As we move into the Fall Equinox, it’s the perfect time to reflect on the balance between darkness and light, both in the natural world and within ourselves. In our latest episode of the Kairos Wisdom Keepers, we dive into the spiritual significance of this sacred time, discussing Mabon rituals and the cyclical shifts that call us to slow down, release, and realign.
Together, we explore how the shorter days and longer nights mirror our own need for introspection and rest. This season invites you to reflect on your personal harvest—what have you cultivated in your life, and where are you being asked to let go? The equinox is all about honoring both the abundance and the endings, preparing ourselves for the inward journey that autumn brings.
Join us as we share practices to help you connect with the seasonal energies, from grounding rituals to offerings of gratitude and balance. Whether you’re a seasoned healer or just beginning your journey, these insights and practices will support you in aligning with the natural rhythms of the Earth.
✨ Watch the full episode or read the transcript below to deepen your connection with this transformative time!
Transcript
Hello. Welcome to our 14th episode of the Kairos wisdom keepers, the fall equinox and Mabon rituals. I’m Janet Raftis and I’m Ina Lukas, and today we’re going to talk about the significance of the fall equinox and Maven cycle, along with rituals and ways to celebrate it.
Yeah, this is such an amazing time of year. It is the Fall Equinox. Similarly to the spring equinox, is a day in which the light is exactly balanced, and it really marks from this balancing point, it really marks our slow descent into the winter time. I say slow, but it can start to feel like it’s very rapid at this time, which brings up a lot that we’ll talk about. But the word Equinox itself actually means equal night. And so here we are at this day in which we are harmonized, and you are really tuned into the fact that you have the exact amount of hours of sun as you do moon, essentially. And so now we’re entering into, like the heavy Moon time of our Wheel of the Year.
So the equinox, entering into this balancing of darkness and light, feeling that energy of balance. And we want to also bring this in here, because this year in particular, we’re going into an eclipse season, so it’s an important time to bring your awareness to balance and harmony, and it is the halfway point between the summer solstice and the winter solstice. And the dates vary a bit each year, but this year, it lands on September 22 the Fall Equinox has been celebrated for 1000s of years by cultures around the world, and there are even ancient monuments that were built to capture this exact moment of balance, such As Chichen Itza in Mexico, and garhwah in Cambodia, even Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. There’s the Sphinx and the Pyramids of Giza and Palenque in Mexico. So there are all these different cultures that created monuments specifically designed to capture this moment of time of the balancing of day and night. I love that it’s just been so revered at such a special time as the you know, both equinoxes and both Solstices have been by our ancient people who really understood the essence of light and all that that meant for them, right, for their physical bodies, for their crops, for everything that sustained them.
So this is really the time of the Second Harvest. We had the first harvest with llamas. We’ll have the last harvest with Sam. This is the, you know, the last of the bulk of the harvest, right? Like the harvest is definitely winding down. Here we are having that acceleration of the shortening of the days. And so this has been, historically, a really bountiful celebration. We’re going to talk a little bit about gratitude with it here too. It is this time of the year when people really celebrated all that they had reaped, right, everything that they put in motion. Around the spring equinox, when they were in the planting season. It’s now pretty much, for the most part, come to fruition. So this is a time when you really want to honor that aspect of the harvest.
It’s also a time of massive shifting in the light, right? So we hit that exact balance on the Fall Equinox, but then we start to shift into, you know, significantly less daylight hours. We are becoming more attuned to the moon. During this time, this shifting of light is going to impact you on a hormonal level. Light, we’ve talked about this in our earlier episodes, light actually affects our endocrine system and all of our internal workings on a very biological level. And so there can be during this time that internal knowing is happening. Meaning that we’re moving into more darkness, right?
We have now left the extroverted part of the year, and we’re moving into the introverted part, the part that is more receptive, the part that is quieter, the part that is more reflective. And this can really start to trigger, especially as we see this in the external world as well, right? As the leaves start to change colors, it can really trigger feelings of grief and the knowledge that all things come to an end, right? And this can take you into a state of, you know, of sadness. And a lot of people really suffer from seasonal depression disorder, and that is something that can be, I guess, triggered by this time of the year. And we believe that while this is a very real thing, that if you consciously work with the cycles, you can really mitigate some of that, because there is something here when you’re really attuned to the cycles, and when you’re listening to your biology, and when you’re allowing yourself to go into that deepening state you are then receptive to the gifts of the season. Because every season, every cycle, has so many gifts, it can be hard to go into a cycle that is going to demand greater introspection, where you don’t have all the distractions of the summer and being outside and the social aspects of it, and the growth aspects where you’re really beaming towards expansion and outwardness.
