The wheel of the year turns

Once more we reach a time for celebration and thanks. Mabon, the autumn equinox, when day and night stand as equals. It arrives quietly, almost unnoticed, yet its power runs deep. It is the second harvest, a time of gathering, of gratitude for abundance, and of preparation for the darker half of the year. Across Celtic tradition, this was a sacred pause, a breath between the warmth of summer and the long shadow of winter, an invitation to stand in balance ourselves.

The Season’s Gifts

The land hums with the hues of Mabon as the heather cloaked hills turn shades of russet and gold. The trees catch the low sun, their leaves blazing with amber and copper. Hedgerows are laden with blackberries and elderberries, hawthorn heavy with scarlet fruit. Sloes ripen on blackthorn branches, while mushrooms push through damp soil and hazelnuts fall among curling bracken. In the orchards, apples and plums are gathered. In the fields, the last oats, wheat and barley are brought in, the air fragrant with ripening grain and autumn leaves. Even the wildlife shifts with the season with swallows preparing to depart, starlings flocking in restless murmurations and bats curl in hidden roosts, slipping into the hush of hibernation as the nights lengthen. The land itself seems alive with motion, abundance and departure woven together.

Ritual and Celebration on Mann

On Mann, the harvest was marked with Yn Mheillea, the Harvest Home. When the final sheaf of corn was cut, it was plaited into a Babban ny Mheillea, a small harvest figure dressed with ribbons and wildflowers. Sometimes a young woman would carry it in procession, crowned as Queen of the Mheillea, and the people would dance in a circle around her, feasting and singing to honour the land’s generosity. These Mhelliahs still echo through our villages today, autumn gatherings filled with auctions of homemade jams, garden produce, and the warmth of community.

But harvest offerings were not only social, they were sacred. In the old Celtic world, the first fruits and the last sheaf alike were left at sacred places such as the hawthorn trees alive with fairy presence, wells dressed with clooties and standing stones aligned with the turning heavens. The land was not just farmed, it was honoured, thanked, and seen as kin.

The Sacred Hawthorn

Among the most revered trees of the Isle is the hawthorn, dwelling place of the Mooinjer Veggey,  the Little People. No wise farmer would dare cut one down, for to harm a fairy tree was to invite misfortune. Instead, offerings were left, a ribbon tied to its bough, a handful of grain or fruit, a quiet prayer whispered into the wind. At Beltane, its blossom crowned the season of fertility and now at Mabon, its red berries ripen, carrying protection and the memory of cycles fulfilled. To stand beneath its arching branches is to stand at a threshold, neither here nor there, but between the worlds.

Balance and Reflection

Mabon is more than a harvest of fields, it is a harvest of the self. Just as our ancestors gathered fruit and grain, so too are we asked to gather what we have sown this year, the lessons, the growth, the struggles endured. What will we carry forward into the dark? What will we release, like leaves falling from the trees?

In the stillness of an equinox dusk when light and dark are perfectly matched, we are reminded that we are not apart from nature, but a part of it. Our lives echo its cycles, our breath follows its rhythm. To honour Mabon is to honour that belonging, to pause, to give thanks, and to walk gently into the shadowed half of the year, carrying the flame of balance within us.