What is the Autumn Equinox?

Autumn Equinox, occurring around September 21-23, is the second harvest festival, of the fruits. Its energy is appreciation and harvest. It's about seeing results from all the hard work and the "seeds" you have been planting through the year. It's a result-oriented time of year, during which, if you focus hard and remain clear many wonderful things can manifest in your life.

The colors associated with the Autumn Equinox are orange, red, brown, and purple. Customs associated with the Autumn Equinox are offerings to land, preparing for cold weather and bringing in harvest. The tools that symbolize the Autumn Equinox are cornucopia, corn and harvested crops.

Autumn food include: squash, corn, pumpkin, grain, nut bread, apples, seasonal vegetables, and apple cider

Decorations include: Autumn flowers, gourds, acorns, corn sheaves,and Autumn leaves

Incense and plants associated with the Autumn Equinox include: pine, sage, sweet grass, myrrh, and marigold, passion flower and fern,

Stones associated with the Autumn Equinox are: clear quartz, amber, peridot, diamond, gold, citrine, yellow topaz, aventurine, and cat's eye

Herbs associated with the Autumn Equinox are: rue, yarrow, rosemary, marigold, sage, aloe, walnut leaves and husks, mistletoe, saffron, chamomile, almond leaves, passionflower, frankincense, rose hips, bittersweet, sunflower, wheat, oak leaves, maple leaves, dried apples or apple seeds.

During the equinoxes the plane of the Earth's equator passes the center of the Sun. At that instant, the tilt of the Earth's axis neither inclines away nor towards the Sun. On the Equinox the Sun rests above the equator and day and night are equally divided giving us 12 hours of sunlight and 12 hours of moonlight. In actuality though, the balance of light and dark occurs a couple days after the Autumn Equinox and precedes it a couple of days before the Spring Equinox.

Each equinox and solstice period is a "power time" and loads of intense spiritual energy or "Earth chi" comes flooding forth. It's really easy to access this energy in prayer, meditation, or psychic work. It's also a great time for any creative work whether you come up with grand ideas or and it's a super time to do healing work or receive healing work. There are multidimensional gateways of energy that open up at these times and the indigenous people celebrated and used the energies that are available at those times.

Three days before and three days after the Autumn and Spring Equinox, the ley lines of the Earth give off a heightened electromagnetic charge. This can make you feel a bit hyper or unsettled but if you can ground the energies and apply it correctly, this is an amazing time for healing, meditation, cleansing, and any type of power prayer, manifestation, and/or psychic work. These cosmic occurrences are interpreted as the need to seek balance in ones life, find your center, and re-align yourself.

The Autumn Equinox is a very powerful time when subconscious messages, information from your spirit guides, and spiritual information can easily break through and inspire you. It's also a lot easier during this time to do any type of psychic work which requires finer sense perception. Psychic readings will be uncannily more accurate. Holistic health treatments will be more effective and on target. The truth seems to penetrate more readily during this time where too often we can become mentally cloudy or emotionally unbalanced.

The Autumn Equinox signals the beginning of Autumn. It signals the need to balance light and darkness within us. Far too often we only adore the light and fear the darkness. But when you can befriend your inner darkness it becomes less of an enemy and more of a place of nurturing for slow and steady growth. The sun is moving into Libra, a balanced and measured sign which is famous for being fair in issuing balance where blame is due. It is a time for harmonizing what is off balance before the end of the year. I find that this can be a challenging time because it may come out weird and unusual, especially if you have been off balance for a while. It may bring up anger, especially with people that need to be addressed. You may feel resentment and a sense of "you can't take it anymore". This is how your stuff is showing up. This is what you need to focus on because this is what is calling your attention to seek balance.

As the plane of the earth's equator passes the center of the sun this too is an opportunity for us to re-align and find your center. Far too often, we get so caught up in our life and forget to center ourselves. We lose track of our directive and may steer off course for a bit. This is an opportunity to re-align yourself with your purpose, dreams, and goals, or even just to re-align with yourself. Spending time around people is great but their beliefs, thoughts, actions, and even language can become imposed on you from being around them so much. So it's very important to re-align yourself with your true nature... who you really are and all you were meant to be. Re-align yourself with your intention or change and integrate new information or experiences to re-define your intention. Center yourself. Find your center. Define your center....your connection to Source, the magick within, your spiritual connection.

For centuries, the Autumn equinox has been a way to recognize the blessings of life. Before the days of supermarkets and the convenience of readily available food, life was hard. People farmed the land and provided sustenance for themselves. Weather, as always, has often been unpredictable as one of the many events that could destroy an entire mainstay of existence. Other problems such as mass insect infestation may have left weary crop farmers wondering how they would survive. So it's no wonder that when harvest was bountiful, gratitude became important. Hence, many celebrations of thankfulness cropped up. These were heartfelt sources of joy.

This is the time of rituals regarding thanksgiving, harvest, and introspection.

We have been actively working and expressing... putting ourselves and our ideas out into the world, growing and changing. Now is the time to pause and go within, and take stock of how far we have come. Our inner work, our growth, is our harvest. Time to honor our journey and the rebalancing that has taken place within us. Notice the seeds we planted and how they have blossomed thus far. Lets open our hearts in gratitude.