The equinox has arrived. Fall is officially here, my first one in Santa Fe. The days are still long and the trees are still green but there’s a definite chill in the air. Traditionally, Mabon is the middle of three harvest festivals in the modern Wheel of the Year. This one doesn’t exactly have ancient roots–there was a Welsh god/hero called Mabon ap Modron but as far as anyone can tell, he doesn’t have much to do with harvests and didn’t have a fall festival in ancient times. Back in the 1970s, when neopagans were trying to cobble together a festival calendar, there wasn’t an obvious choice for naming the fall equinox festival, and Mabon was chosen because he was sort of associated with the Gaulish Maponos, who was sort of associated with the Greek Apollo, who was sort of associated with the sun. Apollo did have fall festivals dedicated to him in ancient times, so that works I guess.

Whatever you call it, I’ve always liked the feel of this holiday. It has a sense of movement between seasons that really makes aware of time passing. It makes me want to look back at the past year and forward to the next. It was near this time last year we decided to seriously consider moving and now here we are, settling into our new home. I’m excited to see what the changing seasons look like here and what new changes this coming year will bring us.

Like so many pagans, I gravitate toward goddess imagery more than gods, but I should probably give more attention to Apollo. He’s the god of a lot of good things–not just the sun, but of plague and healing, of art and poetry, music, knowledge, prophecy, archery and agriculture. He does a bit of everything. He and Athena are probably the gods I’d most want to be like.

Part of me feels bad about this. Like most American kids my age I learned Greek myths and Roman numerals in elementary school, and the white European curriculum I grew up with traces its roots to ancient Greece and Rome, so I’ve always felt more kinship with the Greek pantheon than any other. But my actual ancestry is all Welsh and Scottish so I’ve always felt I should work with that pantheon. Aside from my total inability to pronounce Welsh words, they have great stories and I really want to connect with my ancestors’ myths and legends but I keep drifting back toward those Greek myths of my childhood.

So I keep landing in this weird space where I celebrate festivals with Welsh and Irish names, borrow a lot from British druidry, but find myself asking Greek goddesses for protection and guidance. If I’m anything to go by, modern paganism is a bit of a mish mash. No wonder reconstructionists and hard polytheists get so annoyed.

Anyway, I should stop rambling now and go work on this evening’s feast. If you celebrate Mabon, or harvest festivals under other names, I’d love to hear what you do. In the meantime, enjoy a picture of the moon I took this morning, hovering above some still very green trees. Merry meet, and I hope you all have much to look forward to this day.