Celebrating Mabon with Tarot, Writing & Ritual
By Claire Bowman
The Wiccan sabbat, Mabon (pronounced MAY-bon,) falls on the fall equinox, when the days grow cooler and the nights grow longer. The second of the autumnal festivals on the Wheel of the Year, Mabon continues the celebration of harvest season begun at Lughnasadh in early August, and carries us into the dark half of the year, toward the shadowy festival of Samhain (the next stop on the Wheel), which is celebrated in popular culture as Halloween.
Though Mabon (and the concept of the Wheel of the Year) is a fairly recent innovation developed by neo-pagans of the 20th Century, particularly Gerald Gardner (the “Father of Wicca”), it does coincide with more ancient harvest festivals of this time. These include Oktoberfest in Germany; Jashne Mihragan, the Zoroastrian festival of love and friendship, celebrated in Iran; the Autumnal Equinox festival in Japan; the Korean Chuseok; the East Asian Mid-Autumn Festival; Jewish Sukkot; and many others.
The name “Mabon” comes from a Celtic deity known as the “Child of Light,” who appears in the Welsch epic “Culhwch and Olwen.” The mythic tale tells of Mabon, born on the fall equinox and kidnapped three days later, and taken to the underworld. As the “Child of Light,” Mabon’s disappearance causes the sunlight to wane until he is eventually rescued (on the winter solstice) when the days begin to lengthen again. We know from this epic and others like it that the autumnal equinox has been celebrated since ancient times, and has long been associated with the shifting equilibrium of light as the seasons change.
Even if the Wheel of the Year and festivals like Mabon are of recent invention, they do possess meaningful connections with preexisting celebrations, and allow us to mark and contemplate the passing of time and connect the temporal to the spiritual and the seasonal. Mabon, in particular, is celebrated for its connection to the harvest of late summer and the bounties of the earth that come at the conclusion of the year’s warmest season. At a moment when spring’s seeds are being carried home as ripe fruits and gourds, this is also a time to reflect on the passage of the year as it begins to draw to a close.
So what do we do during Mabon? There are many ways to celebrate, and we’ve crafted a few rituals, a Tarot spread, and a writing prompt to help you honor and embrace the spirit of the season.
Mabon: A Harvest Feast
As with all the harvest holidays, Mabon is a time to honor the harvest through feasting, preserving, and sharing the food nature provides this time of year. In the Northern Hemisphere, that might include apples, pumpkins, squash, corn, and other autumnal produce. A solo witch might choose to work with a single food or ingredient from this season, preparing a favorite dish to share or enjoy alone. Or you might want to gather with a larger coven, and host a low-key potluck amongst your beloveds, filled with seasonal produce and flowers you’ve gathered yourself. Such a gathering can foster reconnection with chosen and blood family, and it can be a way to simply celebrate having made it this far into the wheel’s annual spin.
Photo by Marko Blažević
Dressing Your Altar for Mabon
Over at Mabon House, the symbols of Mabon provide us some altar ideas: fabrics in oranges, reds, yellows, browns, deep greens, and copper; pomegranates, apples, and wine; rosehips, rosemary, and sage; amber and citrine crystals. You may consider adding wildflowers native to your region — whatever is in bloom around you.
To build your altar, start with a clean space. You can begin with an altar cloth, then place your candle front and center and build around it. There is no right or wrong way to build an altar — simply gather and arrange the objects that you connect with this time of year, and get creative!
We always recommend including a Tarot card as a visual spell for the season. For Mabon, you might choose Justice for its themes of harmony and balance (and because it’s Libra season, and Justice is Libra’s card!), or Nine of Pentacles as a reminder to feast and be present with all the pleasures Autumn has to offer.
The Justice Card from the Ethereal Visions Illuminated Tarot.
Equilibrium, the Justice Card & Activism
Because Mabon occurs during a pivotal shift in the balance between darkness and light, the occasion is associated with the scales of Lady Justice. Thus, Mabon is an ideal time to cast spells and perform rituals devoted to the many meanings of balance and harmony in the Justice card.
Activism is an especially potent way to honor and embody this card, and even small acts that work to restore the balance that has been disrupted by structures of capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy can have a powerful impact on our communities.
This can be a time to consider (and reconsider) how we each practice activism in our lives. Perhaps you donate to organizations like TORCH Literary Arts, The Loveland Foundation, or Why Not Prosper (organizations we support regularly at Typewriter Tarot). Perhaps you volunteer, donate food to a local pantry, or engage in your own anti-racism education.
