Autumnal Equinox – Harvest Tide and Threshold

As the light wanes and the balance shifts, we mark the Autumnal Equinox not with the modern names of Harvest Home, the Hairst, or—gods preserve us—that abominable misnomer Mabon, but with the traditional and resonant observance of Là Fhèill Mìcheil, or Michaelmas.

While we do not claim this name as uniquely ours, nor seek to Christianize our rites, we recognize Michaelmas as a Harvest-tide recognition grounded in both folkloric and spiritual tradition. It is a time of reckoning, protection, and the final ingathering. A season when debts are settled, thresholds are blessed, and the inward spiral begins.

We honor the turning with bannocks, fire, and offerings of the land’s last abundance—not as a mourning of summer’s end, but as a commitment to the deep and necessary descent that follows fullness.