Oct 6, 2026 · 42 min · 15 segments
In this episode of *Seasonal Slow Living*, Liz explores the autumn equinox, Mabon, and traditional harvest customs. She explains the astronomy behind the equinox, the modern origins of the name…
Through the summer, the sun's path across our sky runs north of that line, which is why it climbs so high at noon and why the days are long.
Through the winter, its path runs south of it, low and brief.
And twice a year for a moment, the sun sits exactly on the line, once in March, heading north, and once in September, heading south.
That September moment is the autumnal equinox.
This year it fell on the night of the 22nd into the 23rd, depending on where in the world you were standing.
And it is a moment rather than a day, an instant that astronomers can give you to the minute which the calendars then round to the nearest date.
The word equinox means equal night, and on that day the length of daylight and the length of darkness are nearly the same everywhere on Earth, in the far north, at the equator, in the far south, all of it.
That nearly is worth a sentence.
The equal day, the one where sunrise to sunset is exactly twelve hours, actually comes a few days after the equinox where most of us live because the sun is a disk rather than a point, and because our atmosphere bends its light, so we see it before it has properly risen.
Astronomers have a separate word for that day.
I mention it only because I like knowing that even the tidy fact has a small untidiness inside it, and because it tells you something about how carefully people have looked at this over thousands of years.
Some of the stone circles are lined up on it.
Some of the great old tombs have doorways that catch it.
Long before anyone could write down why, people were building things to catch the exact morning the light sat on the line.
But here is the fact under the fact The one that matters for how a household feels in the last week of September.
At the equinox, the light is not just balanced.
It is leaving at its fastest.
Think of the year's daylight as a wave.
It crests in June, it bottoms out in December, and the two equinoxes are the points halfway down and halfway up, where the slope is steepest.
Right now, this week, the days are getting shorter by two or three minutes every single day.
The exact number depends on how far north you live, and that is the most rapid loss of light you will see all year.
By December, the loss slows almost to nothing.
The days sit on the floor and barely move, and that is its own kind of stillness.
Through the summer, the sun's path across our sky runs north of that line, which is why it climbs so high at noon and why the days are long.
Through the winter, its path runs south of it, low and brief.
And twice a year for a moment, the sun sits exactly on the line, once in March, heading north, and once in September, heading south.
That September moment is the autumnal equinox.
This year it fell on the night of the 22nd into the 23rd, depending on where in the world you were standing.
And it is a moment rather than a day, an instant that astronomers can give you to the minute which the calendars then round to the nearest date.
The word equinox means equal night, and on that day the length of daylight and the length of darkness are nearly the same everywhere on Earth, in the far north, at the equator, in the far south, all of it.
That nearly is worth a sentence.
The equal day, the one where sunrise to sunset is exactly twelve hours, actually comes a few days after the equinox where most of us live because the sun is a disk rather than a point, and because our atmosphere bends its light, so we see it before it has properly risen.
Astronomers have a separate word for that day.
I mention it only because I like knowing that even the tidy fact has a small untidiness inside it, and because it tells you something about how carefully people have looked at this over thousands of years.
Some of the stone circles are lined up on it.
Some of the great old tombs have doorways that catch it.
Long before anyone could write down why, people were building things to catch the exact morning the light sat on the line.
But here is the fact under the fact The one that matters for how a household feels in the last week of September.
At the equinox, the light is not just balanced.
It is leaving at its fastest.
Think of the year's daylight as a wave.
It crests in June, it bottoms out in December, and the two equinoxes are the points halfway down and halfway up, where the slope is steepest.
Right now, this week, the days are getting shorter by two or three minutes every single day.
The exact number depends on how far north you live, and that is the most rapid loss of light you will see all year.
By December, the loss slows almost to nothing.
The days sit on the floor and barely move, and that is its own kind of stillness.
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