This is a time when you start to go inward, and it can be hard to be with ourselves. It could be hard to listen to ourselves, and that is a lot of what comes up during this time. Yeah, I love everything that you just said, and it brings us more deeply into what the real spiritual significance of the Fall Equinox is, and the Fall Equinox is the season of senescence. So this is a beautiful time to really go outside and start experiencing what nature is symbolizing and showing you, and one of the most beautiful ways to experience fall is by experiencing autumnal light. I have been obsessed with autumnal light for a couple decades now, because as a landscape designer, you’re always looking at how light is interacting with plants, and to me, there’s just this amazing beauty that happens.
The quality of light shifts so much this time of year, and it’s not bright, it’s not overhead, it starts to become more diffused. There’s a softening to the light. The light is showing us how to soften, how to release, how to start to become more introspective. This time of year in in northern climates, is when all the ornamental grasses really start coming into their their blooms. You know, the plumage, normally is just green blades all summer. And then so many of the ornamental grass species start displaying all of their seed heads. You know, they flower. These seed heads, the interaction of the sunlight with the grasses, the autumnal light is so different. If these grasses were blooming high peak light summer, they wouldn’t be as magical. It would be more harsh light. And in the fall, all the sudden, these beautiful stands of ornamental grasses are backlit by this light, and it like showcases the simplicity of their beauty, because they’re not big, you know, red, yellow, come get me. Come pollinate me. Flowers, they are simple in their beauty. They’re not showy, right? And yet the light is working with them to bring all of the elements of their simplicity into the forefront. And it’s just this beautiful time to be driving around country roads, to be looking at all the native wildflowers that are blooming this time of year, and like, start paying attention.
Because the other thing that’s amazing about fall is as the light is shifting, as the temperatures are dropping, all of the plants are cued to that right so their production is slowing down. And what happens in Fall is a timelessness, where you can start to feel the stillness, and there’s still growth, but the growth is starting to senesce. It’s starting to slow down. And so it’s such a different energy than spring. You feel in the ground. In spring, all the budding energy that’s coming up, you can feel plants coming into action. You can feel this like birth of life, and it starts moving through you.
But in the fall, nature is like whoa. Let’s pause here. Let’s take a deep breath. Let’s let time become suspended as we are moving from this time of great productivity, of great harvest, into a time of introspection. And so it’s this senescence and suspend. Situation where, if you go outside and fall, you can really feel that slowing down. It feels like Time stops in fall, and it’s giving you the cues to go internal, to feel appreciation for these moments of the green and the life and the harvest that is left is telling you slow down. You’ve done the work. You’ve done the work. This is your time of harvest and appreciating in the stillness all that you’ve created. And you’re going to take that down into sow and down into Yule, into introspection.
And so there’s another beautiful part of this is the leaves changing color. So when leaves change color, what’s actually happening is they’re stopping their food making process. During the growing season, chlorophyll is constantly being produced and broken down, produced and broken down. And what happens is that plants are cued by temperature and length of day and length of night. And so in the fall, as the temperatures start to drop and daylight hours get shorter, chlorophyll production slows down, and then it stops. And so what happens then is that when the chlorophyll production stops, it allows the other pigments in the leaves to become visible, the reds, the yellows, the oranges. So these colors are always in the leaves.
Year round, all of those beautiful, gorgeous fall colors are always present within the leaves. But the chlorophyll, the green of the chlorophyll, actually masks them, in essence. So the carotenoids, these chemicals are there, but they’re hidden by these large amounts of chlorophyll in the summer and so like the beauty and the symbolism of that that this is a time for allowing yourself to let all of these underlying colors within you, these different facets of you that have always been there, like they’re being revealed as the overproduction of growth starts to subside, so noticing where you have been in a productivity cycle that makes you feel and look a certain way and put out a certain frequency into the world, all beautiful, all part of the seasons of our lives, the seasons of how we move through the year, how we move through our own cycles. This is a way to realize that, oh, as I let go of the Go, go, the doo, doo, the green, green, oh, all of these beautiful underlying colors are starting to present themselves.
