Autumn equinox 2022: rituals in the forest to welcome the season

This Friday, September 23, 2022, the northern hemisphere says goodbye to summer. It will take place at 3:00 in the morning and thus will usher in autumn, the season of renewal.

At the autumnal equinox the days get shorter. The sun, tired, falls at noon and becomes colder and more distant, while the trees seem to deposit their last condensed breath in fruits and seeds. What rituals will help us in this region of the annual cycle to take a renewing momentum?

Autumn equinox rituals in the forest

Autumn is commonly said to be the season of melancholy and the descent into winters. However, in the rituals that are celebrated to welcome autumn we find the necessary energy to go back to a new cycle.

the harvest festival

At the foot of the trees we attend the old meeting in which the residents of the forest met to celebrate the unique harvest festival.

I have been told that the countrywomen of Banyalbufarbetween the sea and the Majorcan mountains of Tramuntana, were looking for a gap between the harvests of almonds, carob and olives to go for strawberry trees to the S’Arboçar estate (El Madroñal). With these fruits they made a jam (they cooked each kilo of strawberry trees with 600-800 g of sugar, depending on taste, straining the seeds with a stocking) that was kept all year round.

And in each place of our geography we find in this auspicious time mushroom seekers and various collectors of all kinds of firewood, wood and fruit.

Tens, hundreds of thousands of years ago, our ancestors practiced the same gestures, ate the same fruits of primitive flavors and still today, in this autumn of uncertain sign, the gatherer along the forest paths becomes a member of the ancient tribe and activates the same forested brain regions, feeling the same as the most ancient of ancestors.

Samain festival

“Don’t even think about telling the priest your conflicts, because he will see sin in all of them. We, who wandered through the woods on the bewitching summer night, bring you tidings by word of mouth., good news of cattle and crops, now that the sun is coming from the south; to shine upon oak, ash, and hawthorn.” (Rudyard Kipling, Puck from Pook Hill)

The Celtic New Year began precisely on November 1 with the festival of Samain and it is now, at this very moment, when the tree entrusts its seeds to the intimacy of the earth; with the help, perhaps, of the wind or of the birds and other animals that carry out their job of sowing forests at this time.

The months begin with R in whichaccording to the old saying, so do we we can start planting and renovating the forest. And at the same time we find ourselves in the season of fruits, of abundance and of meeting around the bonfire.

They tell the Nordic myths, which Snorri compiled in his eddasthat Odin himself descends cyclically from his abode in Asgard, the celestial garden of the Ases, to regain wisdom by drinking from the source of Mimir that is located next to the root of the magnificent tree of the world: the famous and immense Yggdrassil.

And it is this restorative source, the source of memory, the same one we turn to when we sleep to restore our mind and reinterpret the world through dreams through a cyclical and deep immersion in the subconscious.

Likewise the prelude to winter is the time to rebuild our world in a dreamlike waythrough sleep, the transmission and recreation of the myth, rest and stillness, self-absorption and recapitulation. Of the return to ourselves.

The traditional society went to the forest to collect the fruits and wood to feed, warm and shelter; and in the warmth of the tree, around the fire, they reinvented the world through song, legend and tradition, which are, after all, the last fruit of autumn.

Myth and legend, dreams, poetry and religion are some ways of ordering, explaining and interpreting the universe. inexplicable that surrounds us. To integrate what has been lived in the long season of ascending light, evaluating and reviewing everything experienced so that memory can assimilate it in its own languagewhich has little to do with that of reason, wakefulness and conscience.

Hence a back to natureto the root itself, provide at this time a special meaning to our steps, to the silences and to existence itself.

It is more than ever moment of reunion in which we match the heartbeat and breathing to the path and return to the earth and its peaceful rhythm, in the same way that the leaves of the trees fall softly to rejuvenate, once more, the forest.

The Tree and the Forest They are many and it is only one. The more light it absorbs, the more shade it casts. The better you know him, the more you will be amazed.

Halloween and Day of the Dead

North American Indiansjust like us They saw a bear in the polar constellationwhich as winter approaches appears in the early hours of the night getting closer to the horizon. They said then that the old bear lies down getting ready to hibernate.

It is curious that precisely when winter rises up the mountains and ascends to the north, when the trees are bare and nature loses much of its color and vitality, it is celebrated in the Celtic world the festival of Samain, the end of the old annual cycle and the beginning of a new one.

