Happy Equinox

 This is the point when day and night are almost equal though the actual point of balance, the Equilux occurs a few days after the Autumn Equinox in the northern and a few before the Spring Equinox in the southern hemisphere depending on your latitude (see www.timeanddate.com for precise times and dates in your own location).

Whichever hemisphere is your home, the balancing energies of the Equinox signify the moment just for an eye blink when past and future fuse in the present, war and peace, poverty and plenty, sickness and health, love and loneliness sharing for that second the promise that there is light at the end of the tunnel as the world turns.

Henceforward in the northern hemisphere the nights will become longer as in the southern hemisphere light slowly returns.

Focus of the Autumn Equinox: The completion of tasks, the fruition of long-term goals, for mending quarrels and forgiving yourself for past mistakes, for recovering money owed and overcoming debt problems, for assessing gain and loss, for family relationships and friendships; for material security for the months ahead, for abundance in all aspects of your life, for issues of job security or the need to consolidate finances; all matters concerning the retirement and older people; the resolution or management of chronic health problems.

Symbols: Copper coloured yellow or orange leaves, willow boughs, harvest fruits such as apples, berries, nuts, copper or bronze coins and pottery geese.

Tree: Apple

Incenses, flower and herbs: Ferns, geranium, myrrh, pine, sandalwood and Solomon’s seal. Michelmas daisies and all small petal purple and blue flowers.

Candle Colours: Blue and green.

Crystals: Blue lace agate, chalcedony, Aqua aura, also rose quartz and all calcites.

Festival Foods: The finest of the harvest, fruits, vegetables, jam, nuts , apple pies, geese sacred to St Michael whose festival falls on September 29, game, cider, barley wine and ale.

Ways of Marking the Festival in the Modern world

• Make a list of what needs to be done urgently, a second list of less pressing but necessary tasks and those matters that are best left, some of which may be things you did not want to do anyway. Throw away the third list and draw up a realistic time scale for the completion of the other tasks.

• Contact an old friend or a family member with whom you have lost touch and  decide if there is anyone with whom you would like to reduce or cease communication who is undermining your confidence or making you feel unnecessarily guilty

• Give up a bad habit or work to overcome a fear or phobia that is holding you back from doing things.

• Buy or make seasonal fruit jam and hold an old-fashioned  tea or coffee party to bring different generations together

•  Visit a seasonal farmer’s market or art and craft fayre and maybe take along something you have created.

• Stand by the sea or flowing water at sunset and cast pebbles or shells into the dying light on the water to cast off all regrets, resentments, sorrows, failures and unfinished business from the previous months that you do not wish to carry forward into the winter. Look for something on the shore or riverbank to take home as a token of the gifts you carry forward with you from the previous months.

• Climb to the top of a hill at sunset on Equinox night and as the ancients did say goodbye to the animals who will be soon hibernating and to any birds or wildfowl who are or will be migrating and wish them well

 Focus of the Spring Equinox

Fertility and positive life changes, new beginnings and opportunities, new flowering love; initiating creative ventures, travel, house moves, clearing what is no longer needed in your life; anything to do with conception and pregnancy, children and young people, mothers, healing; helping family members to believe in themselves and welcoming  the winds of change into your life in the way most appropriate.

Symbols: Eggs, especially painted ones, feathers, spring flowers or leaves, a sprouting pot of seeds, pottery rabbits and birds and anything made of dough or clay.

Tree:  Birch

Incenses, flowers and herbs: Celandine, cinquefoil, crocus, daffodil, honeysuckle, hyacinth, lemon, primroses, sage, tansy and thyme and violets.

Candle colours:  Yellow and green.

Crystals: Sparkling yellow crystals, such as citrine, golden beryl and rutilated quartz, also lemon and apple green chrysoprase and aventurine.

Festival Foods: Decorated boiled eggs, chocolate eggs and rabbits, hot cross buns or small cakes with pastry crosses on for the old astrological sign of the Earth mother; lamb, Simnel (marzipan topped) cakes.

Practical Activity: Ways of Marking the Festival in the Modern world

• Boil eggs in pastel vegetable food colouring or after boiling decorate them with non- toxic marker pens, with flowers, Mother Goddess spirals, birds and bees and offer them on a basket of spring flowers and leaves on the breakfast table.

• Hide small chocolate eggs for an Easter egg hunt for friends and family of all ages. You can if warm enough go for a picnic and hide them around the picnic place.

• For increasing your personal fertility if you wish to conceive a child or to launch a creative venture such as selling paintings, crafts or getting a book published, prick an egg with a needle or large silver pin and take out all the white and yellow on Equinox  morning. Then carefully cut it in half and leave the shell halves open for the sun or light  of the morning to shine on them with the pin inside.

• Leave the egg hells on an indoor window ledge until the first night of the crescent moon after the Spring Equinox .

• Place a tiny moonstone or worry doll in one half, leaving it on the same indoor window ledge until the next Full Moon.

• On the night of the Full Moon, prick the moonstone very gently with the silver pin . Name what it is you need.

• The next morning close the shell and bury the closed eggshell containing the  crystal and pin beneath newly planted Equinox herbs or plants.

• Spring clean your life as well as your home . Answer any correspondence that is piling up. Deal with unavoidable issues. Change your routine so that you rise half an hour earlier and can enjoy the growing light, perhaps walking to work or sitting in the spring sunshine on your balcony or in your garden.

• Visit a clear river or lake on Equinox morning and look at any light dancing or moving on the surface of the water Throw a tiny crystal or white stone into the light area in the water. As it splashes, blink and you will see externally or in your mind’s eye a momentary image framed in light that will help you to plan your future path.

• Burn an ear of dried grass or corn in a candle set in a bucket of soil to symbolise the ancient Spring Equinox corn figure woven from the previous year’s harvest or the effigy of a straw Judas man in Christian times. T Scatter your soil containing the burned corn or grass on to your garden or use it for planting an indoor flower display to ensure what you gained practically, financially and emotionally from the previous year grows even more in the year ahead.

Almost 150 Equinoxes, Spring and autumn, have passed, leaf rise and leaf fall, for the sturdy little girl in her grey socks I once was, jumping up and down in the pile of fallen leaves in the sooty urban park, my mirror of the seasons.

I scattered the leaves carelessly through the years that seemed forever, welcoming the return on the flowers and blossoms. Too soon the leaves are swirling from the trees once more. Yet on the other side of the world new life blooms and in the moment of unity, as we light an Equinox candle, we can take strength from the new while treasuring the old.