Yeah, it’s so true. Because in our society, we’ve been really programmed to be solar, and we’ve been programmed to be solar throughout the year, and we’re taught that our productivity is a measure of our worth, and that the amount of output that we have is a measurement of our value. And what this really teaches us, and this is why it’s so powerful to actually like, really drop into each cycle and really be attuned to it is that we are not just solar, we are also lunar, right? So this is a big part of the balancing of those energies as well that we have on that fall equinox day, is that, you know, we have the balance of the outward with the inward, the solar with the lunar, the masculine with the feminine. Doesn’t matter what type of body you’re in, like whether it is a masculine or a feminine or non binary one, you have masculine and feminine energies inside of you, and they are both important. They are both valuable. They both have lessons and gifts to instill. We’ve just been taught and trained that those feminine qualities are to be dismissed, are to be suppressed, are to be kind of pushed aside, right? Like the things that really honor the feminine intuition and our receptivity. So what’s really powerful about this too, is that, you know, we’ve just been through the cycles of outward action. Now we’re moving into the cycles of receptivity, right?
Like this is where we get to soften and show that side of us. How can we allow ourselves to really receive all that spirit and source and nature has for us during this time? This is a time of heightened intuition, because when we are in action and when the action oriented aspects of us are in the forefront. We’re not always slowing down to really hear the deeper messages, right? Even if you’re highly intuitive, there’s a lot more noise in those external months, and we go into these quiet months where we’re more subdued, where we are not around other people as frequently and where there actually is a heightened lunar aspect, then we are really in this beautiful space to experience the gifts of like, what we can channel from source, what we can receive from source, and in honoring those parts of us that are softer, that are more feminine, that are like so. Innovative and sensitive, right? We get to really tune into that, and we get to heighten if we are in this cyclical type of living, we get to showcase those parts of ourselves. And it may not be an outward showcasing, but it’s an integration. It’s an expression and integration of our wholeness, of our unity, and of the importance of that, because when we are in our wholeness, right, honoring all the aspects of ourselves, then we are actually much more attuned to our authenticity.
And there’s nothing inauthentic about the outward expression, about the outward months, but there’s also beauty right in the authenticity of allowing for the quieter times and the quieter, more receptive aspects of ourselves, right? And so this is the part of the year like we have, you know, a lot of people don’t love being cold, and they don’t love staying inside more. You know, definitely does like being cold, but there is also, for a lot of people in our current society, a heightened fear around being alone, right around having to be quiet. And one of the real profound beauties of the season that we’re entering as we go into it, you know, the mabon cycle salon and Yule cycles, is that we do get to slow down, if you can really get into the space of harmonizing that aspect of you so that you can be so present to yourself, so that you can know, oh, this is what wants to be healed. This is what needs to rest. We have to rest. We have to have cycles of rest, because the cortisol fueled summer months are not sustainable year round, right? So it’s like really embracing the beauty of slowing down and the beauty of that receptivity and the beauty of your body guiding you to what is needed right now,
I love that so much, and that brings us into, you know, how do we work with the spiritual meaning of the Fall Equinox, and what type of ritual work do we do during the fall equinox and and the Maben cycle. And as you’re hearing all of this, we hope that you’re getting this, this transmission that’s causing you to start to reflect more inwardly and to notice these motions that are coming up for you, the sadness, the loss and and the appreciation. This is a time, ritually, to go, intentionally, walk in nature, connect with nature, and start looking for the seeds, you know, all of these flowers, these grasses that are going to seed, starting to collect the fallen leaves and be with the trees.
Be with the plants. Feel the gift and the messages that they’re giving you as they are slowing down and there’s they are letting go, you know, the power of leaves of trees, stopping their production, their chlorophyll production and and shifting colors and then releasing their leaves is such a gift of showing you that it’s okay to let go, it’s okay to let go, it’s okay to embrace every stage of of Your beauty, every stage of your humanness and and allowing the trees and the plants you know, in ritual, in ceremony, to speak to you and to help you move through grief, to help you move through loss, and to help you feel that reciprocity of appreciation, where they’re showing You that, yes, I’m dropping my leave now, and yes, I’m going into the deep dormancy of winter, but come spring, all of that xylem and phloem will be running SAP through me, and I will come alive again. And I am looking forward to the downtime, because that was a lot of production. I look forward to not having to be in production. I look forward to being in this inward space where then I get to be born again. I get to produce again. So any way that you can bring ritual into this process of of grieving, of letting go, and of feeling the energy of that balance of of polarities at this time, the masculine, the feminine, looking at the polarity of extroversion and introversion, output versus input and action versus receiving.
