There is a Season (Turn, Turn, Turn)

The Equinox, the Wheel of the Year, and the Seasonal Redecoration of my Altar

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Later this week, the seasons will change (all over the earth). Where I live, in the global north (Colorado, USA), the season will change from summer to autumn. This is my favorite of all the seasonal changes, as I love the cooler weather and the festive times to come — the traditional “harvest-time” of my ancestors, a memory that lives in my DNA.

It’s a time known by pagans & witches as Mabon. It’s a time that I celebrate as a nature-based event that was and is observed by humans rather than created by some humans and imposed on others.

Two Years of Helpful Reading

I’ve written often about my mental health challenges. They are hereditary and they have very nearly cost me my life. I’ve also frequently written about my spiritual rebirth and the progress I’ve made toward being a truly joyful person. So, you could say honesty is kind of my niche.

Since January of 2021, I’ve read only books that I perceived as being helpful for my spiritual development. Part of my path has been allowing my Better Version of Me to lead me to the next thing I’m supposed to do or find in my quest, and the book Year of the Witch: Connecting with Nature’s Seasons through Intuitive Magick was right in that path.

In it, the author (Temperance Alden) details her own relationship to the cycles of time, putting that relationship in the larger context of not only her own spiritual tradition, but also demonstrating ways that different cultures and traditions have celebrated and marked cycles and seasons of the natural world.

I read the book just over a year ago and decided to follow her lead in marking in my own way the changing of the seasons.

One Witch’s Year

Beginning last September, I’ve decorated my altar and my lair (as I’ve christened my basement bedroom/yoga/meditation room) to mark the changing of the seasons. I’ve bought inexpensive seasonal decor (think acorns and fall leaves or sunflowers and poppy garlands) and spent a few hours just cleaning and rededicating these sacred spaces in my life. I’ve come to anticipate that…