Mabon Festival, Fall Equinox, Sept. 20–23
The Harvest Festivals of the Witches’ Wheel
by Yvonne Owens
(Parts of this article have previously appeared in Sagewoman magazine and The Wheel of the Witches Series from Reference West publishers)
The festivals we now know as Loaf Mass, Lughnassa, Mabon, and Thanksgiving are vestiges of the rites of ancient Mystery Religions and have, for time immemorial, traced an archetypical theme. This universal story describes the felling of the Divine Child in the form of the harvest (or the pre-agricultural “Sacred” or “Sacrificed” Victim of the Hunt) and Her or His descent into the Underworld womb of the Earth Mother for the duration of winter. Here, the Divine Child is composted (re-conceived, fertilised, quickened or “transformed”) into new life, to be reborn again in the spring. This epic saga embodies cycles of growth, maturation, death and birth (of animal, vegetable, and human life) in response to the seasonal orchestrations of available light.
These have been the underlying themes of autumn festivals since the earliest human societies of hunter/gatherers. The mystical death and rebirth of the Magical Child of the Divine Mother is at the very root of religious development. The endlessly repeated cycle of the Goddess and Her Divine Child is the basic shape of the yearly seasonal round, characterising ideas about sacrifice (“to make sacred”), celebration, worship, devotional offerings and gratitude for the “gifts” of Mother Earth. The passion of the Mother Goddess and Her repeatedly sacrificed and resurrected child of spring flowered out of our history as a species foraging in the wild, and informed the development of agriculture as the dawn of civilisation. The sacrifice of the Divine Child is seen as materially and spiritually redemptive, and the Child is (and always has been) regarded as a Saviour. The divine ‘child’ is the harvest grain, or sacred quarry, the One who is felled so that others can live.
Persephone is the Roman name for archaic Greek Kore, who departs from her mother, Ceres or Demeter, to dwell with the Lord of the Underworld, Hades, for four months of the year, when winter afflicts the world above and nothing will grow, causing her divine mother to grieve, further dampening growth cycles. She returns in the spring, is reunited with her folorn mother, and life is renewed.
Persephone with Demeter, British Museum
Persephone is also typically shown bearing sheaves of grain.
Images of the God as Wonderful Youth, or vigorous, mature man, and images of the Goddess as Mistress of the Grain emerge at this time of year. In Fall, She is seen as conservator of Her offspring: the earth’s precious resources represented by the Vegetation Gods — Lugh, Dionysus, Adonis, Attis, Mabon, Osiris, Tammuz, the ‘King’ of the harvest festival of Sukkoth and John Barleycorn, among countless others. Osirus, in one of his hymns, declares “I am barley,” in describing how he is felled and dismembered, yet rises again and again.
Whether I live or die I am Osiris,
I enter in and reappear through you,
I decay in you, I grow in you,
I fall down in you, I fall upon my side.
The gods are living in me
for I live and grow in the corn
that sustains the Honoured Ones.
I cover the earth, though I am cut down
I rise again
whether I live or die I rise again
For I am Barley.
I am not destroyed.
I have entered the Order,
I rely upon the Order
I become Master of the Order,
I emerge in the Order,
I make my form distinct,
I am the Lord — of the Granary
I have entered into the Order,
I have reached its limits.
~ From the coffin text liturgy of Osiris: Coffin Text and the Book of the Two Ways, Egyptian ‘Book of the Dead.’
The ballad of John Barleycorn proclaims that “he is dead,” then describes him being ‘ground between two stones “ in a grisly re-enactment of a harvest, personified as a divine fool, felled, threshed, milled, cooked, and eaten. In the Gospels, Christ says, “This is my body, this is my blood; eat this in memory of me,” showing his provenance as a seasonal god, cut down (like all good harvests) in his prime.
