In this seasonal offering, Isla Macleod invites us into the quiet threshold of the Autumn Equinox, a time of harvest, balance and the gradual burrowing of light into darkness. We explore the tender territory where gratitude meets grief, remembering that our capacity to mourn is woven through our capacity to love. A time also known as Mabon, a name borrowed from Mabon ap Modron, the mysterious divine son of the Great Mother, from the ancient Welsh tales of the Mabinogion. His story leads us into a world where human knowledge has been lost and the ancient animals show the path to remembrance. It is the salmon, the oldest of them all, who ultimately knows where Mabon is held. The more-than-human world is keeper of memory, guide and ally in the work of returning what has been lost. Each of this series with Isla offers the sensory richness of the season: apples pressed by many hands, hedgerow berries gathered from branch and soil, the first fire kindled in the hearth and the familiar signs that autumn has been arriving. Through gathering, tending, preserving and making, we are invited to remember our embodied belonging to the earth and the ancestral ways of being that still live within our senses. We contemplate the impermanence at the heart of this season, and the tenderness that arises when we allow ourselves to feel the fullness of what is passing. Alongside the tangible harvest, Isla speaks of the “dark harvest”: all that is quietly taking shape beneath the surface, often invisible to us for months or years. The seeds of becoming that are carried through endings, grief, uncertainty and the fertile darkness. We offer practices for marking this threshold, with invitations to reflect on what has reached fullness, what you are grateful for, what you are grieving, what is ready to be released and what might be quietly growing in the dark. A seasonal pause for gathering, giving thanks, grieving, releasing and remembering that we are held within a much wider web of life. May the seeds of your becoming find their way into the fertile darkness. Woven with music from Bonnie Medicine, Mango Lassie, Telling the Bees, Cynefin, the druid Chris Park and Yoav Yo of Soundspacing. Episode image from ℤ𝕤𝕦𝕫𝕤𝕒 ℤ𝕚𝕔𝕙𝕠 from a recent ceremony of ours. Learn more about our work at rootedhealing.org Receive two free workshops in embodied deep ecology (via Substack) Isla’s Rose Heart Elixir Get full access to Rooted Healing at rootedhealing.substack.com/subscribe
