Autumnal Equinox / Fall Equinox

Fall Equinox Reflections

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Overview

• The Spring and Fall Equinoxes are midpoints between the Summer and Winter Solstices.
• The word equinox comes from the Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night).
• At the Equinox, the tilt of the Earth’s axis is not inclined away nor toward the sun and the Earth’s two hemispheres receive the sun’s rays equally.
• All over the world at the Equinox, we experience approximately equal parts daylight and darkness.
• The Autumnal Equinox is considered the first day of Fall.
• Also called Mabon in the Wheel of Year, it falls between Lughnasadh and Samhain.

Readings

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GET OUTSIDE AND EXPERIENCE NATURE

Autumn and the equinox signal a time to open to and appreciate our blessings and bounty…. Let’s give some thanks for the inner rewards we may be starting to harvest and to look for how we will use these for good… If you can, get outside and experience nature this Equinox. Celebrate the turning colors, the deepening colors of the berries, the ripening seeds. Pick up a few treasures while you are walking to bring some bits of nature into your home – some leaves, a few acorns, some dried berries perhaps. Fill a basket or set up your own little home altar to honor the seasonal shift. – Sarah O’Leary

CELEBRATE THE POWER OF BALANCE

This is the time for long-term planning and nurturing. The seeds of ideas and the seeds of hope that we plant now will re-emerge in the Spring, strengthened and consolidated by their time in the dark and stabilized by their strong roots. It is time to celebrate the power of balance, to move beyond our old habits of polarity, the ‘us and them’ mentality which has led to war, misery and poverty. Now we seek inspiring new ways to bring harmony and equality into our lives and the world. Traditionally, this is the big harvest party of Summer’s end, a time to celebrate our achievements and give thanks for the Earth’s abundance. The active Earth dragon withdraws and takes the Fire into the dark inner realms, providing strength, courage and wisdom from within. – Glennie Kindred

NOT ONLY YIELDING TO COLD & DARKNESS, BUT ALSO BALANCE

As the first frost approaches, promising to decimate a summer’s worth of flowers in one cruel night, as the trees begin to take on a skeletal appearance, we are forced to contemplate and process some highly primal dualities: life and death; hope and regret; desire and fear… The transition from summer to autumn is at its height at the autumnal equinox… At the autumnal equinox, daylight and nighttime are of equal length, but immediately thereafter, daylight hours will diminish each day until we reach the shortest day of the year: winter solstice. As darkness increases, so does the cold. The lush green of summer goes dormant (and in the case of “annual” summer flowers that live their entire life in one season and do not come back the next year, it is the end of life). But as much as the autumnal equinox is about the yielding of warmth and light to cold and darkness, it is also about balance: it is one of two days of the year when day and night are of equal length (the other is the vernal equinox). And it is balance that I will contemplate as I perform my yoga practice of 108 Sun Salutations. – Lauren Cahn 

See Also: Themes: Gratitude