The Equinox Burn
As the season continues to stir and darken, I’ve been craving the kind of celebration I only tend to experience at Butser Ancient Farm, my former, beloved work place before I left to go freelance in 2018. In spring, crowds flock to Butser to bask in the flames of the wickerman as it burns into the night sky, but for the last two years, the farm has also hosted a quieter, more contemplative festival in honour of the autumn equinox. The cider glass and rosehips glow in the setting sun, accompanied by throat singers and the haunting song of Anna Tam on her nyckelharpa, before the dusk draws in with a ceremonial boat burning. As the flames light up the sky, the battle cries and drum beats of two ‘living history’ groups - the Viking hoard of Wuffa, and the Anglo-Saxon war band Herigeas Hundas - call in the new season and the next turn of the wheel.
Unlike Beltain - the heralding of summer and new growth - the autumn equinox is a time to look inwards, to witness the changes in the earth and feel them pass through our bodies like a wave. Within the laws of the universe, energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed from one form to another. Autumn is the season of renewal, when the Celtic year begins again, and the enveloping darkness is nothing to be feared - only an invitation to retreat into the cocoon of the mind, to shed an old skin and begin to grow another.
‘One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.’ (Carl Jung)