The Return of Mabon

Sweet Goddess who now enters the crone well, It is proper to adorn the headstones of rebirth,

Also known as: Fall or Autumn Equinox, Wine Harvest, Feast of Avalon, Alban Elved (Druid), Alban Elfed (Caledonii), Winter Finding (Teutonic)

Herbs: benzoin, marigold, myrrh, sage, and thistles may be burned; acorns, asters, ferns, honeysuckle, milkweed, mums, oak leaves, pine, and roses may be used as decorations.

Meaning: was a time of rest after labor, completion of the harvest. Again the hours of day and night are in balance, with the darkness increasing. All preparations for the dark of the year and the year's ending were made, thus bringing us back to Samhain.

Mabon is eternally lost, taken from Modron's side when he was a baby- and just as eternally rediscovered and released. Mabon still returns down every age of the world, bearing a bright sword to defend the right. Modron continually searches for her son, at the depths of her soul. Commune with the innocence of your own soul. Visualize what your soul might look like. The song of Modron and Mabon sings about the divine Mother and Son of British tradition.

The human need and sacred response are the two distinct voices tracing through the bonds of family. When we look deeper within ourselves to find what we feel is lost, a mirror reveals the sacred maze that leads us back to the key and ultimately the treasure of our soul's heart. When the center is found, it seems so simple and innocent, yet divinely like a shaft of light through the stones on equinox. If however we stop looking and feel that it is either unnecessary or right to call on the sacred rites of the soul, believing it to be unworthy of such an appearance of light - fear not. For in time all that which you need to heal may yet lie in the dark and rediscovery of the path home.

When we begin to allow ourselves rest and time to experience all that life has given us, what was hidden from your desperate grasp reveals itself slowly in the shadows of remembrance. The part of us which is Modron the urgent mother searching for her child, still rises when the need is the strongest, encouraging us to do what we believed we could not. She can descend to the deepest and darkest of places, rousing anyone who will help her find her child, her soul. In this great quest, of sun through the heavens and cycling seasons we find that Mabon still returns to us.

When we have let the leaves fall and color, harvesting our resources to prepare for that final cold that frosts the edges of our soul we see that we are not lost just changed like the season. Mabon bears a bright sword to defend the right and has an innocence of the soul that touches all of us through the mirror we confront. When we are ready to see who we truly are and what the great harvest has given us as gifts, only then can we give thanks and use our stored knowledge to sustain us and prepare us for death. Mabon sings to his mother as she once sang to him with the very return of his light to the world, and a promise of love.

Mabon: (youth (?); young god (?)), Young man stolen from his mother, Modron, when he was three nights old whom Culhwch is commanded to rescue in Culhwch ac Olwen. It is Arthur, however, with the aid of animal wisdom, who finds him in prison in Gloucester. The Welsh Triads describe him as one of the Three Exalted Prisoners, along with Gwair, of the Isle cf Britain. Later, in the hunting of Twrch Trwyth, Mabon succeeds in retrieving the razor from behind the ear of the boar. Only he can hunt the dog Drudwyn. In a poem from the Black Book of Carmarthen, Mabon is named a servent of Uthr Bendragon/Uther Pendragon. Learned commentators have long agreed that Mabon is derived from Maponos (divine youth), a Celtic god of Roman-occupied Britain and mother Modron is derived from Matrona, eponym of the Marne River. The name Mabon also appears elsewhere in early Welsh history and literature; of these, Mabon vab Mellt (son of lightening) is a doublet of Mabon son of Modron, while Mabon-Agrain (also Mabuz) is an Arthurian figure derived from him. W.J. Gruffydd argued (1958) that Mabon may be identified with or at least parallels Pryderi (or Gwair) of the Mabinogi.

Modron: Madron, Mother of the abducted child Mabon in the Welsh story of Culhwch ac Olwen and, according to the Triads, the mother of Owain ab Urien as well. By long standing learned agreement, her name is derived from that of Matrona, Gaulish eponym of the Marne River, just as that of her son is derived from Maponos. The episode of Mabon's abduction while three days old may be a vestige of the muth of the Great Prisoner, a son of the Great Mother who is taken away from the sulphurous powers of Annwfn. In a folk-tale Urien Rheged meets a mysterious unnamed washerwoman at the ford of Rhyd y Gyfarthfa who declares herself the daughter of Annwfn; later she bears him the son Owain and the daughter Morfudd. Modron appears to have contributed to the figures of the Arthurian woman Morgan le Fay and Morgawse.

