Finding Our Way Home

Lately, I’ve been drifting in and out of my spiritual practices.

And I find that when I do that, I’m a bit off-kilter. I move through my days, get things done, tend to the practical business of being alive—but something underneath it all feels slightly untethered.

Then Spirit tends to make an almost forceful re-entry into my life, reminding me that I am but a grain of sand on a massive beach and that one of the most important things I can do each day is tend to my spiritual condition.

Because when I do, I show up as my best self more often.

Samhain (pronounced sow-in) is often celebrated as the witches’ new year, but autumn has always felt like a beginning to me, perhaps even more than January 1. There is something about cooler air and shorter days that makes me want to come home—to my house, to my practices, to myself.

I originally thought I would begin this new series at Samhain. But the more I considered it, the more Mabon felt like exactly the right place to begin.

At the balance point.

It might seem ironic to begin something new in autumn. This is, after all, the season of letting go. Leaves loosen their grip on the trees. Gardens begin to fade. The Earth starts preparing for the long restoration of winter.

But autumn is also wonderfully reinvigorating because it awakens the senses in a way few other seasons do.

Bright leaves. The scent of pine and woodsmoke. Pumpkin and apple spice. Fires in the hearth. Soft blankets. Cool mornings. Longer nights. The first cup of hot tea that feels less like a beverage and more like a ritual.

So I’m beginning a Wheel of the Year Series now.

About every six weeks, as the Wheel turns toward another Sabbat, I’ll publish a two-week series exploring that place in the seasonal cycle. These blogs will serve as an anchor—a way to reconnect with Earth and Spirit, to ground ourselves, and to find a rhythm of living that is more in harmony with the natural world.

Because, at the end of the day, that is what simple living means to me.

My writing often wanders into wellbeing, and that’s intentional. Tending to our wellbeing is one of the simplest and most important things we can do in our daily lives. Much of it costs nothing. It doesn't require us to continually acquire things outside ourselves. Instead, it asks us to shift our attention from the external to the internal—and perhaps to the outdoors—and consider a much more interesting question:

What is essential?

Returning to the Earth, the sun and moon, the stars, the Gods and Goddesses, and Spirit offers us a place of remembering. When we’ve gone sideways or wandered a little too far from ourselves, we can settle back in and begin again.

We don't have to wait for a Sabbat to do that. We can return whenever we need to. But I hope that over the coming year these turning points on the Wheel become small markers along the trail. Places to stop. Notice. Reconsider. Release. Celebrate. And remember what matters most in your particular patch of this enormous world.

Tending to yourself. Simplifying your life. Caring for your health and wellbeing. Paying attention to the natural world. Showing up better, more often, for the people and things you love and hold most dear.

Perhaps that is what spiritual practice really is.

Finding our way home, over and over again.

Mabon — The Balance Point

Harvest • Equinox • Enough • Reciprocity • Release

The eight Sabbats of the modern Wheel of the Year mark important points in nature’s annual cycle. Four are tied to the solstices and equinoxes, dividing the year into quarters. Between them fall four cross-quarter festivals: Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh, and Samhain.

We begin our journey toward Mabon today, a little more than a week before the autumn equinox arrives on September 22.

Astronomically, the equinox marks the moment the Sun crosses the celestial equator. Day and night hover near balance, and from here, in the Northern Hemisphere, darkness increasingly gains ground.

But the change doesn’t happen all at once.

Have you noticed sunset creeping earlier? That strange sense that surely it must be almost bedtime, only to discover that it’s only 7 p.m.?

Still a perfectly reasonable time to begin thinking about bed, in my opinion.

Transitions are like that.

They happen gradually, almost imperceptibly, until one day we realize something has changed.

The light falls differently. The air smells different. Leaves begin to turn and drop. A sweatshirt feels good in the morning. Hot tea before bed starts calling your name.

In the modern Pagan Wheel of the Year, Mabon is commonly understood as the second harvest. The first harvest, Lughnasadh or Lammas, arrives around August 1 and is traditionally associated with the grain harvest. Mabon takes us deeper into harvest season—a time of gathering, gratitude, preparation, and taking stock of what is enough.

