Autumn Magic | Invoke the Harvest
During my morning meditation, I was overwhelmed with the notion to sage my home, and to do so in a Widdershins direction. I never do magick to get rid of anything. No banishing or hexing or removal spells. Generally moving counterclockwise during spellwork is done with the notion of pushing something away. So it was an odd idea for me to have.
Here's why
Any attention to anything makes it grow and holds it in my experience. So paying enough attention to something to banish it, would really be doing the opposite. But in this case, I received a very clear message. This isn't about pushing away. This is about release. About untangling, decoupling, letting go.
Here's the way I did it.
The Blessing and Release of Summer
After meditation, I took a few leaves of sage and mugwort, both gathered and dried this year, and I put them into a brass censer bowl and lit them up. When I got a nice smoke going, I moved counterclockwise around each room in my house, starting with the top floor, overlapping where I began. I wafted the smoke with two sacred feathers that represent the Great Above and the Great Below, the descendants and the ancestors, the future and the past.
After the upstairs, I did the downstairs, room by room, widdershins, making up songs of setting free and of thanks. I found myself thinking about the summer we've just had and how it is waning now, and what a beautiful autumn it is becoming.
I thought about all the seeds I planted and desires I launched in spring and tended over the summer, and how the energy of desire was now shifting into the energy of becoming its own fulfillment. Autumn is the time of manifestation.
I went into the basement with the smoking sage and mugwort, all around, and then I went outside and circled the house and lawn, garage and pond, all the vehicles, everything.
I kept going until the herbs had burned well and truly out. Then I let the wind carry the ashes with my thanks to the summer that has been.
Nature Fills Every Vacuum
So you never want to release a bunch of energy without refilling the space. Knowing this rule, I returned to where I had begun, taking up a bell with a different sacred feather attached. The bell is brass and rings with a high and pure sound. I moved again through the house, but this time, I moved deosil (clockwise,) around each room, and around each floor of the house, jingling it the entire way. The energy was so positive and high that I was nearly dancing as I moved around and around, upstairs and down, basement and closet and porch, jingling, tinkling, ringing.
I went outside and circled the house, the pond, the trees, the vehicles in the driveway, the garage, the sheds, the waterfalls, my little pergola, and then the entire lawn. I felt as if I were ringing in the harvest, the manifestation of all the year's wishes and hopes, dreams and goals. I felt as if I were ringing forth a greeting and inviting the blessings of all the unseen beings who live here, the undines and sprites, the trolls and the fay, the salamanders and the sylphs and all the elementals. The nature spirits of earth, air, fire, and water. The energy of every plant and tree and blade of grass, every flower and weed, every rock insect and animal and birth, every piece of earth and pollen and dust. I invoked the blessings of Source and Earth Mother and the abundant and generous gifts of autumn. I rang in the refreshing, breezy days, the chilly, bracing nights, the stunning colors, the harvest, the harvest, the harvest.
I kept ringing all the way back into the house, and welcomed the season with all my heart and soul. It was a beautiful, and entirely spontaneous ritual, but it felt absolutely perfect. Later, I will leave offerings of almond milk and honey here and there, and something shiny for the crows.
The Season of Manifestation
We are less than a fortnight away from Mabon, which some call the Witches' Thanksgiving. It's the second of the three annual harvest festivals and it falls this year on September 22nd at 3:37 PM Eastern Time. Two days earlier, the Full Harvest Moon rises in the sign of Pisces, a perfect time for manifestation magic.
Remember that harvest and manifestation are very much the same thing.
To harvest is to pluck the fruit from the tree you've tended all year long. It's to dig up a whole hill of potatoes from the tiny piece you planted in the spring. It's to pick the beans and eat them with milk and butter. It's to father the herbs.
When we speak of manifestation we mean to make something real that wasn't real before. To make a thought into a thing. To make a wish come true. To see the results of our work, and of our magic. It's the part of the spell where something brand new appears in a flash of purple light and glitter-smoke.
It's what this season is all about.
It's Time to Shift
It's time to stop thinking about what we want, and claim it instead. It's time to stop waiting and start collecting. It's time for relishing everything we've been building. It's why we feast in the fall. To celebrate what we have grown. It's an act of appreciation for ourselves and all we have done.
Shit the focus. Start looking for the blessings of the harvest season, and the act of looking for them will be the beacon that guides them in.
Blessed Autumn!
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