This transit festivity has survived to this day with extraordinary strength throughout the Anglo-Saxon world. (Halloween), but also in other European regions, where it is celebrated on the same day, November 1, the day of the dead, with a special memory of our ancestors.

It was believed that during the sacred period of Samain, the doors of the Hereafter remain open allowing passage in both directions and facilitating contact with the world of the deceasedfairies, druids and other supernatural beings.

The Energy of Light, always visible, although impalpable. The tree longs for her. The forest searches for it and distills it. Essence and sustenance of all life.

Many rituals in the Iberian Peninsula had this meaning on the same datesand so when the feints were made in which the young men roasted chestnuts in the open air, or when the family retired to sleep, it was customary leave some fire and a few chestnuts for that the spirits of family ancestors had something to eat and keep warm.

The doors of the houses were left permanently open these days to allow them to pass.

All this responds to a radically different conception of the world in which the day cycle began with the night. This predilection has its explanation in the fact that the last dream of the Celtic people seems to always be in the Beyond.

In the mythical kingdom of Avalan, the island of apples lost in the misty confines of the Western Sea. Legends speak of an autumn fruit that is both a symbol and a passport to those mythical lands.; which confers wisdom and immortality, but which above all represents the mystery of the unknown.

The Brotherhood of the Woods

The vortex of daily life has to find a parenthesis in the season of rest And this is precisely the moment in which, in an almost imperceptible way, the new dreams that will germinate in the warmth of spring are forged.

It matters a lot that these ideas and inspirations are leafy, alive and full. In the same way that we feed our children’s dreams with stories to promote a healthy entry into the world of dreams, just before going to sleep, our mind should prepare for the arrival of winter.

We can use this autumnal prelude to soak up the experiences of the forest and the old customs, with tradition and the legend itself, instead of becoming compulsive consumers of too alien and rootless stories that the civilized world gives us incessantly to fill the growing existential void it produces.

yes in nature the arrival of winter forces to get rid of everything superfluous to survivereturning to the essential state of wood, earth or seed, our spirit also returns to that initial germ in which it again feels the call of the forest that tries once more to return us to its lap.

“My horse steps on the white bed of the sleeping tree, but under the earth the trees understand each other again and touch each other” (Pablo Neruda, just the man).

That is how we are in the season of the new beginning. From the return to the initial humus. To life in the forests that at this time are more beautiful than ever.

Walking on the fallen leaves

From the initial green, a thousand warm and lively tones are born in autumn that recall and recreate the colors of all summer sunrises and sunsets. Lhe nights seem to lengthen to encourage enchantment, conversation and legend.

Persephone begins her return to hell at the same time that Odin returns to his sacred source and every animal, plant or man It begins in regions where winter is rigorous its strategies for survival.

Is he time to collect food and fill the pantries or reserves of one’s own body for many mammals, from migrating to warmer regions.

Many plants, such as the fern or the lily, store the incarnated sunlight in bulbs and rhizomes, its aerial part disappears to be reborn with force with the awakening of spring.

The humble carrot and many other biennial plants are born and spend the entire first year accumulating a thick root. that will allow them in the second year to quickly emit the flower and the seeds that will restart their life cycle.

Deciduous trees reabsorb much of the nutrients from the leaves before completely shedding them. Having learned to shed itself implies a degree of evolution and adaptation, a true strategy that allows the tree to sleep enduring the winter cold. But do not think that this implies the slightest waiver or waste.

Many millions of years ago trees learned to interact actively with their environment. TO entrust their pollen to the wind and pollinating animalsits seeds to the animals that would disperse them, etc.

In the same way, when the leaves fall they return to the earth, which is that common organ of the forest and the trees that at the same time stores, digests, recycles and renews life.

The living and throbbing humus is the original magma in all similarity to the collective unconscious. It is the place where everything begins and where everything ends at the end of the cycle. This made with the bones of our ancestors that merge with the rest of the ancestors of all beings and elements.

Humus breathes and has its own dynamics and vitality and it is in autumn when we can perceive this amazing reality in such a natural and evident way that forces us to reconsider our own individuality and our apparent and illusory independence.

When a solitary tree is left bare, it is very easy for the wind to blow its leaves away, but In the forest, the litter does not change its place and always remains at the foot of the trees.

Finally everything is united and, as the famous letter from Seattle says, we share the same breath…