Its officially Libra Season! Happy Autumn Equinox everyone! Last year I wrote a blog for Ritual Shoppe about what this time symbolizes, rather than trying to find new words I decided to share what I wrote last year as well as a Mabon Ritual and Tarot Spread you can do this week to mark this powerful time. I hope you all enjoy!

Tarot Cards for the week:

The Chariot, Justice, Page of Wands, Ace of Swords, 2 of Swords, 3 of Swords, 5 of Swords, 10 of Swords

Sun enters Libra/Autumn Equinox

The pagan holiday that is celebrated during this time is called Mabon. Mabon was celebrated in ancient times to give thanks and celebrate the second harvest of food for the year.

This time also marks the in between period between summer and winter where we are acknowledging both the balance between the light and the dark, the inner and the outer worlds.

Libra represents harmony and balance and rules the 7th house of the zodiac. The 7th house represents relationships, whether romantic, or friendship, or business partnership. We tend to associate the 7th house primarily with romantic relationships as its planetary ruler is Venus.

Besides harmony and love, Libra also represents justice and balance. Keeping the scales even. Our balance between light and dark is a part of this balance and Libra season beginning at the Autumn Equinox helps us to focus on keeping that balance within.

We can look at “light and dark” in literal terms as we move from longer days of sunshine into longer nights with Winter approaching, but we can also look at the symbolic significance of the light and dark in a spiritual sense. Light representing our outer expression and activity in the world, and dark representing our inner expression and retreat from the world.

When we reach the Autumn Equinox, and Libra season, we are smack dab in the middle of this time, and a lot of us begin to feel seasonal depression creep in. We feel slow, and sluggish, while also feeling the need to capture the energy we had maybe at the end of Spring or the beginning of Summer. The year is coming to a close and we may feel the need to grasp onto the self we feel we are moving away from.

Some of us welcome change, and are ok logically with the idea of moving into a new self, but not all of us know how to use the Winter period in a constructive way. So although we can recognize this is a time to accept change, our ideas of wanting to maintain momentum and the same sense of self interfere with the cyclic nature of Winter, which is a time for letting go. It gets darker, colder out, and slower. We begin to want to eat comfort foods and nest in our cocoon. For some this is a time when weight gain and over sleeping is inevitable. And this alone can cause depression or like we are not keeping up with our momentum we had from Summer.

In Ayurvedic health, moving with the seasons is acknowledged as something we must do to stay healthy. Our diet should change with the seasons, as well as our habits. To put a heavy expectation on ourselves that we need to stay in the same consistent routine year round is unrealistic to the way the natural process of things in this planet takes place. Nothing stays the same forever, and acknowledging this balance as a part of the cycle is crucial to living a fulfilling life.

Autumn Equinox

Mabon Ritual

Supplies:

• Black Candle - represents the inner world ( Yin)

• White Candle - represents the outer world ( Yang )

• Orange or Yellow spell candles - represents Autumn and the harvest, abundance and bounty.

• Frankincense or Sandalwood Incense