For our ancestors, harvest wasn't decorative. It wasn't pumpkins arranged beautifully on a porch. Harvest determined whether people survived the winter. There is something worth remembering in that.

Across cultures and centuries, humans have gathered at harvest time to acknowledge a simple truth: we depend upon the Earth, and we depend upon one another.

We still do.

Most of us are simply far enough removed from the fields that we sometimes forget.

Mabon invites us to remember.

Simplicity Living Practice: Preparing for Winter

Getting organized can be deeply spiritual when it is done with intention.

Preparation is, after all, one of autumn's oldest lessons. The squirrels are gathering. Plants are pulling their energy inward. Trees will soon release what they no longer need.

So consider one area of your life that would feel lighter if it were tended to.

It might be a physical space—a drawer, closet, desk, pantry, or stack of papers that has been quietly judging you for six months.

But it doesn't have to be physical.

Perhaps you need to look at your finances. Make an appointment you've been avoiding. Finish the book sitting at the top of the unread stack. Clear out your inbox. Mend something. Put something away.

Choose one thing.

Before changing anything, spend a moment simply noticing it.

How does this unfinished or cluttered place make me feel?

Then give it 15 minutes.

Only 15.

If the time ends and you feel energized, keep going.

If you feel overwhelmed, stop.

You have still changed something.

Consider when you might offer it another 15 minutes on another day. By breaking something heavy into smaller pieces, we begin to change our relationship with it. Instead of carrying the whole thing, we simply pick up what we can hold today.

That, too, is preparation.

Moon Magick: Moon in Scorpio

The Moon enters Scorpio at approximately 2:44 a.m. this morning.

Scorpio is not particularly interested in skimming the surface.

A Scorpio Moon is traditionally associated with heightened intuition, psychic awareness, emotional depth, secrecy, transformation, and endings. It can bring buried things closer to the surface—the feelings, truths, attachments, and patterns we might ordinarily prefer to leave tucked safely away.

Which feels rather perfect as we begin our journey toward Mabon.

This is the season when the Earth begins showing us what release looks like. Not as failure. Not as punishment. Not even necessarily as loss.

As part of the cycle.

Scorpio asks a similar question: What are you still holding onto that has already completed its work in your life?

There can be intensity here, so today isn't necessarily a day to force answers or make sweeping decisions. Instead, pay attention to what rises.

Notice what you're brooding about.

Notice what keeps tugging at your attention.

Notice the relationship, habit, belief, obligation, or old story that suddenly feels heavier than it used to.

You don't have to do anything with it yet.

We're just beginning.

The Wheel has started turning toward the season of release.

Perhaps something in you has, too.

Color of the Day: Ivory

Correspondence is one of the simplest forms of everyday magic.

Colors, herbs, stones, plants, elements, planets, directions, scents, and symbols have long been associated with particular qualities and intentions. Whether we understand those correspondences as energetic, symbolic, psychological, spiritual—or some mysterious combination of all four—they give our intentions somewhere tangible to land.

Today's color is ivory.

Ivory is softer than pure white. It carries the same associations with clarity and new beginnings, but with warmth and age woven into it. It feels less like a blank page and more like old paper. Bone. Shell. Candlelight.

Something that has already lived.

For the beginning of this Mabon journey, I like that. We're not wiping the slate clean. We're carrying everything we've lived through into the next season and deciding what comes with us.

Wear something ivory today. Light an ivory candle. Place a pale stone, shell, dried flower, piece of cloth, or other ivory-colored object on your altar.

Or simply notice the color when it appears.

Let it remind you that beginning again doesn't require erasing what came before.

Sage Wisdom

Change leaves clues. The Earth rarely changes seasons overnight. She leaves clues. A cooler breeze. A lower sun. One yellow leaf among a hundred green ones. Darkness arriving a few minutes earlier than it did yesterday.

Our lives are like that, too.

Before something changes completely, there are often whispers.

This week, pay attention to them. Notice what is shifting around you. Notice what is shifting within you. You don't have to know where it is leading.

For now, simply notice which way the wind is blowing.