Harvest Home versus the Wicker Man
BY H. Byron Ballard

I love that old cult film "The Wicker Man". The beautiful children dancing the ring, the lovely chocolate hares ("not silly old rabbits"), the singing, the sheer screaming sensuality. There was also great appeal in a place, even though fictional, where Pagans and Pagan practices were in the majority, where school children learned the lore that modern Pagans teach their children at the quiet places at their own hearths. There are remnants of English folk religion in the traditional May Day characters--the May Queen, the Guiser, and the Old 'Oss--that are appealing to my amateur historian side. And now there's a new version, transported to America's Puget Sound and tweaking the story to feature a matriarchal colony of beekeepers, whose culture is based on the workings of a hive. 

I wouldn't have known that a few months ago but I've been learning the craft of beekeeping this summer, a craft--like my spiritual path--that is both ancient and modern. I love watching the tiny bodies hurl themselves out of the hive box, flying off to collect their harvest. They've been doing that all summer, of course, but they seem to be moving faster and with more purpose as the days shorten and the nights get chilly. They have to bring in enough stores to feed the colony throughout the winter and they have no idea how long winter will be or how cold it will get. So they keep foraging, traveling incredible distances to bring home baskets of pollen and nectar which they store in perfect wax cells inside the snug woodenware home we've provided for them. They'll keep traveling and storing until the weather keeps them home.

In our fortunate culture, most of us don't have to think about processing the harvest to see us through the winter. When it's January and the cupboard is bare, we go to the store and buy what we need. Not so long ago, our ancestors greeted the harvest with thanksgiving and relief and then processed all that food so that it would last throughout the lean winter season. In my spiritual tradition we celebrate the coming autumnal equinox as Mabon and it is also called Harvest Home. Like the delicious American holiday in November, Harvest Home is a day when we give thanks for the bounty of our fields and store the crops for winter use. Like the bees, we don't know how long the winter will be or how cold it will get. So we do our best and we honor the rich fruitful earth that gives us all we need. And like the children in The Wicker Man, we dance and sing. Because the harvest--with its smells and rich colors-- is a time of joy and celebration, after all. Whether you are bringing in the sheaves or picking the apples in your backyard, here is my Mabon wish for you, as you welcome the equinox with your own Harvest Home: may your corn be tall, your apples crisp and your honey like spun gold!

H. Byron Ballard is a bookseller, village Witch, gardener and enthusiastic traveler who writes both regularly and irregularly for her local Gannett daily paper The Asheville Citizen-Times, for Mountain Xpress, WNC Woman and others. She is an Appalachian Witch and a Dianic priestess who co-founded the Coalition of Earth Religions for Education and Support/CERES. She lives with her husband and daughter in the ancient mountains of western North Carolina.