Autumn Equinox + Libra Szn
Sink into the shadows, but don't forget to sign your name.
Yesterday morning I woke up to find an enlarged, painful lump on the underside of my right jaw. My head is difficult to hold up as my sinuses are full of exudate instead of air. Sounds are muffled. My flesh and bones ache. This is the first acute illness I have had in a very long time and I am miserable. I do not feel like celebrating anything unless it involves my bed and ibuprofen. My plans to switch out my altar and bury my Spring Equinox intentions will have to wait.
One ritual I had energy to perform was reading the Mabon chapter from Missing Witches: Recovering True Histories of Feminist Magic by Risa Dickens and Amy Torok. Each chapter is a circle centered around the eight sabbats. Torok uses Mabon to discuss the role of shame in shaping ourselves. This is a sabbat about balance as we experience equal parts day and night. In the northern hemisphere, after Mabon we slip into the darkest part of the year. What lurks in the darkest part of you? What shame are you hiding from?
Torok writes about menstrual cycles, douching, pretending to know things, and etymology of the word ‘cunt.’ As a cisgender woman, these all things that conjure shame, but lose power as I age. When I was around 17, I listened to my AFAB friend give an impassioned speech about why the word ‘cunt’ is the most offensive thing to be called. You can call me a lot of things, a bitch, a whore, but not a cunt. My other AFAB friends nodding and verbalizing agreement. I’m sure I did to, but I didn’t agree with her. My cisgender male, gay friend and I called each other ‘cunt’ all the time in a loving way. Another mask I would have to wear with this group. More shame to hide.
This year Mabon coincides with Libra season. Cardinal Air initiating autumn. My personal ritual for astrological season changes is to review my birth chart and the tarot correspondences. Libra is my 12th house and contains Pluto and a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. The 12th house is a liminal space. The last house of the birth chart. The self is undone and reconstructed for another trip around the birth chart. I feel myself being pulled into the darkness, solitude, and introspection.
Libra corresponds with Justice and the 12th house with the Hanged One. Part of my ritual includes pulling the Justice and Hanged Ones cards from my many tarot decks. This time the Brady Tarot deck spoke to me. Justice depicts a turkey vulture holding an arrow of truth in its mouth, balancing an egg and skull— life and death, past and future. Both are uncontrollable, but we must contend with them. Rachel Pollack writes:
Balance. Seeking the connections between past experiences and our choices in the future. An honest, unflinching look at ourselves. Ultimately, Justice liberates free will, because we are not free until we understand who we are. We cannot understand how to move forward in life, we cannot make truly free choices, until we know what brought us to who we are.
The Hanged One depicts a opossum hanging upside down above a rushing river with a halo of fireflies illuminating their head. This is a card of surrendering to stillness in order to gain a new perspective. Pollack states that the origin of the Hanged One is in shame. Renaissance Italian painters would graffiti public walls with traitors hung upside down, a posture of condemnation. Tarot artists have transmuted this position to be one of spiritual submission. Pollack writes the Hanged One is:
Attachment to life, to deeper values, independence from society’s opinions. Reversal of previous ways. Surrender, vulnerability, openness.
This includes my shame. My experiences, thoughts, actions that are rooted in shame. Torok writes about how much of our shame is a product of living in a colonial, capitalistic, patriarchal society that tells us “there is ONLY one correct way to do things, and anything else is an abomination…. Every authentic bit of you that doesn’t jibe with the status quo is shameful and must be hidden…. because keeping you ashamed of being different is a great way to make sure you’re always dimming your light. Keeping hidden your shining sun of multiplicity and otherness. It’s easier that way. Easier for them.”
When I read those words, I felt them in my core, my bones, my shadow. As we cycle into the dark part of the year, I cycle into my shadow self. I am suspended in the liminal space, gazing from a different view. Balancing my past experiences with my deeper values to grasp how I got here and where I want to go. I want to be free to make the choices that are independent from society’s opinions. This will require vulnerability and honesty. It will require sinking into and transmuting the shame.
Torok has adopted a mantra from a poem by Enheduanna, the earliest author of written literature. The poem written for the goddess Inanna called out: “Precious Queen / Rekindle for me / your holy heart.” Rekindle your holy heart. The reason Enheduanna is credited as one of the earliest authors is because she signed her name. Torok encourages all of us “to tell your story and sign your name.”
“Rekindle your holy heart. And sign your name.” writes Amy Torok
One of my intentions with starting this Substack was to rewrite my own stories. Many of these anecdotes have been ruminating in my head for years. Purging onto digital paper has been a restorative creative outlet, but I have felt some shame in the process. I’m just a fledgling word witch in a vast sea of other fledgling word witches. Is my story really that interesting to other people? Do I really have another perspective that has not already been written? Are people just subscribing so that I will subscribe to their newsletters too? I don’t have a bunch of degrees from respectable colleges. I have spent my entire life in the midwest in a flyover state. I am more comfortable in a trailer park than an art gallery.
I still carry poverty shame which stifles the joy of abundance. I remember my childhood best friend talking about how rich people appeared to be more clean. We were on our bikes getting sodas at the local grocery store. In the early 90s, one quarter would buy you a generic soda. We watched a girl around our age get out of a shiny car with her mother. They were both wearing pristine, crisp white clothing. It was such a sharp contrast to our hand-me-down and secondhand t-shirts, shorts and flip flops. My friend’s comment made me feel so dirty. Unworthy. I was mad at my friend. Mad that she pointed this out because I never noticed it before. Mad because it made me feel ashamed for being poor, something completely out of my control.
I will always be that dirty kid, but I don’t always need to carry this shame with me. I will write my story and sign my name.
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