The Sythe Moon and the Feast of Nuts: Part II

The Sythe Moon and the Feast of Nuts: Part II

• Tuesday, September 21, 2021

Another year in quarantine, another Feast Day in solitude.  The Harvest Moon is my birth moon, it is when I came into the world at the time of the scales, under the auspicious Glittering Venus, the  Morning Star.   This Tide is for corn and nuts and grains and apples.  For the late roses and the early frosts and the first rains after the relentless summer dryness.  

For me, this is the time when the lightyear turns dark, when the sun passes from spring's hands to those of the winter Hag and all those riding, nightmare-inducing, wild spirits of the crossroads who go about giving a cold breath to the land.  The Hags that ride at night on their many implements and beasts, these are the ones I follow across the night sky.

They have come for the sacrifice; for the turning of the land from fruitful and green to a time of reservation and survival.  This is the time when the horned father rides with all his host and array.  The autumn is personified as a lush woman bearing a cornucopia. a sickle, a crown of roses and the flames of burning fields around her.  And beside her, a withering pyre, where there rises shadows and spirits.  That's what I see in the subtle turn of the land, in the change of the trees.  And for this moment, where the day and night are equal and turning toward the short dark essence of a dark-year, we honor the sustenance that emerges from this tide, and taste the changes.  I think we all await it; this time of pumpkins and apples and sweet smells and savory ones.

The Harvest Is... food, family, home, sacrifice, gathering, rush, preparation, sex, finality... it is the light waning, and the all-consuming darkness and the message that it sends to us; there must always be a balance, a time of emptiness, a hunger.  All things must change, and we can only hope that the change of the tides, there will come a change... one that will reopen the world.

Death is always with us, some times more than other times... right now death is feasting heavily.  I accept this, and think on the nature of mortality. I watch the leaves wither on the trees and appreciate the change that death brings.  I watch the tearing of rabbits by the owls; this is the cost, it is the way of things.  And I look at the many dead from this disease, and prepare my mind for the change this has brought in the world.  And so, I feast.  On nuts, and grains, and apples, and corn, in honor of life, and death, and that sacred dance they do.