Perhaps Mabon is the perfect time to begin a practice of activism in your own life! In case you need some inspiration, we’ve got a long list of organizations we recommend supporting for their work toward social and environmental justice, and we will continue to build that list.
Make a Broom & Sweep Your Space
Pagan Grimoire suggests making a broom for Mabon, and if you’re into crafting, making something with your hands can serve as a powerful spell in and of itself. Ritually, you can use this broom to sweep dust and debris out the door of your home, or symbolically sweep out stagnant or old energy to make way for the new. Cinnamon brooms, in particular, smell lovely, and are used ritually to protect against illness.
Whether you’re using a commercial or homemade broom, you can start by stating aloud your intention that your home be protected and that negative energies be dispelled. Any broom you create yourself (or purchase from a local witch in your area) can also serve as a decorative and symbolic ornament you can display on the wall or above a door when you’re not using it.
Photo by Dan Freeman
Tarot Spread for Mabon
You can, of course, turn any Tarot pull into a small ritual unto itself, simply by lighting a candle and taking a moment while you shuffle your cards to speak with ancestors or guides and invite their wisdom. We always recommend spending time writing and reflecting on the cards you pull as a way of finding more nuanced meaning and insight in the messages that appear. (We’ve included a writing prompt for this Tarot spread below!) Even seasoned readers can benefit greatly from the self-dialogue that comes from writing about your cards. In just a few minutes, you may uncover an insight that might have otherwise eluded you.
This spread offers a set of questions connected to the season, designed to help you check in with your own progress, process, and experience during Mabon.
Card 1: What have I cultivated through this year’s season of light?
Card 2: What is meant to come with me from this season into the next?
Card 3: What card can be my teacher for the upcoming season of darkness?
Card 4: What is the nature of the creative fire that is now being kindled in my hearth?
Writing Prompts for Mabon
Reflect on Cards 1 & 2: What you’ve “cultivated” might sound a lot like what you’ve “accomplished,” and it can be. But instead of focusing on whether or not you’ve accomplished everything on your to-do list, or how many pages you’ve written on your novel, think back to the beginning of the year and the intentions you set for yourself then. Have your goals, directions, and desires changed since January? How is where you stand right now, on this fall equinox, different from where you started? What has grown in your life, or in your creative practice, that wasn’t there before?
Once you have a few sentences about what you’ve cultivated in your life this year, read through and select a single phrase or idea that feels most important to you as you move forward. How can you mindfully bring this new development with you?
Reflect on Cards 3 and 4: As you gaze at the teacher who appears in Card 3, how does this archetype feel as a potential guide or source of wisdom for the darker half of the year? Are you surprised by the energy that has stepped forward to brighten your hearthfire? Imagine this archetype tending to the flames there. What kind of fuel might this figure add to your fire that it’s been missing? And how can you use it for your benefit?
Photo by Jen Theodore
Poems for Mabon
Whether you’re gathering with friends or conducting a solo ritual to mark the season, poetry always adds depth, music, and metaphor to the experience. Here’s a list of poems inspired by the season that might inspire you!
“A Mountain Town and An Autumn Village” by Fuyuji Tamaka, translated by Hisakazu Kaneko
“Days in Autumn” by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Marie Kinzie
Making Mabon Your Own Special Occasion
The ideas included here are but a sampling of what’s possible. The important thing is: there’s no “right way” to celebrate Mabon or fall equinox. Moreover, the changing of the seasons (and the timing of those changes) looks different depending on where we live, the current climate, and the natural environment around us.
Perhaps the most beneficial aspect of working with this time of year, or any milestone on the Wheel of the Year, is simply taking intentional time to notice what the seasons can teach us, and to reconnect us to the natural world, which always offers inspiration and wise reminders for how we can cultivate a life that feels aligned, magical, and creative. So let your intuition guide you as you connect with this moment in time. Enjoy the natural world around you, connect with your favorite signifiers of fall, and make magic in accordance with what feels available and organic to you!
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about Claire Bowman
Claire Bowman is a writer, editor, and Tarot reader living in Austin, Texas. A Sagittarius with a deep love for poetry, she is always up for long conversations about jellyfish, poems that shake you to your core, or the shape-shifting nature of consciousness.