Finding Balance, Letting Go
Wednesday Wheel for the Autumn Equinox (with playlist)
The Equinox is a time of balance. The day and night are of equal lengths, perfectly poised between summer and winter, dark and light, day and night.
It is also, as we watch the leaves start to turn and the apples fall, a time of letting go. Of letting things drop, of leaving them to rest, of throwing them on the compost heap.
It’s harvest time, and that means local pushes to donate tinned foods in baskets in the local building society, and give my son packets of pasta to take in for the Harvest Festival at his new school.
Early autumn is one of my favourite times of year, when I often do start to feel in balance again after sticky, humid August, and when a new school year starts. Having been either in education or had children in education since the age of five, I’ve always measured time by the school year and so September always feels more like the beginning of the year to me than January. The crackle of fallen and dried leaves under my feet always speak to me of beginnings as much as endings.
The Equinox is that crackle in time, that moment where everything is perfectly poised, a snap in the air and the world stands still and you can almost see it brushing up against some other world, a held breath, between inhale and exhale.
It feels a good time for new beginnings, and so part of my practice this year will be a gratitude and blessing ritual for our new home. My youngest son and I have made pumpkin and leaf shaped candles, to light along with our wishes for this year. Even my husband, who tends to affectionately think of my practice as ‘that hippie stuff you do,’ enjoys joining in with simple family rituals like this. You don’t need to call yourself a pagan - or anything - to live seasonally and embrace the rhythms of the year.
In the daytime, I plan to visit the nearby forest. It’s the sort of forest that was born to be a portal into the Otherworld, full of dark, gnarled trees, green tunnels leading off the main path and shadows that slip away as soon as you try to look at them. To spend some time with the river there, and with my journal.
Simple Letting Go Ritual
It’s obviously nice to do this outdoors, but that isn’t accessible for everyone and so in a pinch, even a flushed toilet will do. Write down everything you want to let go of, be it habits, worries or resentments, and give them to the running water. Spend some time afterwards in contemplation. If you’re indoors, maybe have a ritual cleansing bath, with your favourite oils and music that moves you. Here’s my playlist for this time of year:
Season of the Witch Lana del Ray
Returning by Jennifer Berezan
She Carries Me by Jennifer Berezan
Rhiannon by Fleetwood Mac
Harvest Moon by Neil Young
Autumn Leaves by Eva Cassidy
Danny Boy by Ella Roberts
In the Evening there is Weeping
Journaling Questions
Where does your life feel out of balance? Where do you feel out of balance? Physically, emotionally, spiritually? ( A really simple exercise that can help with this is the Life Wheel, popular in life coaching.)
What do you need to bring yourself and your environment into equilibrium?
What does the concept of ‘balance’ even mean to you?
If you were to fall, who or what would catch you?
It’s a good time too, to reap nature’s harvest and eat local foods or even forage them if you can; nuts, berries and mushrooms (although please don’t eat any mushroom you’ve picked unless you are one hundred per cent sure it isn’t poisonous.) Our local woods is abundant with blackberries that literally fall into our hands, and the apple tree at the end of our garden has blessed us with the crispest apples I’ve ever bitten into.
Just that, biting mindfully into this free gift from nature and saying ‘thank you,’ may be ritual enough.