21 September 2020 - Mabon | The Everyday Lore Project

Mabon starts today and runs until a week tomorrow. Mabon is a relatively new term, adopted in the 1970s and is the second harvest celebration in the Pagan Wheel of the Year. It corresponds with the autumn equinox, which happens around half past two tomorrow afternoon.

So to celebrate, I inscribed an acorn with an owl. An acorn because it’s said they’re powerful talismans and will bring good luck, and an owl as I’m about to go back to school and finish my Masters and it’s said they represent wisdom, and I certainly need an abundance of that just now. Plus I had a lot of acorns left over from my nutting haul, and it is the second of this month’s Devil’s Nutting Days.

Not that I was deliberately trying to sabotage myself, but I chose three small acorns as my potential canvases. There were bigger ones I could have used, but somehow they didn’t feel right. But small acorns meant I had to carve a very small owl. And after temporarily getting lost down an owl rabbit hole of coins and Athena and Clash of the Titans, I found a design I thought I could adapt easily. I did pause for a sec at the belief that owls are also thought to be harbingers of death, never a good look in a pocket talisman, but as I’ve always liked a wol, I shook off the doom and drew my owl repeatedly until it was simple, small and scorable. Or so I thought.

The first acorn, I couldn’t scratch the surface. The second, the scalpel punctured the skin immediately. The third took a little work but after a while I managed to scrape in some dents. And after fervently hoping I didn’t slip with scalpel and slice off a finger, I had the most basic of owls that probably only I could identify at a pinch. Or a squint. A very close squint.