Mabon & Honoring the Cycles of Nature - 7

In this episode, we explore Mabon—the Autumnal Equinox—one of the most meaningful points on the Wheel of the Year. Together, we’ll reflect on the history of Mabon and its symbolism of balance, gratitude, and release. Autumn’s turning invites us to honor our personal harvests, release what no longer serves us, and prepare for the quiet months ahead. Plus, I’ll share how you can access a simple Mabon ritual on my YouTube channel to celebrate this season of change, connect with nature, and plant seeds of intention for the future.

https://www.youtube.com/@ALifeCollective

Welcome to Lady(ish)—the podcast where real talk meets whole-self transformation. Hosted by coach, healer, and wellness guide Autumn Noble O’Hanlon, this unfiltered space is for women who want more out of life—but on their own terms.

Each week, we dive into the messy, beautiful, and often contradictory layers of wellness, covering everything from career shifts and body image to energy healing, intuitive living, fitness, burnout recovery, and creating change that actually sticks.

Whether you're chasing a new chapter, healing old wounds, or just trying to reconnect with yourself in a loud, overwhelming world—Lady(ish) is here to support your evolution. Expect honest conversations, coaching wisdom, holistic tools, spiritual insights, and permission to be a little bit of everything (and nothing you're not).

Because wellness isn’t one-size-fits-all—and neither are you.

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Transcript

Autumn Noble (00:00)

Hello my friends and welcome back to the podcast.

I wanted to jump in here for a special episode to talk to you about what this weekend is bringing in for us and what starts next week. For those of you that haven't met me in person, you might not know the story about how I actually got my first name. When I was born, it happened to be on the first day of fall, hence the name Autumn. My parents were driving to the hospital and my dad says that he heard on the radio that they announced, hey, today's the autumnal equinox and it's the first day of fall.

So originally I was supposed to be named Cammie and here we are, my name is Autumn. So this is absolutely my favorite time of year. But as many of you may know, I am a huge advocate for learning to live a little bit more in sync with nature and connecting with the cycles of the moon and of the sun and really just allowing the seasons and their changes kind of inspire us and how we're living. With that in mind, I wanted to dive into Mabin, which is the autumnal equinox

Festival. It's a sacred time of balance, harvest, and transition. Whether you follow a spiritual path rooted in the Wheel of the Year, which is where the pagan holidays are traditionally represented, or if you simply want to live more in tune with the rhythms of nature, Mabin is a beautiful opportunity to pause, reflect, and give thanks.

As I'm beginning to prepare for my weekend Mabin ritual to just bring in the harvest and kind of honor the changing of the seasons, the equinox, and also my birthday, I wanted to read a little bit more and learn a bit more about Mabin and its history. And I thought I would share a little bit of that here today.

As I said, Mabin is one of the pagan holidays represented on the wheel of the year, which is where the eight sabbaths of the pagan holidays are sort of housed in this beautiful wheel where you can see as the world turns, the earth turns, seasons turn, you move from season to season. And Mabin marks the autumnal equinox when night and day are perfectly in balance.

The holiday is named after a figure from welsh mythology. I'm not going to try and butcher the name here. Although many of the traditions associated with Maven reach far back into ancient harvest festivals celebrated across a variety of cultures.

For many of our ancestors and people that celebrated these harvest seasons, it was a time that was both celebratory because we're bringing in the harvest, but it was also very sobering because we knew what was coming around the corner. Longer periods of dark, periods where we wouldn't have access to the harvest and we would be sort of living off of what we created up to that point. So it was a celebration of bounty of the harvest, but also a preparation for the darker months ahead.

communities would come together during that time to give thanks for what they do have to feast, but also to begin preserving food for the winter.

some symbols of Mabin that I think are accessible to all of us are first and foremost, this idea of balance. We're sort of coming into this equinox this day of the year where light and dark are perfectly in balance, really reminding us to seek harmony and balance within ourselves and balance between work and play.

activity and rest. Masculine and feminine parts of ourselves, the equinox and this festival really call us to honor all aspects and sides of ourselves in equal parts.

