Happy Fall Equinox Fellow Pagans

[riser4]

I always feel more alive in the fall. I get kind of a 2nd wind. I am hoping that plays out as I enter "the fall of one's life."

[goldenboy]

Burn the grump!

[glademaster]

Burn the grump!

Vinotok would make a top ten list of things I miss about living in western Colorado.

I lovw the fall, even out here in soggy Washington.

[schindlerpiste]

[TWINS]

I always feel more alive in the fall. I get kind of a 2nd wind. I am hoping that plays out as I enter "the fall of one's life."

Me too.
That first day when it just feels crisp and cool outside.
Brings happiness to my soul after suffering through the summer heat.
Spring and fall are my favorite seasons❤

[KQ]

This equinox marks my 55th journey around the sun. Entering the fall of one's life is interesting.

So is today your birthday? I have a friend who is celebrating today.

[KQ]

The Beautiful Sadness of Autumn: An Equinoctal Magic

In the midst of the harvest celebration, what to do with the melancholy of this season?

Fall is a sensory season, heavyladen with beauty: tables overbrimmed with squash and corn, the nightchill that welcomely pings your skin, woodsmoke in the air, cider on your tongue, the faraway horns of a highschool football game. Gosh, it’s gorgeous!, and front-loaded for celebration.

But not all my friends feel that way, or they feel something else besides: my intuitive friend Lucie gets a deep fear around this season, an acute, visceral sense of her impending demise. Other people dear to me also feel the SADness coming on, even amid the fireworks shows of leaves. Something pulls about the Fall, something tugs, something ebbs.

The feeling begins around the Equinox, around Mabon: it comes with the draining away of light, the steady and growing influx of darkness at the edges of the day. The long languid abundance of summerTIME is gone, the sense of immortality. There is a sense that things are being taken from us.

And they will be, and are. Events, relationships and memories will be left behind. We might feel like we have run out of time to correct our mistakes, to turn things around. It can’t all go with us, carried across the seasons. We make decisions about what to keep and what to feed, what is sound and whole enough to make the journey, and through doing so we choose what kind of person we want to be.

Our sorrow might stem from what seems to be that choice’s ruthlessness. For in one timeline, we cannot be all possibilities, we cannot be all different versions of ourselves at once, so we have to choose one. Sometimes the choice has already been done for us. Acknowledging mistakes and YES, failures is not a popular or comfortable position. So there is a frightened sense as the selves that do not, that will not, make it through to the next cycle, clutch on for dear life.

Maybe that is one reason my friends feel so sad. Everything feels passing, precious, poignant. In the superabundance of mid-autumn, we can see all of it: what we have done, as well as what we have failed to do.

But the failure is also part of the harvest. A teacher of mine told me once that our mistakes are compost for our successes. I make offerings to the Goddess of Failure, she says. I give her all that I did not succeed in doing: all abortive attempts, all miserable rejections, all the things I tried but I could not do, all the people I could not convince to love me. I give it all to her. I learn from my mistakes so that I can be better. I make them into compost so that I can grow my next projects, so I can avoid the same mistakes in relationships.

That is something quite different from abandonment. So instead of feeling like you have to abandon anything, turn it over with compassion into the soil.

Goddess of Failure, part of my harvest is my mistakes. I offer you what I broke, and I offer you all the lessons I learned from it.

There are no mistakes, no real failures: only compost.

And instead of only looking at what is lost, look at what is left, what you keep, the one you’re with, for that is what will sustain you. It is polished for you: cleaned out and pure and glorious and made ready for you, all yours. Place it on the altar of your heart, hard and dearly won. The compost goes beneath.

It is all your harvest. Well come to what is your own. Happy Autumn Equinox!

So mote it be, and blessed be!

[skiballs]

So is today your birthday? I have a friend who is celebrating today.

Yes it is, and it was a most excellent one. Best to your friend.

[capulin overdrive]

Guess it's closer to winter, but this time of year pretty much sucks ass.

Every damned nasty weed and bug clinging to life and/or trying to make seed. Just fucking die already!

Pollen count through the roof, rattle snakes looking for a den, and the stupid ass sun lined up with the east/west roads!


Foosball and all the other stupid teams sports on the idiot box.


So yeah, winter and spring corn season are the only ones worth a crap for my sorry life.

[KQ]

Guess it's closer to winter, but this time of year pretty much sucks ass.

Every damned nasty weed and bug clinging to life and/or trying to make seed. Just fucking die already!