Like these are all the different components that we’re playing with that you can bring into ritual. I love that you just brought up rebirth, right? Because that’s such a huge piece of this is that there is no life without death, and there’s, you know, no death without rebirth. And this was something that has been this has been believed for 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of years. It’s only kind of recently that the idea of rebirth and resurrection was suppressed so. In Western cultures, or monotheistic cultures. So we are beginning the descent into the underworld, and the descent into the underworld. You know, in traditions around the globe, there are underworld deities, goddesses and gods who rule the underworld, because the underworld is what coincides with, you know, the winter time, the fallow time, and it was the place of regeneration. It’s where the souls went to rest and regenerate so that they could be reborn again. And so we have these mythologies from around the world that address this. And one that is well known is that from Greece of Persephone and Demeter. And it was in the fall that Persephone, we’re actually going to have a full episode on this coming up. Next episode will be on Demeter and Persephone, but this is when she begins her underworld descent. And so if you do work with the Goddesses Persephone and Demeter, demeters grief at losing her daughter for six months out of the year, is to work with that archetypal energy, to work with the energy of Persephone who accepts, who ultimately accepts this role of, okay, I go into the underworld.
I’ve become queen of the dead. And she sort of embraces it, knowing too, that she’s going to come back above the earth in the spring. This is a powerful way to work with this energies is to actually, like, tap into archetypal energies of the season, yeah, and in that process of knowing that we’re going into the underworld, this is also a time you know, one of the biggest rituals and celebrations this time of year is expressing gratitude, right? Like the deep appreciation for the harvest that you have had and for the ways in which nature is continually showing you how to balance yourself, how it’s providing for you that balance, again, the equinox, balance of giving and receiving. So this is a powerful time to give offerings back to Gaia and to keep this exchange in balance. You know the thank you for how you’ve nourished my body all season. Thank you for this bountiful harvest and and giving offerings. You know the offerings as you’re walking through nature, as you’re talking with plants, give tobacco offerings, flower offerings and offerings of love, offerings of just speaking your love to to the plants, offerings, to the beings, to the elementals, to the gods, like speaking this appreciation to them, you know, thank you. Thank you recognizing, letting them really know that you recognize the amount of systems of support that are here, physical and non physical, that that are nourishing you and keeping you alive and being in deep reverence, yeah, and it’s also a great time to gather with your loved ones and celebrate. Have a potluck where everybody makes their you know, preferred seasonal dish and brings it over and together, you celebrate the flavors and the bounty and the joy of connecting with those you care about, heart to heart, and really being in that place of gratitude for the capacity to have this bounty and to get together and share it with one another.
And another option is that we have a Fall Equinox activation on September 22 and so on the Fall Equinox, you know, which also is initiates Libra season, which is the season of balance and harmony, right? Like no coincidence that those are together, we’re going to be working with the balancing of energies, specifically this year, as we move through an eclipse season, because things can be a little intense and chaotic during eclipse season, and yet we have this beautiful moment of balance and harmony. And so a few of the things we’re going to be working with in this activation are witnessing your projects blossom into their ripened fullness through focus and inspired energy, creating greater yield, more money, amplified overall abundance by balancing the energies of your inner masculine and feminine powers to maximize you personal autumnal harvest and releasing emotional chaos and creating structured, harmonized balance is your pathway to success.
These activations that we do are so potent and powerful and it’s hard for us to tell you what the results are going to be, because every person has their own experience in this we also have a Mabon ritual handout for you that is going to be linked in the show notes, along with information about the activations with a very specific ritual that you can use if you are new to ritual practice, or just if you enjoy trying different ritual practices, this is one that we know and love.
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Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Join us for a powerful Fall Equinox activation to create calm in the cosmic storm. It’s a chance to harmonize and balance so that you can:
- Witness your projects blossom into their ripened fullness through focused and inspired energy.
- Create greater yield, more money, amplified overall abundance by balancing the
energies of your inner masculine and feminine powers to maximize your personal autumnal harvest.
- Release emotional chaos and create structured, harmonized balance as your pathway to success.
Enjoy this FREE Fall Equinox/Mabon ritual to experience greater balance in your life.
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The information provided in this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment.