Mabon for me is the most harvesty of the three witch harvest festivals. Fruit becomes ripe now. The apples are early at their peak this year, and the blackberries are outstanding. At the recent full moon, my coven had homemade apple and blackberry pies, both made of fruit we picked. There's something very earthy, very pagan, about harvesting fruit yourself, baking it in a pie and eating it, harking back to the times when everyone harvested and cooked their own food. Catherine writes about this pagan urge in her story on mushrooms. We give you also in this issue stories on marrying chakra by chakra, banishing by laughter and falling into fall, plus our usual fine columns on pagan astrology and music.
We decorate our tables with harvest foods now -- as Arwynn says elsewhere, Mabon is "Thanksgiving for pagans." As I write, we are in the first wet spell after a summer of near-record-breaking drought. The maples, the madrona and the fennel, my poor wood betony lying prostrate, plants wild and garden-raised are all beginning to perk up under the life-giving rain. That is something to give thanks for.
I must admit, though, that when I think of the unusual Northwest heat, of strange storms and power failures and low-level wars and people dying of unnecessary illness and suicide bombs, or retaliation against suicide bombs -- when I think of the contempt our federal executive branch has shown the U.S. citizenry -- my reaction is anger. In astrology, anger is ruled by Mars, and we've just witnessed an unusual cosmic event for that planet. Mars is backing off now, having come as close to Earth as it will be in 60,000 years (according to some scientists; as with most scientific subjects, there's room for debate here). Mars still travels in Pisces, retrograde, walking backward from our point of view.
Mars begins to go forward just after Mabon, on September 27. Will we reap then what we've sowed?