If you are looking for a thrilling manga to read, then "Find the Witch and the Beast" is a great choice. This manga, written by Kousuke Satake, is a dark fantasy series that follows the story of Emilio, a young swordsman, as he embarks on a dangerous mission to find a missing witch, also known as the Beast. Set in a medieval world where witches are feared and hunted, Emilio is accompanied by a talking cat named Puck, who provides him with guidance and support along the way. The manga explores themes of trust, redemption, and the complexity of human emotions. One of the highlights of this manga is Satake's exquisite artwork. The detailed illustrations bring the story and characters to life, creating a visually captivating experience for readers.

Autumnal Equinox: Witches Share How They Celebrate

September 23 marks the 2019 Autumnal Equinox — a day when the sky is equal parts dark and light. It’s also the date that witches celebrate Mabon, one of the pagan festivals in the Wheel of the Year. The Wheel of the Year is the cyclical calendar of festivals that modern pagans celebrate. The Wheel symbolizes the continuous turning of time and mirrors nature’s cycles of death and rebirth. Named for the God of Welsh mythology, the festival celebrates the harvest and the life and that summer created as we prepare for the long, cold nights of winter.

Most modern witches likely don’t have a literal harvest to feast on and honor like the original celebrants of Mabon did, so the day instead marks a time to reflect on and honor the things we’ve been working on this year and the work that we’ve brought to fruition. “Mabon is the day that corresponds to the last harvest: It is a day to call in, a day to appreciate our many, many blessings and spread those around. It is a day to give thanks and let whatever bad habits or troubles that have been accumulating in our psyche in an unhelpful way go,” Sarah Faith Gottesdiener told Teen Vogue.

Gottesdiener is an artist, designer, tarot reader and witch — you may know her from her popular and often sold-out Many Moons workbooks or from her shop, Modern Women. For Gottesdiener, the season’s magic is especially potent because it combines with her celebration of the Jewish High Holy Days. While she says that the Celtic mythology attached to the Wheel of the year doesn’t resonate with her, its connection to nature and the season’s effects on us personally and collectively makes following it important to her. This includes embracing the return of the darkness that accompanies the Equinox. “The darkness is a beautiful thing, because it is where seeds germinate. The darkness is deeply potent: it is our subconscious and a source of our own power,” Gottesdiener said.

For writer and intuitive tarot reader Swati Khurana, the Autumnal Equinox is a profoundly personal holiday. After Khurana began shifting away from the label of “Hindu” 20 years ago to separate herself from what she called a "tradition that was connected to caste violence," she said she started questioning and opting out of holidays and traditions that felt like they no longer fit into her “post-colonial intersectional feminist perspective.”

“I loved the rituals of being among women in temple, applying mendhi on my hands, creating trays of offerings, and walking into the moonlight,” Khurana told Teen Vogue about her appreciation of certain aspects of some Hindu holidays. “As I started observing the Equinox, I used elements that I still find so beautiful, but recast them in a ritual that centered self-actualization and personal freedom. Observing the Equinox became a way for me to reclaim the season [that] includes my birthday and my two favorite holidays — Diwali and Halloween — from a feminist perspective.”

If it’s your first time celebrating Mabon, Gottesdiener recommends choosing rituals that feel sacred to you and that have intuitive resonance. “Like celebrating the phases of the moon, or the different seasons, make it personal, and make it about celebrating and honoring life in the present moment— that is ultimately, what all great magick does,” she said.

Gottesdiener will be celebrating by hosting a customary potluck feast for loved ones where they’ll eat, read poems, pull tarot cards, reflect, and burn that which they wish to release. She also plans to do some solo celebrating. “For the most part, I am a solitary practitioner, so I'll also be reflecting and working with the energies for myself personally as well. Because of the placement of the [waxing] moon, this year, I'll be focused on what I wish to harvest more of in my life,” told Teen Vogue.

Social justice educator Steph Guthrie offered a ritual facilitated for her birthday by friend Kritty Uranowski that felt particularly meaningful during a difficult year of her life. “We each wrote down on small pieces of paper one thing we were grateful for from the summer that we’d carry with us into the winter, one thing we were ready to leave behind, and one thing we hoped to manifest in the months ahead,” she told Teen Vogue. After a consensual and optional sharing of their reflections, participants burned the things they wanted to leave behind, planted in the ground the things they hoped to manifest, and held onto the things we were grateful for.

