Autumn Equinox as a Spiritual Practice

The great turnings of the Cosmic Wheel.

Twice a year, the centre of the sun is directly above the equator and so day and night is of equal length all around the globe. As I write this, we are approaching the Autumn Equinox (sometimes known as Mabon) on September 22, and the spring one will be six months away, in March 2021. The angel Raphael, the Archangel of the West meaning Healer of God, now in the autumnal time of the Western Gate supports us. This is the energy of death and rebirth, of transcending the opposites and coming to wholeness.

As we now live in what is known as ‘COVID times or era’ it will be interesting to see how the ensuing six months will play out for us all personally and in the context of the divine universal cosmic plan.
We are small beings in a much larger order of events than we can control. We walk forward each day, putting ourselves into the hands of our personal belief of God, as we know God.
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Traditionally, Equinox is a spiritual time to set your altar ‘ Your altering’ for your life. We thank the Universe for all of her abundances. Impending winter is a time of death, rebirth, and transformations. Mabon meaning is the harvest, or gathering of self and move towards this full sense, filled up by summer sunshine and long daylight hours, as we take this energy forward into the darker winter months as a sustaining ‘diamond light’ within us.

You might like to make a personal altar to retreat to during the coming winter months. Your ‘altar’ is your personal sacred space of transformation where you settle into an altered state for yourself; you tune into your ‘pause’ the great space we have between action and reaction, between an external version of ourselves and our deepest purest internal version.

Find your sacred place in your home. You may have more than one, I have several; yoga studio, office, bedroom…and I have the following on my personal altar. You will find what works for you.

Find a special piece of cloth, shelf, stone, or even a beautiful piece of wood.

A picture of a ‘sacred other’ who has meaning for you; saint, teacher, guru, but perhaps not someone you have lost, like a dear family member.

Include fresh flowers, your crystals, natural items like special stones, prayer beads like a mala (I have rosary beads as a continuing Catholic) and then you can light incense each time you visit your sacred altar space to quietly pray, meditate reflect or even cry. We will go into more detail on our Quietly Praying Gratitude YSY women’s group. Read more here

I know you will enjoy creating your personal sacred space and close with the sacred words of St Teresa of Avila.

If you have resonated with the sentiments in this blog, explore our Quietly Praying Women’s Gratitude group which will begin meeting to explore Spiritual and devotional practices, from October 2020 as part of the Spiritual Pharmacy@ YogaSpace Yorkshire.

More details can be found on our events page.