Frequently the deities have animal counterparts, totemic aspects that are frequently those creatures which commonly feed on their vegetation form. For instance, grain-god, Osiris, was known as “The Bull of Heaven,” as was Tammuz. And wine god, Dionysos, was revered as a black goat, the creature most likely to be found munching on grape vines. Ritual wineskins were made from the skins of sacred black goats, and goat meat was the sacred food of the Dionysian mystery rites — along with little bread man figures carried in baskets. (Pork was the sacred food of the Eleusinian mystery rites of Demeter and Persephone, along with little cakes.) These creature-aspects served as sacrificial proxies in many cultures; their immolation at the eight major festivals represented the relatively few, very sacred occasions upon which the general populace ate meat.
More primitive, pre-agricultural divine sons, such as Adonis, Mabon or Lugh, are identified with wild creatures such as stags, fish, birds and wild boar. The “divine offspring” of the Earth Mother are seen collectively as a conscious, willing, noble sacrifice. They are also seen as aspects of Her, as most clearly recognised with Persephone or Kore. Reverence for the Earth’s riches underlies the most enlightened spirit of ecology, where abundance is seen as a precious gift, a form of life, never to be taken lightly.
In cherishing all manifestations of this earthly life as the Divine Child, we can experience profound grace in partaking of them. The sense of wonder attained through nourishing the body and soul with what is construed as the body of the God is the original model for the sacrament of transubstantiation. “Communion” was first practised as a vital part of the rites of Dionysus. The bread manikins were ritually named “Dionysus,” and carried into the hills in baskets; the wine that was the special substance of the God of the Vine was carried in goatskin flasks. The bread manikins were passed around to the celebrants, torn into bite-size pieces, and ritually consumed. This extremely archaic ceremony may have been practiced in Old Europe, Asia Minor, and areas surrounding the Mediterranean for as long as 7,000 years. We still make “ginger-bread men,” and bread manikins have extremely venerable antecedents.
The basket represents the womb of the Mother in Her many guises (Hestia, Gaea, Modron, Demeter, Ceres, Cybele, Semele, etc.). Black goats were the special avatars of “Dionysus Eleutherius,” meaning “God of Liberation” or “Freedom.” This is the same concept of wine and beer’s ancient role in providing release after the labors of the harvest, or liberation from the bounds of duty, as supplied the root for the word “Libation,” from another (Roman) name for Dionysus: “Liberius.” Bread and wine were consumed as the body and blood of Dionysus, centuries prior to the consumption of these “miraculous” or transubstantiated substances in the rites of Christianity. Dionysus could take the form of a beautiful woman or man, and is still depicted with an androgynous, Hermes type of beauty by contemporary artists.
Dionysus could take the form of a lion, a tiger, a leopard or panther, a bull, a serpent, or a black goat, and was a shape shifter and metamorph like his centaur mentor, Chiron or his satyr teacher, Silenus. As such, Dionysus was a ‘Lord of the Animals’ type of deity, sacrificed in and as the harvest and consumed as sacred goat or bull meat at the Dionysia in the holy temple precinct of the theatkon, Greek for ‘priestess/manaead setting and seating. From this term for the sacred ritual, drama precinct, we get the word ‘theatre’ — as well as the dramatic arts, comedy and tragedy and thespianism, itself. Thesbus was the name of the poet/dramatist who won the first-ever awarded prize for tragedy, a word that means ‘goat faced’ — something that makes sense of the solemn eyed, drawn down facial features of both the tragedy mask and a goat’s visage as its model. His prize was a black goat.
Dionysus from Pella, Macedonia, 4th century BC
1st-c. AD Roman copy
Dionysus as torch bearer for the Underworld descent (Iacchus) and as the mature grain and wine god following with maenad celebrant, Red Attic ware, 4th-c. B.C.