Pollen count through the roof, rattle snakes looking for a den, and the stupid ass sun lined up with the east/west roads!


Foosball and all the other stupid teams sports on the idiot box.


So yeah, winter and spring corn season are the only ones worth a crap for my sorry life.

Yeah.. flies are going crazy on their last gasp esp. the Bot flies. They are making my horses crazy. I was looking forward to not mowing but then I realized it's going to be leaf raking season. Ugh. American Plane trees suck for leaves. Great for shade but suck when they shed.

[capulin overdrive]

Yeah.. flies are going crazy on their last gasp esp. the Bot flies. They are making my horses crazy. I was looking forward to not mowing but then I realized it's going to be leaf raking season. Ugh. American Plane trees suck for leaves. Great for shade but suck when they shed.

Equinox is usually still too warm, but we get Yellow Jackets that find their way into the house by the dozens in the fall looking for warmth. Nothing like getting stung in the house by a groggy pissed off yellow jacket.

Not to mention scorpions and rattle snakes. Thankfully i'm 10 miles from scorpions, but have had a baby rattlesnake get into the house through a pencil sized crack on the bottom of a door. Was a long time before i'd walk around barefoot without the lights on!


And another thing that sucks about fall, HUNTERS!

Just spent a couple hours putting up cattle, because the hunters leave the gates open!

[BCMtnHound]

Blessings of glorious harvest and feasting to you. Don’t forget to leave a portion aside for the ancestors and the wayward traveler.

[m2711c]

Yeah.. flies are going crazy on their last gasp esp. the Bot flies. They are making my horses crazy. I was looking forward to not mowing but then I realized it's going to be leaf raking season. Ugh. American Plane trees suck for leaves. Great for shade but suck when they shed.

2 words..... mulching mower.

[Single Track]

Equinox is usually still too warm, but we get Yellow Jackets that find their way into the house by the dozens in the fall looking for warmth. Nothing like getting stung in the house by a groggy pissed off yellow jacket.

Not to mention scorpions and rattle snakes. Thankfully i'm 10 miles from scorpions, but have had a baby rattlesnake get into the house through a pencil sized crack on the bottom of a door. Was a long time before i'd walk around barefoot without the lights on!

The tourism board of Hell, CA would like to use this quote in their next Instagram post. Respond "Hell Yeah" to grant permission.

[Ripzalot]

P. A.G.A.N. - People Against Goodness and Normalcy

[SB]

Dreamed I was an Eskimo.

[Vt-Freeheel]

A warm and muggy start to fall in Vermont. 80's yesterday, other than the start of foliage it felt like a mid July day.

[riser4]

A warm and muggy start to fall in Vermont. 80's yesterday, other than the start of foliage it felt like a mid July day.

Ya. No like. However, we usually get a spell like this at the end of September, so I wasn't completely off guard

[SumJongGuy]

Not to mention scorpions and rattle snakes. Thankfully i'm 10 miles from scorpions, but have had a baby rattlesnake get into the house through a pencil sized crack on the bottom of a door. Was a long time before i'd walk around barefoot without the lights on!

Our cat brings snakes in through the doggie door to play with. Mostly little brown rat snakes. but occasionally a copperhead. She's gone through way more than 9 lives..

[Ripzalot]

Our cat brings snakes in through the doggie door to play with. Mostly little brown rat snakes. but occasionally a copperhead. She's gone through way more than 9 lives..

I got a snake present last weekend. Didnt know we had any snakes around here.

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[capulin overdrive]

My baby rattlesnake curled up in a pair of swimming trucks i had laying on the floor, luckily they felt wrong when i picked them up, and i shook him out.


Neighbor got up and put on a pair of pants with a snake in them! Lucky for him, it was a bullsnake.


But yeah, snakes don't belong in the house!


And i'm way too paranoid for a doggy door!

[KQ]

6:30am PDT

[liv2ski]

I always feel more alive in the fall. I get kind of a 2nd wind. I am hoping that plays out as I enter "the fall of one's life."

Same, I hope this fall I can get out and start moving around a bit after 6 months of solid desk work.

[tgapp]

This morning's sunrise over the Salt Lake valley. Steely skies, scattered rain, and a fire burning up Neffs Canyon. Feels fitting for 2020. Happy equinox, all.

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[BCMtnHound]

4°C, heavy valley fog, but clear of smoke. Dreams of working on my wife's bike before I woke this morning. Heading into the best time of the year!