Mabon (MAY-bone or MAH-bawn) is named for the Welsh God and it is seen as the second of the three harvests, and particularly as a celebration of the vine harvests and of wine. It is also associated with apples as symbols os life renewed. Celebrating new-made wine, harvesting apples and vine products, and visiting burial cairns to place an apple upon them, were all ways in which the Celts honored this Sabbat. (Avalon, one of the many Celtic names for the Land of the Dead, literally means the "land of apples".) These acts symbolized both thankfulness for the life-giving harvest, and the wish of the living to be reunited with their dead.

~ "Celtic Myth and Magick" by Edain McCoy

Date: Mon Oct 1, 2001 7:30 pm
Subject: Natural Life

By Autumn Joy Laird

Fall sun lowering below the trees

The landscape is covered in an orange haze

Lower and lower it sinks son Lugh

Arian rises above kissing her little one

The great wheel connecting a web of stars

Caught in them is her smile and grace

A air of mist will fall tonight

And the clouds pass by whispering Samhain

On the cool breezes of rustling leaves

The daylight falls faster beneath the seas

To give mother a chance to rest

And to shine up high where she can observe

The workings of the harvest time

Regeneration sprouts in the late blooming flowers

Reminding us of the deeper colors that life provides

To fill the eyes with a rich sense of blood

That gave the earth bounty

And the colors of the sky now covered in twinkling lights

A sun-fall and a sunrise in the time of the full moon

There is nothing like the sweet smell of smoke

Wood stoves and fires kindling the leaves of fire

Ashes of these that give fuel

Now come due their time under the breath of fall

But give thanks for they are part of us

And every sun must rise and every sun must set

For the beauty of the moment is impermanent

Though comes a peace from these moments

Where we look to the west to see the great sun set

And rise to greet again Lugh in his mother’s house

And watch the chariots fly a warrior burning in the sky

Smiling down on me and bending to kiss

Like a butterfly of orange-yellow bliss

My eyes are watchful of this gift

And tomorrow again I will except there are new paths

Things have changed but beauty is there still to see

In the leaves falling all around me

Their scent welcome to my nose

And I rejoice in the moment that allowed me to live

In the colors of Autumn and the gentle breeze

The stars shining overhead and the moon gazing down on me

I feel lighter somehow of the worries befalling thee

For surely another will be able to see the way I see

And look to the same stars directing me

Know the time that is mine caught in a sudden light wind

To look where I look

At the horizon where he dips to kiss the Earth

The land being part of my extension

A tree flaming in the colors of the sun

And an eagle waiting there for him

I reach my arms out extending to the son of the evening

And whisper then the words that so many leave unspoken

Love is here

Beauty is here

And my heart is yours to grasp

For I look upon you with eyes of kindness

And understand the fine balance that your ride requires

Though I wish to gain more

I want only to please you and love you

As I find love in your colors and seasons

Transcending the trappings of a stationary life

Each day awash with these messages

I long to be the tree of peace and grow strong the four roots

To the east where the sun rises

To the west where the sun sets

To the north where the great winds blow

And to the south where the great waters flow

I will tap the elements in a swirl and center it to the self

And think of it as the great base where leaves will grow

Flourish and then fall as each color grows and it is time to let go

I will drum to you love and know that there is so much more awaiting me

In a time of change I will let the storms pass my house by

Battering the elements and churning the sky

But always will there be another sunset for Lugh to ride

Then as the night falls as it is to me now

I witness the geese setting coarse to the south

Silently honking in the rivers of air

And I think now how the deer are feeding under the moon

The corn husks withering after a long summer heat

They have produced their corn and we have mowed the wheat

Orange pumpkins glowing on withered vines

Like a moon they do shine in their round abundance

I smile to the faces I see growing within that once tiny seed

The apples too have grown ripe on the sacred tree

Fallen to feed the turkey and the deer grazing near

And we too take delight in the feast provided to us

This is what fills my heart now

As I listen to the animals telling how great the Earth has provided

With acorns fallen and squash has grown

To see us through a winter where we can take rest

We can come to reflect on our memories and look towards the future

Plan a life in accordance to the seasons

One by one the fires being lit

To keep out the chill air that nips

Listen to the crackle and the whispering voices

Of our ancestors guiding us in story and in song

Filling our minds with love to be strong

And hear the message deep down

The last bursting rays of light on my eye lids leave me content

And I peer up to know that there is still light up there

Through all the darkness they wheel and turn

To remind us again of the balance of light and dark throughout all

For we are one with the earth and one with the people

One with the land and united in all aspects of our consciousness

Once we allow the sun to guide the way

Into a rebirth of natural living.