Happy Mabon, and Welcome to the Hearth
Blessed Mabon, everyone. I don’t know about where you are, but here it’s still hitting the low 90s most afternoons — which makes it feel a little ridiculous to say “fall has arrived.” And yet it has. Not because the thermometer agrees, but because the light’s changed. The evenings come down earlier now, the wheel has turned to balance, and something in me just knows it’s autumn, heat or not.
So I’ve been leaning into it anyway. I’ve got apple and cinnamon candles going most evenings right now — yes, with the windows open and the AC still fighting the good fight. There’s something about that scent that does more to convince me it’s fall than the weather ever could. Mabon has always felt like the holiday of gratitude and balance to me: the second harvest, the point where day and night sit equal before the dark half of the year takes over. It doesn’t need the temperature to cooperate. It just needs you to notice it.
This is the first post in what I’m hoping becomes a real, ongoing journal here at Flint & Flicker — a place separate from the guides and correspondences, where I can just talk. Less “here’s how to do X,” more “here’s what’s actually going on in my practice this week.” I wanted the first one to just be an open door.
So: welcome. If you’re new here, I’m glad you found this corner of the internet. My own path is eclectic — I didn’t come up through one tradition and stay there. I’ve pulled from Wicca, from folk practice, from whatever felt true and useful as I went, and I’m still very much figuring it out as I build it. I find that the craft can be incorporated into any faith or no faith: I personally mix Celtic pagan and Catholic elements into mine. I think that’s true for a lot of people who land here, and I’d rather be honest about that than pretend this site is handing down doctrine. It’s not. It’s one person’s practice, documented as openly as I can, in the hope that it’s useful to yours.
I want this to be a place people actually grow together, not just a library you visit once and leave. That’s part of why I’m also working on a forum for the site — coming soon — so this doesn’t stay a one-way conversation. I want to hear what you’re working on, what worked, what didn’t, and what you’d want covered next.
For now: light a candle, even a seasonally-inappropriate one if that’s what you’ve got. Take a minute to notice the balance point we’re standing on. And if you’re somewhere the heat hasn’t let go yet either — you’re not doing autumn wrong. You’re just doing it where you live.
Blessed be. 🍂