Another common symbol of Mabin is just simply a harvest festival, which is where it started. It's a time to get together, give gratitude for the abundance around us, both literal but also metaphorical. And so if you've been wanting to maybe start a gratitude practice, Mabin and the autumnal equinox are really easy and I think an important time to do that because we may be going through challenging times, but having a gratitude practice

really calls us to see that yin and yang of balance and good and bad in all aspects of our life and allows us to honor our own harvest and the things that we have to be grateful for even when maybe things aren't going as perfectly as we would hope. Another symbol of Mayben is the idea of letting go. This is the time of year when trees start to drop their leaves and similarly

this time of year invites us to release what's no longer serving us, to sort of take stock of where am I losing energy and where am I feeling particularly weighted down in evaluating whether or not it might be a time to kind of clean the slate, take stock and reset and prepare for a time of self-reflection, which is where the next upcoming festivals or the next upcoming holidays are leading us.

Lastly, another important symbol of Mabin is just preparing for the future. As the year sort of wanes a bit and we're approaching the end of the year, it's time to prepare for quiet reflection, which is the time of the winter. The winter and the darkness is a time for us to sort of evaluate what we're wanting for the upcoming year, reconnect with ourselves and reground. So as we're letting go in Mabin, we're also sort of preparing

for that time of darkness and that time of reflection. In order to do that adequately, we have to start sort of taking things off of our plates and that's where the letting go idea comes into Mabin.

Symbols that are commonly associated with Mabin that you might want to put around your house are the traditional kind of fall symbols that many of us are accustomed to. Pumpkin, apples, gourds, wheat, corn, grapes, wine, and anything that's sort of richly and lushly covered in those deeper colors of fall. A lot of people will decorate their homes with autumn colors like reds and oranges and golds.

and light candles to honor the shifting of the light. Those candles are sort of symbolic of us bringing the light into our homes and finding that light within the coming darkness.

If this is resonating with you and you're interested in sort of living more in alignment with nature's cycles, Mabin is an invitation to slow down and start noticing this very evident changing of the seasons, particularly if you live in the Midwest or somewhere where you're starting to see the trees changing colors. Mabin is an excellent entree into honoring the natural seasons because it's hard to miss it when we look around.

living in alignment with those natural cycles can help us feel more grounded, more intentional and connected to the earth. And the earth has its own sort of vibrational frequency and by grounding and sort of calling in and connecting with the earth at this time, we can try to match our own energy with that frequency of the earth. From a mental and emotional perspective, it's about taking time to reflect on what you've

quote unquote, harvested in your own life, whether it's projects that you've completed, lessons that you've learned, personal growth that you've achieved, or the evolution of relationships around you. Focusing on those harvests in your own life can bring a deeper meaning to this season for each and every one of us that wants to sort of live more in alignment and.

allow the natural ebbs and flows of nature to move through us. In closing, if you're feeling called to honor Maiden in your own way, I've recorded a very simple ritual that you can try at home that's inviting you to connect with the energy of the equinox to honor your personal harvest and plant seeds of intention for the months ahead.

I'm going to be posting that ritual on my YouTube channel, so feel free to check that out. You can find me on YouTube at A Life Collective, and it's also linked in the show notes. So I often post rituals and meditations associated with the natural holidays and the pagan holidays, as well as new moon and full moon rituals as well. So if you're wanting to live more in alignment and if this kind of piques your interest, you want to learn more, feel free to check out my YouTube page.

follow some of those rituals and find little ways to bring the natural cycles of the earth into your everyday. Whether through ritual, reflection, or simply just a mindful walk in nature, I hope that this season of balance brings each and every one of you gratitude, abundance, and peace. Thank you so much for joining me on this exploration of Mabin. Until next time, honor your cycles, honor the earth, and honor yourself.