Funny how the Nietzsche quotes come out when things go wrong. Perhaps he knew a thing or two.
On Thursday 17 September, Stir the Cauldron crashed. I asked my website hosting company to help restore it. They responded the following Tuesday. In the meantime I had picked up the pieces of The Cauldron from a server in County Durham in the UK and found them a new home on servers in Utah in the US. The process of transferring the domain name and reconstructing the site took another two weeks. The post I had planned in celebration of the Autumn Equinox languished as the Equinox passed. But Stir the Cauldron is back, better, stronger.
The Autumn Equinox is a special time for me. It’s the time when harvest is celebrated. It’s when the nights start to be longer than the days. It’s our wedding anniversary.
The Autumn Equinox is the second of three harvest festivals each year. Where Lammas celebrated the start of the harvest, the Autumn Equinox celebrates the harvest coming to an end. My offering to this celebration is to mix up wheatgerm oil, raspberry seed oil, rosehip seed oil and cognac essential oil into Mabon Lotion.
I burn a candle for a few minutes as part of a daily meditation ritual. As the days get shorter we start to burn candles in the evenings. I started pouring my own candles a few years ago, but resisted any attempt to create scented candles. But never say never; of all years, this was the year to experiment. I’ve tried adding fragrance to candles and tried to make candles for specific purposes. It’s still a work-in-progress. I’ll share successes and failures soon.