Mabon

Mabon is the youngest of the eight names on the wheel: coined in the 1970s by neopagan writers to fill an unnamed autumn equinox, borrowed from the Welsh 'Mabon ap Modron' — the divine son, taken young and returned in triumph, whose myth carries themes of departure and return.

Whether or not the name is ancient, the practice is. Every settled agricultural culture marked the autumn equinox with a second, larger harvest — the apples, the last stone fruit, the storable roots, the vine. The barns filled while the light shortened; the community measured what would carry them through the dark.

Mabon is the sabbat of taking honest stock. Not of hoarding, but of noticing: what did the year give you, what did you make of it, and what is worth carrying into the darker half.