Mabon Season and Autumn Celebration Ideas

Okay, so here’s the thing about fall. Pumpkin picking, apple crisp, sweatshirts, fairs, sunflower mazes if you’re lucky enough to have those. We’re always rushing from one thing to the next in this society, and the beautiful part of having a nature-spiritual practice woven into your life is that it keeps calling you back to slow down and savor where you actually are.

I’m Sara, founder of The Sisters Enchanted, and I’ve been helping witchy women build practices that feel like them since 2016. This one’s about Mabon and how to keep celebrating the autumn season, even if the equinox already came and went. Spoiler: you’re not late. There’s always time for you.

What is Mabon, and why is it called the Witches’ Thanksgiving?

Mabon is the Witches’ Thanksgiving: the second harvest festival, celebrated at the autumn equinox, when we give thanks for the harvest and the abundance of the season. That’s the short answer.

Here’s the fuller one. Mabon lands on the first day of fall, but I want you to stop thinking of it as one calendar square. We’re celebrating that harvest, that gratitude, the whole cornucopia of life, for more than just a day. This season carries all the way through until our next Sabbat, which is Samhain (Halloween). So even if the equinox already passed, you’re still right in the middle of it.

When is Mabon?

Mabon happens on the first day of fall, so the exact date shifts a little every year with the autumn equinox. The year this episode aired it fell on September 22nd or 23rd depending on your time zone, though you’ll often see the 21st claimed as “the” Mabon date, mostly because if you write a book on the topic you don’t want to change it every single year.

But truly, don’t get precious about the date. It is a season. It is an entire moving, living season, and you get to embrace the whole thing.

How do you celebrate Mabon and the autumn season? (15 ideas)

You celebrate Mabon by slowing down and marking the harvest with intention: build an altar, bake something, walk in the leaves, practice real gratitude, and plant for what’s coming. Here are 15 easy ways, and you don’t need to be a kitchen witch or have four seasons outside your window to do them.

1. Create an autumn altar or sacred space. People get so hung up on this. It can be a pumpkin, a candle, and an oracle card with a fall image on it. Mine right now has two Enchanted Blossoms oracle cards, some pumpkins, a beeswax candle I rolled myself, dried flowers, a pinecone, and some brown, harvesty silk cloths draped around. It’s small, right in my living room, and every time I see it I remember where I am in the Wheel of the Year.
2. Bake something harvest-related. A harvest loaf or a harvest cake. Give it a Google. And listen, I am not one to be found in the kitchen, so we ordered a harvest sourdough from a bakery, cranberries and walnuts, everyone loves it. Baking optional. Enjoying it, mandatory.
3. Take a nature walk. The easiest way to fold a connection to nature into your practice any time of year.
4. Practice gratitude (the real kind). Not the toxic “you should just be grateful for what you have” kind. You can want a second bathroom and still be deeply grateful for indoor plumbing. Both are true. Look in the nooks and crannies for it too. I’m grateful for my aging cats even in the middle of a very unglamorous chapter with them.
5. Have a bonfire.
6. Make a fall wreath from found nature items. Write words like peace, abundance, or joy on the leaves before you bind them, then hang it on your front door. Your door is what you welcome into your home, so that’s everyday magic on something you already use every day.
7. Meditate or visualize on balance. Light and dark, doing and resting. It’s the perfect practice for the equinox.
8. Make apple cider, or a seasonal tea or punch.
9. Plant bulbs for spring. This one’s bigger than it sounds (more on it below).
10. Do the cozy fall things. Curl up by a fire with a fall-themed book. If you’ve never read A Discovery of Witches, this is the season for it.
11. Try something new or host a harvest dinner. A new craft, a gathering. Seasonally, a Witches’ Thanksgiving harvest dinner in September or October is far more in alignment with the actual harvest than waiting for the “official” holiday.
12. Go to the hayrides, corn mazes, and sunflower mazes. Community and laughter now is you casting more of that into your future.
13. Write a letter to someone you love and are grateful for. We’ve been told for so long that it’s not safe to be vulnerable. Communication is one of the great gifts of being human. Tell them why you’re grateful, and maybe slip in a harvest dinner invite.
14. Do an abundance ritual. A candle, an acorn, a piece of paper with your wish on it. Connect to the energy of creation, receiving, and giving back so you keep the flow moving.
15. Put it on your calendar. Genuinely. If you feel like you don’t have space for any of this, your calendar is the first place to look.

Why does slowing down for the seasons actually matter?

Because so much of your ability to reach a goal hinges on how you feel in a given moment, and you get to cultivate that feeling on purpose. What you do, what you surround yourself with, how you dress, what you consume: that’s how you create the vibe of a season, and the vibe is what carries you toward what you want.

A nature-spiritual practice is one of the few things in modern life that actively asks you to slow down and savor. That’s not a bonus. That’s the whole point.

Your calendar is the cauldron of manifestation. What’s on it is what you’re creating. So if gratitude and abundance never make it onto the calendar, they’re not going to magically appear. Put them there. (If planning is where you get stuck, I broke this whole idea down in Planning as a Vision Board, and if you’re tired of running your whole life in react-mode, Stop Urgently Reacting to Your Life is a good companion read.)

What is the ideate phase, and how does fall fit into it?

Fall is the ideate phase: the part of the year for visioning what’s to come and planting, literally and energetically, what you want to grow by spring.

So when you plant those bulbs, you’re not just gardening. You’re ideating. You’re asking what you want more of and putting the first real action behind it. Fall (which holds both Mabon and Samhain in the Wheel of the Year) is where that visioning belongs. This is a Sisters Enchanted approach to living with the seasons instead of racing past them, and it’s the heart of what we teach in Holistic Witchery.

Want a done-for-you plan for the season?

If you want to actually run your Witches’ Thanksgiving instead of winging it, I mapped out a full 4-Week Witches’ Thanksgiving Plan on my Substack. It walks the whole harvest season week by week, so you can slow down without dropping the ball on any of it.

Frequently Asked Questions About Mabon and the Autumn Season

Keep the magic going

Fall is the season for coming home to yourself, and you don’t have to do it alone. If you want the everyday-magic version of all of this in your inbox, all my letters live on Substack, and you can find every current way to work with us (the podcast, the blog, the challenge, and our programs) on our links page.

When you’re ready to go deeper, Holistic Witchery is our signature course for building a real spiritual practice, and the Enchanted Journey membership is the off-social community where witchy women gather every month to be witnessed and actually live this stuff.

Don’t settle for ordinary. Stay Magic!