Mabon is the time of the year when our Goddess awaits the birth of her son, and is whiteness to her lover’s aging. She knows that he is close to death and we can feel her struggle. The days are getting shorter, it is time to gather the harvest. It is also the holiday ritual to honor the Sun God Mabon, and to thank the Mother Goddess Modron for the bounty of the Harvest. It is time to prepare for winter.

Personally, I believe that Mabon is mostly the Sabbat that we should celebrate with the Goddess mostly. She needs us most at this time of year, and we need her. The story of our beloved Goddess can easily be explained with one of many mythological stories. Like for example, the story of the Goddess of Mabon: Demeter and her daughter Persephone.

The story of this beloved Goddess goes like this: Demeter was, and is still is today, the most loving Goddess anybody could find out there. She is the Goddess that doesn’t hesitate to mingle with humans in their day to day lives, unlike the other Greek pantheon who would only check on the humans when they would feel like it and only mingle with us like if we where the mouse of a cat. Demeter is the soft and loving side of our Goddess. She cares for humans, teaching them how to sow, reap grain, how to live from their crops. As we all know, our Goddess and God have many faces, and Demeter is the most generous one. She is the Goddess of corn, grain, and the harvest. She is the daughter of Cronus and Rhea. Her joy in life where to teach humans how to grow, preserve and prepare grain, how to harvest the goods she helped them grow throughout the year. Her daughter is Persephone (also known as Kore) and she loved her dearly. Persephone was the most beautiful entity there was, everybody wanted her, whether it was the available or non-available.

One day, while Persephone was picking up flowers in the meadow near her home, she was abducted by Hades, the God of the Underworld, who had opened the earth under her to take her. She then became Goddess of the Underworld because her taking by Hades made her his Queen. Demeter heard her daughter scream, but arrived too late. When she arrived in the meadows, there was no sign of her beloved daughter. Demeter searched high and low for her daughter, even going to Zeus for council. After all, Zeus was Persephone’s father. He and Demeter had a love affaire well before Zeus was married to Hera. After Persephone was abducted, Demeter became really depressed. The land died immediately, letting place to the cold and the disappearance of the crops and food. This Goddess who would think about the humans before was only thinking about her daughter now. She roamed the earth as an old lady, searching day and night desperately for her daughter, but with no success. But even in her search, Demeter still did some incredible acts of kindness, and a few acts of vindication (she is a Goddess after all and every Gods and Goddesses has its good and bad side after all).

When Demeter was walking the earth to find Persephone, she met an old and poor old man who was gathering firewood who invited her to return to his home to eat supper with his family and to rest on her journey. When she told him that she was searching for her daughter, he wished her success and he told her that he understood her suffering. His son was young, but dying at home. This changed Demeter’s idea and she accepted to follow the old man to his house. There, she saw the boy and felt so for him that she cured him when she kissed him on the forehead. Her love had restored his health. But Demeter can also be vindictive at times. In Greek mythology, the Gods and Goddesses could punish anyone who failed to honor them in a dignified fashion. Demeter, although she was such a kind Goddess, still was vindictive at times. But in one of these few times, she had stopped on her travels to quench her thirst by drinking from a spring and heard a man named Ascaelabus laughing at the sound of her gulping the fresh water. Embarrassed, and angry at the man for being so rude, she turned him into a lizard.

But one day, Demeter was tired of looking for Persephone alone, she needed help. So she went to see Hecate, Goddess of the crossroads, who advised her to speak to Helio, Goddess of the sun. Demeter then went to Helio who had been riding her chariot of sun thought the sky that day when Persephone was kidnapped. Helio told Demeter that she had seen Persephone being taken by Hades to become queen of the underworld. She also told Demeter that it was Zeus himself who had sanctioned the abduction, and therefore marriage. Demeter was Furious. She trusted Zeus in this ordeal; she never expected that it was him behind all this.

She then went to see Zeus and told him that unless Persephone was brought back to her, she would then renounce her divine duty of bringing fertility to the land and crops. After months of waiting, Zeus finally agreed and talked to Hades about letting Persephone go back to her mother. He did see that the humans where helpless and that they needed Demeter to survive. They did not have any crops to feed on and since they where not prepared for this, they did not gather any food. The humans where starving and where helpless. After Zeus spoke to Hades, he agreed to let Persephone go, but before he let her go, he then gave her three seeds of the Pomegranate fruit. Anybody who eats food from the underground world cannot go back to the other world, but since Persephone had eaten only three seeds, she was able to go back to her mother. But she had to return to the underworld at least 4 months a year. If she did not she would die. Every time Persephone had to go back to Hades for 4 months, Demeter would not make the land fertile. That is why we have 4 month winters and our lands are not fertile. Every seed represented one month and we believe that the extra month represents the long time Persephone went from one world to the next. It took her that long to go from each world because she never wanted to leave her mother and when she was with Hades, she never wanted to leave her lover for she did come to love Hades when she had to return to the upper world.

So we now see the despair of our Goddess that has to loose a love one, when she knows that the God adult has to die in order for the new God to be reborn. It is like when Demeter lost Persephone and found her again after many months. It was like a rebirth. Imagine that when she did find her back, everything was fertile again, living again.