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Autumn’s Balance: Embracing Growth, Reflection, and Serendipity

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."”
Albert Camus

I do hope you’ve all had a wonderful summer. With a new academic year starting in September for much of the world, I often think that September feels more like the beginning of the year, with new excitements and challenges. There’s also that familiar push towards fulfilling whatever goals we set ourselves for 2024 – what can we achieve before year end?
I’m in Canada currently running another Expansion Through Colour workshop introduction to Colour Mirrors in Calgary. Then on the Equinox itself my good friend Andrea Reindl, of Legacy Creative, and I are in Toronto running a workshop on Aligned Vision and Authentic Connection – how you present yourself to the outside world in a way that is congruent with who you are, is easily understood and draws in those clients you can most help. Out of the office, the changing season is as much in evidence here as at home with decidedly chilly evenings and groceries bursting with fruit and vegetables including some types of squash I’ve never met before.

Mabon, also known as the Autumn Equinox, is a pagan holiday celebrated when day and night are of equal length. This balance between light and dark serves as the foundation for Mabon’s themes of harmony and thanksgiving. This year Mabon falls on 22nd September in the Northern Hemisphere. It is considered the second of three harvest festivals on the Wheel of the Year, coming after Lughnasadh and before Samhain. Since Mabon is a harvest festival, it involves the preparation and sharing of a meal that includes the season’s produce—apples, pomegranates, roots like potatoes and carrots, squashes, and grains.

This feast is often shared with family or within the community as a way of giving thanks for the bounty of the harvest. Participants often decorate altars with symbols of the season, such as acorns, pinecones, autumn leaves, vines such as ivy, and horns of plenty. Candles in autumnal colours like deep yellows, oranges, and browns are also common. Apples are also a prominent symbol of Mabon, representing life and immortality. Activities might include apple picking, making cider or apple pies, and using apples in rituals. Similarly, the making and drinking of wine is traditional in honour of the grape harvest.

The equinox is a time of balance, and this is a central theme in Mabon. It is a time to reflect on the balance within your own life (work vs. rest, giving vs. receiving) and the external balance in nature. Some people practice the act of balancing stones at Mabon as a meditation on balance and thanks, reflecting the balanced day and night. It offers a moment to stop and relax, enjoy the fruits of personal endeavours, and prepare for the slower, reflective winter season ahead.

Mabon coincides with the Sun passing through Human Design Gate 46, the Gate of Serendipity, or Self-Determination. “Growth and good fortune come through application, truthfulness and sincerity, or, simply being in the right place at the right time with the right attitude. Small gains eventually lead to great accomplishments. Love of your body is love of your temple, or love of the vehicle that conveys you through your precious life.” (Chetan Parkyn).

I love this sentence from Hua-Ching Ni’s translation of the I-Ching about Gate 46 where Gates correlate with hexagrams: “This hexagram counsels one to emulate a young sprout by maintaining calmness and balance and allowing growth to evolve naturally.” And it inspired my choice of the Albert Camus quote above. If you’ve read my previous newsletters, you will know that each Gate has 6 different expressions, or Lines: –

  1. Promoting growth
  2. Expanding naturally
  3.  Progressing easily
  4.  Fulfilling commitments to grow
  5. Proceeding regardless of visible progress
  6. Reviewing – it may no longer be the time for growth but for service
As we look to making the last few months of 2024 really count, are we focused on our growth or in service? In truth the two go together and we are talking of emphasis. I believe there is a German word for which the rough English translation is “thrownness” as in how a potter might throw clay onto the wheel. We may not be able to control the quality of the clay nor the trajectory of that throw but once we’ve landed on the wheel, we can create whatever speaks to our Soul – balanced, harmonious and whole.
The Colour Mirrors bottle that correlates with Gate 46 is one of the Chakra bottles C10 called “Suchness”. It is an expression of the new Sacral, orange over rose pink in colour. “Rose pink brings love into the issues of abuse to which orange relates. It puts you in a state of alignment with your soul. Your soul never thought you were abused – it knew you were in a process of learning and healing. This bottle supports creative ideas and opens you to bliss and enlightenment. Here is where you can finally be at peace with the suchness of life.”

I think the “suchness of life” is much like “thrownness” and indeed “serendipity”. We may have great good fortune, or we may not. When my dad died, my mum gave me a card which had been given to her by a school friend at the time of her father’s passing in 1935. It read: “When the one great scorer comes to write against your name, he writes not that you won, or lost, but how you played the game.” I sense that this is what this time of year is all about. We are invited to give thanks for our blessings, whether achieved by hard work or by good fortune, and consider how we want to play the next part of the game of life.

With love and all good wishes,

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