- Do a thanksgiving circle, offering thanks as you face each direction — for home, finances, and physical health (North); for gifts of knowledge (East); for accomplishments in career and hobbies (South); for relationships (West); and for spiritual insights and messages (Center).
- Dip colorful leaves in melted paraffin wax for altar decorations that may be enjoyed even after the celebration or attach to a wreath for your head
- Make a dried leaf mobile
- Make wine
- Take a walk in a wild place with your family or circle members; Sing songs and talk about all the things you’ve done over the summer and spend time discussing other things you’ve done together in the last year; gather wild seeds and seed pods to decorate your circle for ritual.
- Gather dried leaves, herbs, plants, seeds and seed pods
- Scatter offerings in harvested fields
- Offer libations to trees
- Have a potluck feast with a group of friends and loved ones to celebrate the abundance of the season.
- Adopt someone in a nursing home. As a family, take your special person baked goodies and colored pictures. Read them books or tell them stories.
- Walk around your neighborhood picking up garbage. Do what you can to improve your home and prepare for winter.
- Pick a subject that interests the whole family. Go to the library or find other resources and study that subject. Together, share what you’ve learned.
- Cut an apple in half to show the star inside. This is a reminder that all life is renewed in some way.
- Bake cored apples filled with butter and cinnamon as a special treat.
- Create decorations for your front door out of colored leaves, pine cones, nuts, acorns and Indian Corn bundles.
- Honor the birds and small animals in the wilderness or by your home by making a bird feeder filled with seeds and grain.
- Make rattles out of empty gourds and sunflower seeds or seeds collected from nature walks. Use the rattles to make music or scare away bad dreams.
- Look at your family habits and figure out what you can do to improve your conservation habits. Can you use less water or recycle more of your garbage?
- Go through your garden, tending it, thanking the plants and flowers for their abundance, harvesting whatever is ready-try collecting seeds of non-hybridized plants for next year
- Make a mandala of seeds and grains on the ground, an offering of the Mother’s gifts to the animals and birds; infuse it with specific magick that will be released as the seeds are consumed or scattered.
- Share your abundance…collect a basket of goodies from your garden or pick up a few extras when shopping at a local farmer’s market to share with a neighbor who has no garden, or who has had a rough year; gather donations of food and/or clothing for a favorite charity.
- Arrange baskets of fresh fruit and baked goods for friends or family
- Fill a basket with pine cones, fruits, colorful dried leaves, wheat, acorns, and fallen pine branches and leave it by your altar or door
- Cook up a Mabon soup with carrots, onions, potatoes, radishes, and/or corn
Customs: offerings to land, preparing for cold weather by bringing in harvest, cutting willow wands( Druidic), leaving apples upon burial cairns & graves as a token of honor, walks in forests, gather seed pods & dried plants, fermenting grapes to make wine,picking ripe produce, stalk bundling
Spellworkings of Mabon: Protection, prosperity, security, and self- confidence. Also those of harmony and balance. Taboos:It was considered unlucky to cut down the very last of the Harvest, and so was also left to stand in the field by some traditions.
Activities of Mabon: Select the best of each vegetable, herb, fruit, nut, and other food you have harvested or purchased and give it back to Mother Earth with prayers of thanksgiving. Hang dried ears of corn around your home in appreciation of the harvest season. Do meditations and chanting as you store away food for the Winter. Do a thanksgiving circle, offering thanks as you face each direction – – for home, finances, and physical health (North); for gifts of knowledge (East); for accomplishments in career and hobbies (South); for relationships (West); and for spiritual insights and messages (Center). Decorate the table with colorful autumn leaves in a basket. Display the fruits of the harvest – corn, gourds, nuts, grapes, apples – preferably in a cornucopia. Or decorate with wildflowers, acorns, nuts, berries, cocoons, anything that represents the harvest to you. Like its sister equinox, halfway across the Wheel of the Year, the Autumn Equinox is a good occasion for a ritual feast. Plan a meal that uses seasonal and symbolic fruits and vegetables. You can serve bread, squash, corn, apples, cider and wine. Make some homemade wine or cordial gather and dry herbs, plants, seeds and seed pods. Make grapevine wreaths using dried bitter-sweet herb for protection. Use ribbons of gold and yellow to bring in the energy of the Sun, and decorate with sprigs of dried yarrowor cinnamon sticks. Make a protection charm of hazelnuts (filberts) strung on red thread. Make a witch’s broom. Tie dried corn husks or herbs (broom, cedar, fennel, lavender, peppermint, rosemary) around a strong, relatively straight branch of your choice. Make magic Apple Dolls Gifts of the Harvest can be used to make tools and emblems that will remind us of their bounty all year round. Look for colored leaves. Collect fallen leaves and make a centerpiece or bouquet for your home. Save the leaves to burn in your Yule fire. Vist an apple orchard and, if possible, pick your own apples. Hang apples on a tree near your home. Watch the birds and other small animals who will enjoy your gift. This is also the time for replacing your old broom with a new one. As the broom corn is ripe now, besom making is traditional and magickal this time of year. Begin the festival with a vineyard or orchard harvest. You might check the farm lands in your area to see if there’s an orchard or pumpkin patch that allows customers to harvest produce for themselves. Traditionally Sabbat festivals begin at sun set on the eve of the Holiday. You can use the daytime hours of this holiday eve to prepare baskets for harvesting the next day. Baking a pumpkin pie (from scratch if possible) is a wonderful way to bring in the fragrance of the holiday season.
More ideas here.