Pagan wheel of the year 8: Autumn Equinox

Aspiring to a measure of equanimity

My home internet has been down for a week, and I’ve felt in a surprisingly fraught state about it. Mostly because of my online work and buddhist teaching commitments, but maybe also a bit because I’ve become addicted to resorting to it to cover up feelings of loneliness, lostness and anxiety? Listening to podcasts, random ‘researches’ (and sometimes unnecessary purchases) - sobering to notice that. It was repaired just an hour before I set off on a long weekend in an off-grid tiny hut on the Lizard peninsula, highly recommended by a local friend. Partly to scout for potential local-ish solitary venues, but also to mark my birthday in a very different way to the mega-gathering last year. So an extended digital detox it is, and a beautiful one at that.

Right now I’m sitting in my hut with a patiently awaited hot drink - the water takes about 15 minutes to boil on the outside gas stove without windbreak - after a day’s adventuring in changing-of-the-seasons atmospheric weather conditions. In one day today I walked a bit of the coastal path round ‘the other church cove’, sat by a quarry lake for lunch and then meandered around the eery Goonhilly Downs heath-landscape, accompanied by the constant buzzing of the huge satellite ‘earth station’ satellite dishes, the whirring of the more distant huge windmills and some traffic noise from the nearby road. Quite a strange and confounding combination of sights and sounds. And just now I wandered around the barley fields around the farm I’m staying at, as the sun made an unexpected brief appearance. The hut is beautiful, secluded and in a perfect location, but the facilities around it need some tweaking to be viable for longer solitaries; I’m hoping to have a conversation with the clearly very enthusiastic and friendly host about that and maybe we can work something out.

So where am I internally just now? A bit lost to be honest, after an emotionally intense summer, first staying with a very good friend in London who is going through major illness and gruelling treatment on top of various other life complications, losses and uncertainties. I completely admired the way she was managing all that and it was good to spend proper time together for a while; I was especially inspired and moved by my friend wanting to create a beautiful garden, right in the face of all she was going through. However, I also felt quite helpless about not being able to do very much to make a real difference other than on a small daily basis by helping with some planting, and cooking us a few delicious meals; and then it felt quite a wrench to just leave again, with living so far away now and not knowing when we will see each other again. This was followed by a ‘sangha blast’ on our annual Buddhist Order Weekend in Herefordshire, connecting with many old London friends; I had quite vivid memories and even dreams about my many years of living in a buddhist community with some of them this summer, and since then the question keeps popping into my mind whether I want to or ever will live in community again, rather than on my own. I do miss the ‘family without the stickiness’ feel of it  sometimes, but I most definitely don’t want to return to any city or indeed leave Cornwall - so if it happens, it needs to happen here. There, I’ve put the idea out there, let’s keep the mind open to a stronger sangha element arising in some way down in this vibrant and beautiful celtic realm.

Now I’ve returned back home to much less paid work which feels good and spacious already - and to presently teaching two online buddhist study groups - one only temporarily for one module on request of a sangha friend, the other one a more longterm commitment. I’m very much enjoying this return to some more substantial buddhist teaching - something else I had really started to miss. I had resisted the online medium at first but have now accepted that at least to begin with I need to embrace it for the opportunity it offers to reach out more widely than my immediate neighbourhood. To my delight, nine women have signed up for this new study group; all of them based either in Cornwall, Devon or Alfoxden in Somerset; this should allow for some seasonal in person gatherings as we go along, bringing in that animist edge - I’m looking forward to see what develops in that context.

So outwardly all is going exceedingly well in my life: I’m very grateful for the clarity of heart of where I want to be, for new friendships deepening and old ones taking on new and surprising shapes, for my health and financial security, all held in the embrace of this beautiful land by the edge of the atlantic ocean. And yet, and yet … I have been feeling tense and stressed and chaotic this past week in particular, with my old weekly rhythm gone, and a new one not yet established - why should that matter so much and not simply feel quite liberating and interesting? Gradually letting go of work feels surprisingly anxiety-provoking; I still can’t quite trust that I really do have enough money with the help of my pension to live simply and stop working altogether if I feel like it, when I’m ready for that. Having said that, I’ve been tentatively playing around with the idea of 2026 as my watershed year, when I might take the plunge and do a year-long retreat, or a series of retreats and roamings maybe, starting on or around my 63rd birthday - I was born on the 9/9/63, so this will be my next significant birthday, all the 9’s so to speak (: it helps to put it in writing, so those of you who read my ramblings can remind me and hold me to that when the time comes!

So I’m still moving in snail-like fashion from existential anxiety to trust and calm abiding - aspiring to a measure of equanimity as we approach this autumn equinox. Some months ago my Kinesiologist asked me whether there was something I might not yet have properly looked at in my past (in the context of my ploughing into a parked car behind me on reversing, totally not seeing it…) I didn’t think at the time that anything was likely to have been left out of my very thorough seven-year psychoanalysis. However, some recent very clear catastrophic dreams made me realise that maybe there is another, deeper level to go to in fully facing the sheer terror and despair chronically pervading my childhood home - neither of my parents were aware of these feelings or their impact, so they were hidden and denied but they were tangible, ‘dripping off the walls’, so to speak, entirely uncontained, and dangerous to be around. And so I still feel safest on my own to this day, but simultaneously aware of my vulnerability, especially as I get older. Not quite knowing what to do with that situation - my working ground.

But enough random ramblings about me - let’s come to the point: tomorrow night is the full harvest moon, and a few days later on the 22nd September is the autumn equinox or Mabon, when day and night will be of the same length, before we gradually slip into the dark half of the year. This festival is connected with the myth of Persephone, a fertility goddess who through trickery - and possibly violence - was lured into the underworld, where out of curiosity she tasted seven pomegranate seeds. Through this action she has since then been forced to spend the dark half of the year down in the underworld and is only allowed to ascend from there when the light returns in Spring and summer. This evocative story can be understood and interpreted in many ways and on multiple levels; perhaps at the simplest level of its meaning, it personifies the challenging reality of the seed needing to descend and wait patiently in the cold and dark earth, before awakening into striving upwards towards the light when the warmth of the sun reaches it with the return of Spring.

So as you sit around a fire with friends or by yourself, you might want to reflect on what needs balancing or to be brought into equilibrium in your life right now, in order for your energy to quieten and turn inwards and downwards, in harmony with the seasonal cycle - our attention focussed on the forest floor filling with falling leaves and sprouting mushrooms. Like Lammas, this festival is also connected with the ongoing harvest and storage for the winter of the many fruits and grains of the fields. It’s plum and apple and blackberry season right now, nuts are ripening, and wheat, oats, rye and barley are continuing to be harvested. So a crumble or a nut roast might be fitting feast offerings at this time of year.

‘…the kind of destiny you meet in the Labyrinth is your own as a human being on a planet that is assuredly not human. The moment you relinquish the flower and the fruit to become seed. The seed is tumbled, blown, eaten, abandoned, buried. And then it waits in darkness. You wait in darkness. In the tinge of September air, that’s what you remember, along with the ripeness of all the fruits of autumn, the squash and corn, apples and plums.’ (From Charlotte du Cann: ‘The red tent’)

Wishing you a relaxed and balanced passage through the autumn equinox portal my friends.