Well, it’s been two weeks, and September’s new moon is officially here.
This new moon falls squarely in the center of the month, and it comes a week prior to Mabon, also known as the autumn equinox. To me, this moon feels like summer’s very last breath — like low, warm light gently caressing us one last time before the winter sweeps in.
New moons are blank slates, the points where the moon cycle resets. They’re great time to set intentions, and this moon is a particularly good excuse to use to get organized and focused. Astrologically speaking, the moon is in Virgo, a sign often associated with order, management, and momentum. This means that (whether or not you believe in astrology) this new moon offers an opportunity to declutter, to organize, to strategize, and to set things into motion.
Personally, I love a fresh start. It’s part of why I love traveling; you leave everything behind and open up an entirely new chapter where anything and everything is possible. There’s always so much magic in a new beginning, and this new moon in particular invites us to open ourselves up to the possibilities inherent in starting anew. So this new moon, I hope you’re able to launch your next chapter with intention and clarity.
By the time we reach the next full moon, we’ll also officially have entered the autumn months. Mabon, which is September 21st, is one of my favorite holidays on the Pagan Wheel of the Year (more on that later).
Mabon marks our entryway into the colder side of the year, into the dying months. Traditionally, it was a time to reap the second harvest and to give thanks for all the abundance the summer months had brought. (It may actually be the blueprint for what we Americans call Thanksgiving — it always amazes me how many holidays have roots in pagan and earth-based faiths).
Mabon is also a time of equilibrium and balance, which seems to align well with Virgo season. On Mabon, we find ourselves in the center of two halves; here the days and nights are exactly the same length. (This year’s Mabon finds itself directly on a half-moon as well). We find ourselves dancing between the light and the dark, encased in the harmony of those contrasts.
Mabon is also associated with apples, which generally represent knowledge and abundance. It seems likely that the Garden of Eden story might be in some way symbolic of the apples of Mabon — and of the inevitable shift of summer into winter, Persephone falling down the rabbit hole into the underworld, the brightness of innocence turning into the wizened wisdom of the crone. So many of our modern religious traditions connect back to the natural world’s cycles; they hold immense power and wisdom, down to the smallest detail, and the transition from summer into fall always feels like one of the most potent shifts of them all.
Mabon asks us: In what ways can we accept and integrate change, death, and decay? What does the earth teach us about embracing our natural cycles, including our withering and the falling-down of our great leaves?
Every answer lies buried in the flicker of coldness that rides in on these winds and the turn of the moon from nothingness into brightness and back again, if we look, if we listen.
What I’ve Been Thinking About This New Moon
Over the past two weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about time — how we can bend and shape it with our minds, how our perception can stretch a minute into an eternity or a month into a flash.
I’ve spent a large part of this summer in Maine by the ocean, and I always feel like time hangs suspended in amber in this place. One day I was walking around a loop nearby our house when a group of kids passed me by. They looked exactly like me and my cousin and some of the kids we used to hang out with did once, back in those wide, burning summers, striding around in our sweatshirts, the boys tall and gangly, a sense of extreme urgency to their quick steps.
I hadn’t seen the kids at all before that and never saw them again. The small but persistent part of me that believes in magic wondered if time had come unlocked, if a bit of the past had weaved its way into my present. I thought of how they saw me as some lady walking a dog, someone who — to them — was not young and who had never been young. And yet once I was them.
A few weeks later, I spotted an old man standing under a tree, his face dappled in sunlight. I tried to get a look at him, but I couldn’t. I wondered if he was someone from the future, someone I’ll meet or become when I’m fully in my crone era.
And I thought about how everyone we pass by was once young and will be old, and we all still contain those experiences within us, just as fall contains summer inside of it, just as living things keep their seeds and eggs frozen until it’s time to bring them back to life.
Sometimes I do subscribe to the theory that all time is happening at once — that all time bears the same weight and is equally alive every moment. Then again, I do believe that time fundamentally influences the shape of the world and space itself. And I believe that, as T.S. Eliot said, “Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past.” And I also believe that the only thing that exists is the mustard seed of the present. And I believe all these things can be true at once.
All I really know is that time has been slipping and cracking for me lately. It seems to speed by then freeze and unspool. Ever since the pandemic, time seems to have been rushing by at warp speed. I can’t get it to stop speeding by, and I cannot believe how much time has passed when I look back on the last few years. I know I’m not alone in this feeling — an article was just published in The Cut today about the same exact thing. I also know time is supposed to get faster as you get older, but I also think that the pandemic shifted something in time, undid some kind of weight that was holding it down before. Now, time seems wilder and slipperier more alive to me, like a lot of reality.
Time is perceptual, not objective, and because of that, I think it’s possible to do time magic — AKA to change the way we experience time. (Is magic not really just change?) Personally, I really want to slow down time. I think about this constantly. (Ironically, I probably spend way too much time thinking about this). As much as I complain about all the trials of the day-to-day, deep down I know I truly do not want to miss a single minute of it. I want my life to move by a glacial pace. I want to live in the saturation of each and every moment. I want to be awake for life, to inhabit my body and mind fully, to expand into the fullness of my being. Mostly I don’t want to let time slip away without doing the things that I’m meant to do on this Earth. I know that means being more present with the fullness of each moment, including the ones that have more ragged edges.
Maybe that’s my plan for this new moon, and the intention I will set for this Mabon and this next half-year cycle. How can I avoid my desire to check out and to thus let time slip away from me? How can I focus on being fully in every moment, and feeling each emotion as it comes like the tides? How can I live with fewer regrets?
I also want to emphasize that I think these rituals, and the moons and Wheel of the Year holidays, can be worth celebrating even if you aren’t pagan or spiritual at all. They’re merely markers of time and signifiers of cycles that can open our eyes to new ways to see the world around us and ourselves. Of course, if you fully believe in the spiritual significance of the planets and the old gods (which about half of me does, personally), then more power to you. Belief is the most powerful force in the world. We might as well use it to our collective advantage.
Anyway, here are a few journal questions and some suggestions for how to celebrate this slightly bittersweet, apple-scented time of year.
New Moon Journal Questions
What are you beginning this new moon cycle?
What are you letting go of and leaving in the past moon cycle?
What are you calling in over the next six months? What are you leaving in the past?
What in your life needs to be organized, condensed, decluttered, or streamlined? How can you go about doing that? (In the spirit of Virgo season, all these journal prompts can be written as lists).
Mabon Ritual Suggestions
Make an altar using natural objects near you
Make a fire and burn something that symbolizes something you want to let go of
Clean your home to rid it of old energies
Go apple picking
Write down a list of things you’re grateful for for the past six months
See you in autumn.