The Spiritual Significance of Autumn Equinox in Our Modern Lives
The Autumn Equinox is a distinct time of year to honor the harvest of the ten months before. Whether that be a "real" harvest of the things planted in your garden or the harvest of efforts and intentions for your life path that you set earlier in the year.
The changing seasons are key points in the cycle of life— annual cycles of growing older (and hopefully wiser). Within this cycle many ancient cultures perceived a powerful and deeper message for humanity.
As the sun begins to sink lower in the sky, the air in the day has a different feel on your skin, and the light in the sky a different quality, our senses tell us that the energy of summer has come to an end.
The Autumn Equinox arrives in the Northern Hemisphere on September 22, 2026, at 8:04 pm Eastern Standard Time or September 23 at 1:05 am British Summer Time, officially marking the beginning of fall and the start of spring in the Southern Hemisphere. The exact time of the fall equinox varies by time zone, so check the precise moment of equilibrium at your location.
Spiritual Meaning of Autumn Equinox
As we consciously link our awareness to the cycles of nature, our understanding of our own cycles begin to deepen.
Earth-based cultures understood that the four focal points of the year: the Winter Solstice, Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice, and Autumn Equinox; illuminated stages of an inner spiritual journey— a spiritual cycle that the individual takes within themselves.
Spiritually speaking, fall represents the harvest time of year, a time to acknowledge growth and expansion as a natural evolution of our organic being. Our lives go through cycles of growth, harvest, death, and rebirth just as we see in nature.
Fall is the time of year that we set up our internal space and make room for what’s to come in the next year.
We create room for our greater visions to emerge, by allowing the empty space and silence to take hold of our internal spaces— we clear our internal ground in the fall— before we go into dormancy and rest in the cold and darkness of Winter.
How to Engage with the Energy of Autumn
This is the time of year to empty out space by composting your old ideas and using the energy they hold to make fertile soil for new creations and visions. The energy of Autumn Equinox signifies a time to be in stillness— a hibernation of sorts— to allow creativity to arise, but not by doing.
I am not speaking to a passive experience of going to sleep and wishing the time away— and hoping that things will change— but an active engagement of becoming quiet and listening to what is trying to get your attention and emerge from within you— by allowing the dream space to activate while your external activity lessens.
On the Fall Equinox you may want to honor all that you have in your life and shift your consciousness from one of lack to one of gratitude in some way through a small ritual or ceremony. Such as lighting a candle, giving thanks, and speaking your gratitude for all that you are and all that you have.
A Small Personal Ritual to Honor Autumn
A favorite ritual of mine is to take the 15 minutes before and 15 minutes after the precise moment of the equinox to sit quietly on the ground in thoughtfulness and meditation and open my mind and my senses to the intelligence of nature all around me.
In this time spent in thoughtfulness around the moment of equal light and equal dark, I acknowledge my personal growth cycle and ask for harmony and balance to fertilize the soil of my life's garden.
The word “equinox” comes from Latin and means “equal night,” referring to the roughly 12-hour day and 12-hour night that occurs only on the two equinox days of the year.
On the equinoxes we honor the balance and interaction of the light and the dark, and we may offer gratitude for the changes that come with the passing of time.
The significance of the Autumnal Equinox for the person engaged in spiritual growth is that this is the time of year when we activate our new cycle of energy. (Not the beginning of the new year like most people practice.)
That is why it is so important to actively engage with the threshold of Autumn Equinox, spend time gathering and acknowledging this year’s harvest (your personal growth) and then around the moment of the equinox start to prepare yourself to go into a state of inactivity— in the mind as well as around your daily to-do list.
As we become more internally quiet and embody a state of rest we are creating the kind of space necessary for greater awareness of our soul’s vision to come to into being.
Then as the days get shorter and the nights grow longer, we descend into the darkness of Winter and face our own inner darkness— i.e. the ego, the subconscious, but more importantly the dream world— to prepare for the birth of the spark of light within, celebrated at the Winter Solstice.
Spiritually speaking, fall represents the harvest time of year, a time to acknowledge growth and expansion as a natural evolution of our organic being. Our lives go through cycles of growth, harvest, death, and rebirth just as we see in nature.
Winter is the time of year of for rest, when the cold and death of nature becomes the healing freeze that sets the soil for Spring and our rebirth.
The heart of spiritual practice is internal, and is usually invisible and unnoticed by everyone else. By enacting the spiritual with a physical ritual, we can both recognize and make concrete our spiritual process that is just as much a part of our reality as the material world.
I encourage you to take some time this year to acknowledge your life cycle and spiritual path. In doing so, you are honoring, not only your own growth and light within, but the ancient wisdom that has served our health and wellness for thousands of years.
As our planet stands upon a precipice of enormous change and transformation, each one of us has a choice to make.
How will you participate in the great turning of our times?
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begins after the Autumn Equinox, two spaces available.
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“I honor the light in you that is the love of all things, without your existence the light of the Universe would dim and all of existence would miss you.”
The changing seasons are key points in the cycle of life, annual cycles of growth and evolution, and within this cycle many ancient cultures perceived a powerful deeper message for humanity.