
 Beltane and Samhain: Reflections of Life and Death
 The Maiden's Breath: The Vernal Equinox
 The Light of the Harvest: Lammas
 Flashbrewing: Traditional Yule Ginger Beer/Ale
 Ole Old-As-The-Hills (A Yule Story)
 Anthesteria, the Hellenic "Samhain"
 The Hermit's Light: Celebrating the Autumnal Equinox
 The Gift of Yule: An Illuminated Wheel
 The Quickening Wheel: Imbolc
 Observations for a MidSummer's Eve
 Mother's Flowering-The Summer Solstice
 Are Holiday Decorations and Spending A Cloak for Guilt?
 The Meeting at the Crossroads-Samhain
 Reconsidering a Historical Eostre
 A Samhain Selfie
 New Years' Resolutions for Witches

Holiday: All ...
 We Want them Back! (A Pagan View of the Holidays)
 Turning The Wheel By Choice

Holiday: beltaine ...
 Beltane -- Holiday Details and History
 INDEX: Beltane
 You Call it May Day, We Call it Beltane
 Beltane -- Enlightening Links
 Beltaine - Our May Morn
 Beltane: Return To Feeling

NOTE: For a complete list of articles related to this chapter... Visit the Main Index FOR this section.
|
|  |


Article Specs

Article ID: 14176

VoxAcct: 301577

Section: holidays

Age Group: Adult

Days Up: 3,367
Times Read: 6,410

RSS Views: 14,248
| Mabon..Balance and Reflection

Author: Morbek
Posted: September 26th. 2010
Times Viewed: 6,410
Close your eyes and picture this: You are sitting outside on a late summer evening. The very warm air is suddenly heavy with humidity and it’s not moving at all. The leaves on the trees don’t move, not a blade of grass stirs and there is no break in the quiet of the evening. The birds are still, the crickets and frogs suddenly have become quiet and you realize the thick, impenetrable lack of sound. Looking to the sky, you see that the sun has just set but it is still daylight enough to read by. This is twilight, the balance between day and night. It is the world in a perfect, relaxed state of being. And so it is with Mabon.
Mabon is the balance between summer and winter. The harsh heat of the latest season is gone and the bitter cold of winter hasn’t arrived. The earth is stopping her hectic cycles to take a deep breath and relax. Our ancestors celebrated this Sabbat as the second harvest. It was a time of apples, grapes, grain, wine and merriment. The God is preparing to die and the Goddess is moving from mother to crone…more on that later as it plays significantly in our perception of this Sabbat. Mabon is the autumnal equinox when day and night are equal spans of time. We tend to notice it more acutely than we do the vernal equinox because light and warmth are going away, not moving toward us.
So, what does yet another harvest festival have to do with our daily lives in the twenty first century? LOTS! Mabon is also known as harvest home and is celebrated in an “all out” fashion. The largest feasts, the most wine and beer, the best clothes on our backs and the best entertainment available are all facets of this holiday. Does that sound familiar? It does if you are at all familiar with October-fest in any of its incarnations. Once again, remnants of the old religions have survived into modern times and, I believe, that is wonderful.
The stags of the forests are bearing their crowns of antlers telling us that, with dignity, there will be another generation of wild animals willing to help us survive. If you look at a majestic stag, you can see the balance of male and female symbols as, more often than not, his antlers form a crescent moon shape. Although, it is only in the rutting season that this is obvious. You have the juxtaposition of the virile male who is ready to mate with anything against the sweet softness of the moon that shines forth her beauty freely. These symbols are in balance and that is one of the major themes of Mabon.
Balance is so important because the earth is about to make an abrupt change in the seasons. Just as summer can arrive quickly (though we appreciate that change) , it seems winter arrives with a sudden crash. Our lives change in response to the waning days, children return to school, which gives us a whole new schedule, the times we leave for work may change because of weather conditions and even our wardrobe changes in response to the lessening light. Mabon is a moment in which we can allow ourselves to become ready for the changes by becoming spiritually balanced. Just as the leaves on the trees change from green to reds and gold, our day-to-day lives will drastically change. If we achieve balance before the changes then we will allow them to flow around us with ease.
Just as the darkness begins to overtake the light, the goddess moves to the final stage of her life, that of the Crone. She is no longer responsible for her offspring and is achieving a momentary freedom from that responsibility. This freedom only lasts a moment, however, because she realizes that she is now among ‘the wise women” and her responsibility is to the community as a whole. She is also entering into the final days of her life. Just as the light is leaving, so is she.
Mabon is a time of mysteries. The Goddess has stopped her fertility cycle. Look at the fact that, to the ancients, this whole thing was very confusing in most cultures. How can women appear to bleed that often and not die? How does she bring forth life? Why does she stop bearing children when sexual activity doesn’t stop? I do not assume that pre-agrarian cultures were not intelligent enough to recognize these cycles as normal but imagine contemplating these mysteries without our benefit of extensive knowledge of biology! It must have blown minds. The mystery aspects of Mabon are ancient and probably have been passed down from peoples that weren’t even breeding animals yet so they were dealing with a zero knowledge base! No wonder that the first deities were Goddesses!
The earth moves from very fertile to totally barren…so does the Goddess. We can be thankful though, that she is the loving Crone that watches over her children and grandchildren with tenderness and patience as she waits to become fertile once again so she can bear fruit. We must realize that there are times in our lives that are barren and learn from her to be patient, kind, understanding and loving while we wait for fruitfulness to arrive again so that we can go forth and be the agents of change instead of letting those changes just happen to us! There are many times in our lives that we must wait. The time of Mabon is a point at which we can meditate on the mysteries of life and come to understand ourselves so when it is time for us to wait, we understand it as normal and natural.
At this balance point in the year, one of the mysteries we can focus on is the equilibrium and the pause it can give us. We have much left to harvest in our lives. There is still a lot of work to be done. We are granted a time in the year to celebrate our hard work and what it has given us as well as to recognize that we need to stop and get ready for the coming changes…after life without change is, well, boring!
ABOUT...

Morbek
Location: Butte, Montana
 Author's Profile: To learn more about Morbek - Click HERE

Other Articles: Morbek has posted 3 additional articles- View them?
 Other Listings: To view ALL of my listings: Click HERE

Email Morbek... (No, I have NOT opted to receive Pagan Invites! Please do NOT send me anonymous invites to groups, sales and events.)

|
|
Web Site Content (including: text - graphics - html - look & feel)
Copyright 1997-2019 The Witches' Voice Inc. All rights reserved
Note: Authors & Artists retain the copyright for their work(s) on this website.
Unauthorized reproduction without prior permission is a violation of copyright laws.
Website structure, evolution and php coding by Fritz Jung on a Macintosh.
Any and all personal political opinions expressed in the public listing sections
(including, but not restricted to, personals, events, groups, shops, Wren’s Nest, etc.)
are solely those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinion of The Witches’ Voice, Inc.
TWV is a nonprofit, nonpartisan educational organization.
The Witches' Voice carries a 501(c)(3) certificate and a Federal Tax ID.
Mail Us: The Witches' Voice Inc., P.O. Box 341018, Tampa, Florida 33694-1018 U.S.A.
|  |
Witches, Pagans of The World



|


Current Topic
Editorial Guide
NOTE: The essay on this page contains the writings and opinions of the listed author(s) and is not necessarily shared or endorsed by the Witches' Voice inc.
The Witches' Voice does not verify or attest to the historical accuracy contained in the content of this essay.
All WitchVox essays contain a valid email address, feel free to send your comments, thoughts or concerns directly to the listed author(s).
|
|