There is something almost suspiciously tidy about the Autumn Equinox. Light and dark are balanced, the harvest is gathered, baskets of apples appear everywhere, pumpkins glow obligingly in the background, and a few artfully arranged acorns complete the picture. Perhaps there is a cinnamon broom involved if we are feeling particularly festive. Pagans are very good at autumn. Give us a crisp morning, a candle, and something orange and we will absolutely make a religion out of it.
And yet, the older I get, the less I think the Autumn Equinox is really about any of those things. Increasingly, I think it is about reckoning—not the ominous, thunder-on-the-horizon sort of reckoning but reckoning in its older and simpler sense of counting up, taking stock, and looking honestly at what came from what we planted. The harvest does not care what we intended to grow. It shows us what actually grew, and there is something profoundly Pagan about that.
To read the full article, go to the Green Egg Blog: https://greeneggmagazine.com/2026/09/20/the-honest-harvest-what-the-autumn-equinox-asks-of-us/