9 Fall Equinox Dishes For Your Mabon Feast | Mabon Recipes Guide (2024)

FAQs

What to eat during Mabon? ›

For Mabon, celebrate with foods that honor the hearth and harvest —breads and grains, autumn veggies like squash and onions, fruits, and wine. It's a great time of year to take advantage of the bounty of the season!

Fall vegetables include squash, potatoes, and beans. Baked squash stuffed with nuts is a Mabon favorite. Soup made with many types of beans is a symbol of abundance: common numbers include 5, 9, 13, 15, and 19 beans with the maximum being 23. You can often find packages of mixed dried beans at the store.

Common Practices

Often believers will dress and eat lavishly to celebrate the bounty of life. Believers will also perform a ritual. Believers create a sacred space outdoors, with leaders walking around an area and chanting while sprinkling the area with water and salt, which are believed to be spiritually cleansing.

The Cornucopia: Mabon is traditionally represented by the cornucopia, also known as the Horn of Plenty. It is a magnificent sign of the prosperity that harvest brings, and it is a beautifully balanced symbol that has both masculine (phallic) and feminine elements (hollow and receptive).

Nutmeg, cloves, spice–these are the scents of Mabon. Sandalwood and myrrh, heather, pine and cedar also make good choices. Herbs commonly associated with this Sabbat are mace, cinnamon, cloves, cypress, juniper, oakmoss, marigold, ivy and sage.

For Mabon, try adding harvest fruits and vegetables to your altar (like apples, leaves, pine cones, corn, pomegranate, squash, and root vegetables—go ahead, add a pumpkin if you must). Color-wise, you're looking for gold, orange, red, bronze, and rust.

Pumpkin: Pumpkin takes the spotlight during autumn with dishes like pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin soup, pumpkin ravioli, and so much more. Squash and Gourds: Aside from pumpkins, butternut squash, acorn squash, and various other gourds are used in soups, casseroles, and side dishes.

The Fall equinox on September 23 marks the transition to shorter days across our hemisphere. Autumn also brings an abundance of tasty fall fruit, especially the peak of apple, grape, and pear season.

Mabon is known as The Second Harvest and is also sometimes called The Fruit Harvest. Our history is full of stories about apples, and apples are used as symbols in mythology, folk tales, and religious sagas, such as the story of Adam and Eve. Apples are abundant in the Fall, and have a place on your pagan altar.

Demeter, the Greek goddess of the Harvest and Agriculture

At the center of one of the most famous myths about the seasons and the Harvest lies Demeter, the goddess of grain and fertility and mother of Persephone.

Is Lammas the same as Mabon? ›

Lammas, also known as Lughnasad, or Lughnassadh, is a pagan holiday and one of the eight Wiccan sabbats during the year. Each sabbat marks a seasonal turning point. The sabbat occurs on August 1, which is about halfway between the summer solstice (Litha) and the fall equinox (Mabon).

Known as the pagan Thanksgiving, Mabon marks the Autumn Equinox, when day and night are equal, making it a time of balance, equality and harmony. In ancient times Mabon was a celebration of the second harvest (Lughnasadh was the first) when farmers gathered hearty foods like gourds, pumpkins, grapes and apples.

The name Mabon comes from the Welsh God, who was the son of the Earth Mother Goddess. However, there is evidence that the name was adopted in the 1970s, and the holiday was not originally a Celtic celebration. To celebrate this holiday, pagans might pick apples. Apples are a common symbol of the second harvest.

Typically masculine, Mabon has strong Welsh roots and the lovely definitions of "son," "great son," or "divine son." In Welsh mythology, Mabon is a member of Arthur's war band and the son of Modron.

Root vegetables: carrots, squash, pumpkin and sweet potato. Whole grains: brown rice, quinoa, oats and millet. Legumes: beans, chickpeas, lentils, soybeans. Green vegetables: broccoli, spinach, kale, celery, rocket and artichokes.

General Practices: At Mabon, day and night are in equal balance. It is a time to offer gratitude for the blessings of the harvest and also to begin to prepare for turning inward. Making dishes with apples, squash and pumpkins as part of ritual celebration is customary.

In Celtic tradition, Mabon typically commemorates the celebration of resting after a long and laborious harvest season. It is traditionally seen as a time to finish projects and clear out emotional and physical clutter, so that the winter can be a restful and peaceful season.