Born of Equinox: An Autumn Child’s Love Letter to the Shadowed Wheel

The Beauty in the Dark Half of the Year

Most people write about the wheel of the year as a carousel of celebrations — the bursting fertility of Beltane, the abundance of Midsummer, the golden harvest of Lughnasadh. It’s all joy, all light, all “look how much we’ve grown.” And don’t get me wrong, that part of the cycle is dazzling. But for me, it is just as magickal when the year tips toward its shadowed side.

From the autumn equinox through Imbolc, we walk a different path: one of descent. The harvest is gathered, the days shorten, and life retreats inward. This isn’t about expansion but release. It’s the season of letting go, of honoring endings, of facing what hides in shadow and sitting in the fertile void before anything new dares to stir. It’s less fireworks, more candlelight. We could even say "less performance", more raw truth.

I was born on the equinox — that fleeting, impossible moment of balance between light and dark. Maybe that’s why I feel so at home in thresholds, in liminal spaces where opposites meet and dissolve into each other. To me, endings and beginnings have never been opposites at all, just the same truth seen from different sides. Perhaps this is also why I’m drawn to building bridges, to holding space for multiple perspectives, to seeing the world not in binaries but in continuums. My birthday has always been a reminder that wholeness is born from balance. Neither light nor dark is “better.” Both are necessary, and both are sacred.

All life begins in the dark. A seed pushed into the soil. A baby growing in the womb. The moon’s cycle starting in shadow. Darkness is not absence, but origin — the place where possibility gestates before reaching for the light.

And yet, in modern life, this rhythm feels almost rebellious. Capitalist culture demands that we keep going, keep producing, keep shining. Rest is framed as laziness, grief as weakness, shadow as danger. But the wheel insists otherwise. Nature doesn’t apologize for going bare. Trees don’t cling to their leaves out of fear of productivity loss. The earth herself honors cycles, not spreadsheets. To follow the dark half of the year is to reclaim our own cyclic humanity — to say: I am not a machine.

So how do we live this in the city — where neon lights kill the twilight and everything moves at the speed of “now”? For me, it starts with small, stubborn acts of rebellion.

• Journaling at dusk, not to be productive, but to ask: what needs to die in me tonight?

• Striking a match and lighting candles, not for cozy vibes, but as a way of saying: welcome, darkness, I see you.

• Building an ancestor altar in October, whispering names, pouring tea for the dead, letting memory become medicine.

• Burning scraps of paper at Samhain, watching the flames devour what I no longer carry.

• Claiming slow winter nights, not as laziness, but as sacred resistance in a culture addicted to hustle.

These are simple acts, but they stitch me back into rhythm. They remind me that this season is not a void to be endured until the sun returns, but a living mystery to be entered. Darkness doesn’t need to be feared. It’s not the opposite of light, but its partner — the other side of wholeness. Without night, dawn has no meaning. Without descent, there is no rising. In the dark, seeds germinate, dreams brew, ancestors whisper.

The shadowed half of the year teaches us that to grow, we must first descend. To be whole, we need both light and dark. That’s the wheel’s quiet rebellion: reminding us that we’re not built for endless summer, endless grind. We’re built for cycles — for death and rebirth, shadow and flame. And the magic isn’t in choosing one over the other, but in daring to live the rhythm of both.