AUTUMN EQUINOX

As one of the cross-quarter festivals, the autumn equinox is one of the lesser festivals of the Pagan year – historically, it was not observed in the Celtic culture from which Paganism derived its eightfold festival calendar, but today it lends a symmetry to the cycle of festivals we celebrate.

As the dark half of the year progresses in the wake of the Summer Solstice, the hours of light diminish a little more each day. On this equinox, day and night again come nearest to equality before darkness begins to fill more than half of each day; we know that the sun will set sooner and sooner each evening, until at Yule we experience the longest night of the year.

This equinox is primarily celebrated as a harvest festival, the second of three and the one most focused on the harvest. We celebrate the bounty of the earth, remembering that we depend on its fecundity to stay us through the barren winter. Although in the U.S. our national harvest festival, the secular holiday of Thanksgiving, is celebrated between Samhain and Yule, in Britain the Fall Harvest is still usually celebrated in September or early October, timed to the full moon nearest the Equinox, called the "Harvest Moon." We thank the Kindreds for the blessings of fertility and health on the crops and in return we give them the gifts that sustain the lifegiving relationship we have with each other.

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