Veneration of the Horned God as Lord of the Animals or Master of the Beasts is of extreme antiquity and is first recorded in the religion of the Harappan Civilization (Indus River Valley Civilization) of prehistoric India. The ‘Celtic’ Gundestrup Cauldron features lions, elephants, rhinos and other creatures not found in Europe at that time, in addition to the trigon Pipal Tree leaf motif from ancient India.* These sacred Asian motifs appear in different sections of the cauldron alongside deities from Celtic myth, such as the Manannán mac Lir (youthful Celtic sea god) figure riding a dolphin. The Herne figure of the Gundestrup Cauldron is also cognate with Hermes; he wears the Pipal leaf crown between his horns, as does the prehistoric Indian vegetation god, Pashupati, shown in the ancient seal from around 6,000 years ago below.
from the Gundestrup Cauldron, Herne or Cernunnos Horned God, Lord of the Animals figure, circa 200 B.C., silver vessel, La Tène Celts, Denmark
Pashupati (‘Lord of the Animals) with horns and trigorn Pipal leaf crown, Mohenjo Daro c. 4000 BC.
Pshupati with sheaf of wheat or barley crown, Mohenjo Daro c. 4000 BC.
“Mabon” is a very old Celtic name for the festival which marks the Autumn Equinox (September 21st-23rd). The word means “son,” and refers to the legendary “Wonderful Youth” (or Divine Child), son of the Goddess, Modron — whose name means “Mother.” “Mabon ap Modron” is the full name and title for Mabon, and simply means, “Son of Mother” in Ancient Welsh and Irish Gaelic. The Romans worshipped Mabon as Maponus.
The Autumn Equinox, like the Spring Equinox, finds the days and nights of equal length in a perfect balance of the forces of light and dark. This is the penultimate festival of the Witches’ Wheel of the Year. The cycle of time is seen to have brought the life of the earth to its ripe and mature expression. From the moment of the Equinox, the animal and vegetable life of the Northern Hemisphere begins to enter its decline towards the more dormant stage of winter.
The Festival of Mabon celebrates the divine son as both the wild stag of the forest and the mature God of the Harvest. As the vital spirit of all that is born, flowers or bears fruit, He is most cherished during the autumn when His gifts are reaped from fields, gardens, vineyards, and orchards. His sacrifice is commemorated in songs like “John Barleycorn,” and various work songs of this type which were sung collectively during the long days of harvest. Mabon is associated with “The Oldest Animals” in Celtic myth, and is also seen in the agricultural products which came along over the millennia during which He was venerated. Beer, wine, bread, stored grains, fruits, vegetables and other gifts of Modron, the Mother, are the sigils of Mabon. Like Dionysus, he is nearly always shown as a beautiful youth.
Mabon celebrates the moment when the “Wonderful Youth” is in His glory. It is at this time that He is most beautiful, most perfectly mature and “ripe.” The fulfilment of the harvest of tree and vine, forest and field, is the theme of Mabon. There is a poignancy about Autumn that expresses the bittersweet irony in the vegetation divinity’s greatest fulfilment, for — like all true harvest gods — Mabon’s epiphany is to be felled in his prime, drawn into darkness, mourned, commemorated and thanked, dismembered, then re-membered and reborn in His perfect, new and perfect body, once again. In the eternal circling of the Witches’ Wheel, He is manifested as the new buds, grain, and green barley shoots — all that emerge into fruit and flower in the spring.
Like Persephone, Mabon is kidnapped by the forces of wintry darkness and swept into the Underworld for half of the year. His descent occurs at Samhain, after the final harvest, when, along with The Hallows (Britain’s talismanic power objects and emblems of sovereignty), he is taken below by the King of the Underworld, Pen Anwynn. Many heroes and heroines undertake to retrieve Mabon throughout the Mabinogi (the compendium of ancient Welsh lore — which means either “children’s wonder tales” or “tales about the Wonderful Child”) and other legendary myth cycles. Among them is King Arthur, who rescues Mabon from his dark imprisonment.
In the Dream of Rhonabwy (Traditional), from the Celtic Western Mystery Tradition, King Arthur descends into the Underworld with the fading of the light at Samhain, to do battle with Pen Anwynn (The Head of the Underworld, King of Raven and Leader of the Army of Crows, Owein). The reason he does this is to rescue Mabon Ap Modron (“Son of the Mother”), the Divine Child of the Goddess and the solar Light of the World. The Underworld King persuades Arthur to engage in a board game, like Chess, instead of a battle at arms. The winner will have their boon granted by the other. Arthur strives to return Mabon to the world above, each year, after Mabon descends into the Underworld with the fading of the Light. He accomplishes this feat at the Winter Solstice, when the Sun King (Arthur) returns with the Divine Son.
