The Sabbat Mabon is named for the Welsh God who symbolized the male fertilizing principle in Welsh myths.  Some mythologists equate him as the male counterpart for Persephone.

Mabon is a day of balance between light and dark. It did not go unnoticed by the English and the Celts, but as a Sabbat it was not observed by them until the Norse invaders brought it into prominence and placed it between Lughnasadh and Samhain as the second of the three harvests.  With the number three in these conquered lands associated with the Triple Goddesses and with the act of completeness, they adopted this addition wholeheartedly.

In China the day is known as Chung Ch'iu and marks the end of the rice harvest.  Judaism celebrates Succoth near this time, another harvest holiday with pagan roots that is often observed by building a temporary outdoor dwelling decorated with fall vegetables and in which all meals are eaten for that celebration. In old Rome the equinox marked the infamous Festival of Dionysus, the God of Wine, whose party lasted for as many days as the revelers could remain upright.

The old Anglo-Celtic festival of Harvest Home, a respite form the work of harvesting and a celebration of thanks, probably once fell on Mabon.  In remembrance of that time, Mabon is referred to as the "Witches' Thanksgiving" and is one of the oldest harvest celebrations in Europe.  Thanksgiving as it is known in the United States and Canada grew more out of the Pilgrims' need to connect with the festivals of their homeland than it did from any religious impulse, and that first Thanksgiving Day had many detractors among the Puritan leaders due to its pagan origins.  The Christian hymn "Come, Ye Thankful People, Come," commemorates this festival, and is also an appropriate song for pagans to use at their harvest rites.

Some music that could be used at your Mabon gatherings: "We Gather Together To Ask the Lord's Blessing," "All Good Gifts" (from the musical Godspell),"Now Thank We All Our God," and "Thanks be to God," a hymn set to an old Welsh folk tune. These songs are mainstream but reflect a universal theme that hardly anyone will object to singing them.

The original Harvest Home festival featured many of the same activities that characterize Mabon.  These include cider pressing, grain threshing, dancing, feasting, and the crowning of a Harvest King and Queen that is still one in pagan circles.  The King and Queen become the earthly vessel for the God and Goddess to reside in during the Mabon ritual and festivities.  The English folk song "Lavender Blue, Lavender Green" was a song that grew out of Mabon observances.  Blue is the color of the Harvest Lord and green of the Harvest Lady.

You can add any prayers and songs of thanksgiving to your deities in any Mabon rituals that you do.  You may also want to observe the "official" Thanksgiving Day in the United States (fourth Thursday in November) and in Canada (second Monday in October).  When these holidays were established in 1863 and 1957 respectively-they were decreed as days to give thanks to our Maker for all our blessings, including the harvest.  There is no reason pagans cannot fully be a part of this holiday by expressing their own thanks to whichever deities they worship.

It became customary during Mabon in Ireland, and in parts of Western Scotland and Cornwall, to visit burial mounds, called cairns, to honor dead ancestors, particularly female ancestors.  This practice may have had two origins. One was to visit the dead and appease them so when they visited the human world at Samhain they would be predisposed toward kindness and good will.  The second origin may have been in ancient Ireland where a cult of female ancestor worship based its beliefs on the notion that, upon death, all human souls were reabsorbed into the wombs which bore them, and therefore only women inhabited Tir-na-nog, the Irish Land of the Dead also known by the name "the Land of Women."  Women were the ones required to decorate and adorn the graves at Mabon while the men prepared the nearby feasting site.

Cairns and cemeteries were feared by many of our ancestors as places where evil spirits lingered.  Approaching such places at Mabon was deemed safe because it was believed that the balance of light and dark would act like an equilateral cross, and offer protection from any negative spirits attracted to the graveyards.  Fires were lit at the cairns, or carried in gourds similar to our jack-o'-lanterns, to further frighten away baneful spirits.

Just prior to Mabon, the Druids cut wands from the willow tree, a tree associated with death and also sacred to the Celtic goddesses.  These wands were thought to be powerful tools for magick involving the conjuring of spirits they consulted for divinatory purposes.

Some pagans question why there is a focus on death at Mabon, a theme they usually associate with Samhain.  Mabon begins the season of autumn when leaves die, and nature, having given forth an abundance of new life-giving foods, withers so that the cycle may begin again.  The deities are aging and the God will soon die, as will the old year.  For our pagan ancestors who marked time by the turning of the Wheel of the Year, this was a natural time to reflect on the meaning of death.

Mabon is not only a time when night and day are equal, but all things are in balance for one brief  moment.  The Goddess and God are thought to have equal power on this night, as well as the forces of good and evil.  It was a time when the old Norse people believed one's fate for the coming year was sealed.  The Norse often spent the day and night before Mabon fasting and praying for forgiveness for transgressions.  Divinations and vision quests were done to ascertain whether one's life in the last year had been pleasing to the deities.

Mabon marks the end of the second harvest, a time when the majority of crops are gathered.  Nuts, apples, and grapes-all autumn crops-are the featured items at this Sabbat feast.  Berries, which began to ripen in summer, are ready now to be made into jam, jellies, and wines.  In many traditions there is a taboo against eating autumn berries after Mabon when they were made into wine.

In Scotland and Wales, Mabon wines were poured onto the ground to honor the aging Goddess as she moved quickly into her Crone aspect.  It was also a symbolic sacrifice, as in the spilling of blood, so that the God might live until Samhain.

Wines form the autumn grape harvest have always figured prominently in pagan harvest rites.  Drunken orgies were common practice at the equinox in Germanic lands and in Rome and Greece.

The German Oktoberfest celebrations were once festivals for the wine harvest, particularly in Bavaria, where the equinox was a major Sabbat.  Today one can still buy an alcoholic concoction at the Bavarian festivals called Neuweisswein (New White Wine), a milky and potent by-product of the distillation process.  The mixture is not bottled, but sold by the glassful form old stoneware crocks resembling tall cauldrons.  The milky look of this wine connects it with the Mother Goddess who has entered her croneage at Mabon.

Celtic lands were not as well known for their grape industry as their neighbors to the south, but that did not deter the ingenious Celts.  What they developed was a heather wine made from the native flowering plant.  Though the end product doesn't have the deep sacred significance of grape wines in other lands, it is a tribute to the bounty of nature and very appropriate for Mabon.

Blackberry wines were another Celtic specialty, especially in Ireland, where the berry was sacred to the Goddess Brigid.

See beverage thread for these wines.

~from Sabbats: A Witch's Approach to Living the Old Ways~

by Edain McCoy