Considering the number of people who declare autumn their favorite season, the equinox receives pretty slim press. This year it falls on the 22nd and, as always, it is one of the four quarter days of the pre-Christian European calendar. Even among pagans it seems not to have had the same level of celebration as the other solstices and equinox. I sometimes wonder if that’s because things are generally good already in September. The intense heat of summer is over but the chill of October hasn’t yet arrived. We stop using the air conditioning and don’t have to turn on the furnace. It’s the Goldilocks month. It’s part summer when living is easy, and part fall when the world is beautiful. Like its fellow quarter days it is truly a liminal time.
Liminal periods are always good for reflection. No matter how much I want to savor this time of year, I have a feeling that it always catches me off guard. There are changes afoot. Starting Monday it will be dark more than it is light, and that will hold true until the sister equinox visits us in March. These longer nights have traditionally made room for ghosts and goblins. If we haven’t begun to store up supplies for winter, now is the time to start. It’s the season when we all believe in magic, if just a little bit. I’m one of those people who finds melancholy somewhat lovely. It’s not depression (believe me, I know!), but a kind of happy sadness that the season itself is ephemeral. Pretty soon people will be watching scary movies, but not quite yet.
Harvest is a joyful, spooky time. Those trees that have been green since April now put on their colorful winter coats but soon will spend the colder months bravely naked. Snow may come. Fall is a prophetic season, warning us of what might come. Monsters may be set free from their chains. And yet there will be cozy indoor holidays when we can hunker down and recollect the year that has just been spent. There’s a wisdom to seeing the quarter days as the spokes on the wheel of the year. Like many wheels already rolling it’s futile to attempt to stop them. They’re moving us to the next place that we’re meant to be. It’s true that the autumnal equinox falls on a weekend this year, but it does seem to me a natural holiday. And a time, like all holidays, for reflection.