Owein,’ said Arthur,
‘call off thy ravens.’
‘Lord,’ said Owein,
‘Play this game.’
In Celtic legends and early mediaeval tradition, earthly castles became the theatres for Underworld descent, supernatural rescues or soul-retrievals. In Branwen, Daughter of Llyr, and The Dream of Macsen Wledig, actual places are the sites for Otherworldly events. Glouchester Castle (Caer Loyw) was one reputed site of Mabon’s imprisonment. It was a “shining fortress” like that in the tale of Owein, where, in roles similar to Peredur’s nine Witch tutors, beautiful maidens and youths attend the hero. These magical castles contain invaluable treasures, like the Fort of the Golden Bowl, where Rhiannon and Pryderi are lured into “thrall,” or enchanted servitude. Pen Anwynn (“Head of the Underworld”) guards the sacred regalia of the British Mysteries, the “Hallows” (or “Thirteen Treasures of Britain”) — in places like the “Castle of Wonders,” to which Peredur journeyed, and in many other Otherworldly portals or “Hollow Hills.” In this, Pen Anwynn corresponds to Pluto, the King of Hades — also called “Lord of Riches” or “Wealth Giver” (from Plouton meaning “great wealth or riches”).
Pluto is a late (Roman) variant of early Greek Ploutos, a god of wealth originally associated with agricultural prosperity (or “riches of the earth”).Accumulated wealth was a by-product of agriculture (as was civilization, itself), so these imagistic associations are subtle and sophisticated metaphors. But their true artfulness can only be appreciated when we realize these symbols also referred to the core value of life and magic, encapsulated in the fundamental law of physics, “energy is never created or destroyed, it only changes form.”
Though the transformation can be gruelling and sometimes looks like death, there are no true endings for, in the darkness, new life of inestimable worth is incubated — initiatory wisdom to which the magical and transformatory treasures to be gained in the Underworld provide the key. Caitlin Matthews, in Mabon and The Mysteries of Britain, describes how “Pwyll’s experience of Annwyn (the Underworld) is of a magnificent palace of entertainment and joy, while Arthur’s face is said to be scarred with anxiety after the experience of the raid upon Annwyn for the Cauldron of Plenty (also called the Cauldron of Rebirth) and other empowering Hallows.”
These images allegorise the contracting influences of winter and the “dark night of the soul” which characterises the hermetic “descent” of psychological introspection and withdrawal. Winter represents an energetic “hibernation,” and its emotional colouring is the need to conserve vital fuel, both spiritually and with regard to material resources. When He is restored to the bright world above ground, Mabon reigns again as the God of Spring, in an endless cycle of transformation. According to Caitlin Matthews, “The hero who descends to the Underworld becomes the guardian of the Otherworldly Hallows in the paradise of Avalon. Those who have eaten of the fruit of the apple which grows there can only return as the reborn Mabon, the son of Modron, because that fruit bestows eternal youth with potent restoration of spent strength.”
Mabon and Modron are extremely archaic aspects of the Divine Mother and Son, and are but seldom alluded to in the later Christianized Celtic (Irish and Welsh) tales. The legendary Bards Amergin and Taliessen are, like Mabon, associated with the idea of the “Glorious Youth.” In His ancient homelands, for the most part, the special affection and reverence traditionally felt for this archetype by Irish, Welsh, Scots, Cornish, Bretons and other Celts is now given to Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection. This is most apparent in Irish and Manx monastic writings, where Christ is addressed on intimately friendly terms — as “Jesukin” and other fond nicknames. The proprietary solicitude and love once reserved for Mabon by the general, Pagan populace is now evident in sentiments around Christ’s sacrifice. Monastic writings describe Christ in the exact terms once accorded the generous, sacrificial Green God.
* The Gundestrup Cauldron may have been fashioned by foreign smiths, or traded from Scythian tribes through the extensive Celtic trade network.
