Worship Leader:- Barbara Thomborson
Leader for Dances of Universal Peace:- Laurie Ross
Autumn equinox marks a day or two of equal amounts of daylight before nights are longer. What are the implications for us? What does ‘neopagan’ mean? An interactive Service. Laurie Ross to lead in 2 Dances of Universal Peace.
Video to come
Audio to come
Read below, or download the PDF
Barbara Thomborson © 23 March 2025
Merry meet and blessed be! This is how many neopagans greet each other. Before getting into neopaganism, let’s look at some basics of autumn equinox.
There is a difference between astronomical equinox and actual balanced amount of light at equinoxes. Distances in latitude from the equator account for this. For us New Zealanders, the astronomical equinox was last Thursday at 10:01 p.m. However, the day of nearly equal amounts of daylight and darkness is tomorrow. On equinoxes, the sun appears to rise directly east and set directly west. If we could see its path on the 2 equinox days, it would be a perfect 180⁰ arc above earth.
The natural symbolism of autumn equinox includes at least 4 notions. First is the balance between light and dark which can inspire us to seek balance in our lives. Second is the sense of leaving the time of growth and preparing to move into the fallow time. Thirdly, we anticipate the lengthening darkness which tends to make us pull inward or look inward. Lastly, like the dry leaves on many trees, autumn can be a time for letting go.
So much for understanding the natural aspects of the autumn equinox. I promised you a neopagan celebration of the equinox, and I think it’s important to understand what you’re doing and why. So let’s focus on neopaganism.
Many ancient pagan practitioners knew about the autumn equinox as the days of light balanced between day and night, and as harbinger of dwindling daylight and the fallow months. All ancient and pre-European-colonised peoples practiced earth-based traditions. That may sound like an overgeneralisation, but in all my studies on this, I’ve never heard an anthropologist say otherwise. Current nature-worshipping ‘religions’ from ancient times that have many followers include Hinduism, Shintoism, and Candomblé. The only known religions that are not earth-based are Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Zoroastrianism. In fact, in the Old Testament, Jews first referred to paganism as a ‘false religion’, and in the New Testament Christians demonised pagans: First Corinthians, chapter 10, verse 20 says: the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons.
Nature-based traditions are the fundamental form of paganism; pagans believe that nature is sacred and that the natural cycles of birth, growth, and death carry profoundly spiritual meanings. Worship of Mother Earth is probably the oldest form of religion; pagans considered her sacred because She gave and supported life. I reckon everyone here has heard of Gaia, the ancient Greek Goddess of Earth. Many neopagans worship her as a living, breathing, generating ‘animal’ or goddess.
Neopaganism refers to contemporary spiritual movements that seek to revive and reconstruct ancient and indigenous nature-based and polytheistic religions.
For over 30 years I have followed a personally eclectic type of neopaganism that has aspects of Celtic mythology and folk holidays, with native American traditions as well as European goddess worship. It’s a right royal mishmash of mythology and polytheism based on reverence for Nature. The groups I have practiced with include Druids, Wiccans, and Goddess worshipers.
Many neopagans use a calendar inspired from Celtic mythology called the Wheel of the Year. It has 8 ‘sabbats’ or stations of the year to recognise changes in earth and its relationship with sun. Four are celestial sabbats – the solstices and equinoxes; the midpoints between these celestial sabbats are the earth-based ones. Today we’re celebrating a celestial sabbat which is at the top of the Wheel. The 8 sabbats occur roughly 6 weeks from each other. The next earth-based sabbat is Samhain, or what we call Halloween. It is earth-based because by Halloween, harvest of all the field crops should be done.
In this picture, the celestial sabbats are in the small centre circle. The earth ones are on the larger outer circle, with Maori words for these times underneath. Their names come from the Celtic gods and goddesses most neopagans use on the wheel of the year.
Like the wreath at the front of our altar, wreaths in pagan traditions have symbolised the wheel of the year. Today’s one has different coloured ribbons to represent the 8 sabbats, with orange for autumn at the top. Traditionally such wreaths were decorated with seasonal vegetation. I decorated this one to use as a teaching tool. As well, many neopagans use an altar of objects that symbolise the sabbat they’re celebrating, like our one here.
In a similar vein, the symbol for many neopagan earth goddess worshippers is the five-pointed star in a circle, called the pentacle.
Wiccans use the pentacle for drawing out the earth’s powers for personal use. Don’t worry – I have never practiced wiccanism. Earth goddess worship also inspires a certain mysticism that I find meaningful. The pentacle and the earth goddess have inspired some beautiful and moving artwork:
Many indigenous peoples took inspiration from the basic elements of fire, air, water, and earth. More on that in the next slide:
This picture has some of my favourite pagan bumper stickers; I especially like the born-again pagan. Some Maori and Pacific Island men have had a good laugh over that one. Blessed be is neopagan for both hello or good-bye. The earth, air, fire, and water are four sacred elements. Each element corresponds to a direction: Fire is in the north, Air is in the east, Water is in the west, and Earth is in the south. In a sacred circle cast either for a group or just for yourself, they are four of the 5 sacred things. The 5th sacred thing is the people or person within the circle.
To end this part of the service, I have a couple things to add. You don’t have to be a neohippie to be a neopagan, but it helps. I reckon anyone is a candidate to be a born-again pagan. I encourage you to make your own ways to be a born-again pagan. It’s one thing to be in nature and commune, enjoy its gifts, and feel more alive as the animal you are; however, I’ve found that making regular practices of worshiping aspects of nature has expanded my appreciation and veneration for nature and made interactions with the natural world deeply meaningful. Not to mention the fun with all the merrymaking that neopagans do when we celebrate a sabbat.
So, besides the pretty altar, how shall we celebrate our autumn equinox? Well, many neopagans dance in a large circle, again representing the wheel of the year. Laurie Ross, a crone of Dances of Universal Peace, will now lead us in a couple of autumn dances.