Even if you don’t identify as a witch or aren’t up for a planning big ritual, pausing to acknowledge the season’s changing is a valuable practice for reflection and gaining perspective.“Dedication to observing and respecting the natural world is something that anyone can do, whether they are witches or not,” said scientist and college instructor T. Kempton. “Seasonal holidays like Mabon encourage us to be active participants in the turning wheel of time, living intentionally and intensely, instead of just coasting through life. Mabon is a beautiful time, and we are beautiful within it.”

A Pagan Fall Celebration: Mabon

The opinions expressed in this article are the writer’s own and do not reflect the views of Her Campus.

It might surprise you to learn that there are pagans who celebrate the end of the harvest season. That celebration is called Mabon, or the Autumn Equinox.

To understand a pagan holiday we have to first understand:

What’s Wicca/Paganism?

According to Britannica, Wicca, is a predominantly Western movement whose followers practice witchcraft and nature worship and who see it as a religion based on pre-Christian traditions of northern and western Europe.

A Wiccan then is someone who practices paganism, which is any nature-based religion/belief, as well as someone who incorporates “magic” into their craft. (No, Wiccans do not believe in the devil as that is more of a Judeo-Christian belief). Wiccans also tend to be polytheistic.

Magic is essentially all about intent, it’s like a prayer: a thought being released unto the universe asking for something to forces and powers beyond the natural realm, and, like a prayer, there are many ways to go about practicing it.

What is Mabon?

In the words of a practitioner of the Wiccan faith, popular YouTuber and author, Harmony Nice, “Mabon is a celebration of balance—the days and the nights are now in equilibrium once again. It’s time to give thanks (…).”

It’s a time of the year to appreciate how much the earth has given us (the harvest season is coming to an end). It’s one of the eight Wiccan holidays, or Sabbaths celebrated throughout the year. These celebrations usually stick to harvest seasons/seasonal changes/natural phenomena.

Think of this holiday as sort of a pagan Thanksgiving. It’s a time to be grateful to the universe for all we’ve achieved thus far, and celebrate new beginnings and chapters closed in life.

When is Mabon celebrated?

Wiccans can choose to either celebrate according to their hemispheres (since the Sabbats are tied to the seasonal changes occurring year-round) or to celebrate according to the Northern hemisphere. You can either celebrate Mabon from September 21st-24th, or from March 21st-24th.

How do people celebrate Mabon?

There are many ways you could celebrate Mabon. A very common form of celebration is with a big Thanksgiving-like feast with friends and family. Focusing on homegrown/local products and purchases (using what the Earth has given and celebrating that bounty symbolically).

Other people choose to go on a walk through the woods nearby, taking time to breathe in the calm atmosphere and experience the changes Nature is going through as summer turns to fall.

Others put out offerings and decorate their altars (worship area) with fall themes like pumpkins, fallen leaves, incense, crystals, etc.

There are many ways to celebrate, and even if you’re not part of a Wiccan/Pagan belief system, you can still let yourself enjoy this wonderful time of change.

Neo-Paganism is so modern in its interpretation, there’s really almost no boundaries as to how you can experience these holidays, it’s all up to you.

How to celebrate the fall equinox like a pagan

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Druids at Stonehenge for the autumn equinox, 2014. Stonehenge Stone Circle / Flickr

Wednesday is the fall equinox. The hours of daylight and night will be completely even, and with that, the northern hemisphere will enter into autumn.

Lots of people will observe the change of seasons by jumping into leaf piles, sipping pumpkin spice lattes, and yelling at NFL teams.

But for the million-or-so pagans worldwide — an umbrella term for wiccans, druids, and followers of other pre-monotheistic European faith traditions — the change of seasons is observed in much older ways.

Sabina Magliocco, the author of "Witching Culture" and an anthropologist at California State University, Northridge, says that there isn't one particular set of practices for modern-day druids.

But there are several themes that will show up in pagan rituals around the world:

• Balance, because of the perfect balance between dark and light in the day. You might be asked to think about what in your life is out of balance and how you might act on it, and the same for society. "What can we do pragmatically to contribute to balance within ourselves and the outer world?" she asks.

• Gratitude, because of the harvest. The equinox is a time for giving thanks to the literal and metaphorical harvests of the summer season, Magliocco says, whether that's actual crops or completed projects. "People might decorate with symbols of the harvest: apples, gourds, pumpkins," she says, and if you're feasting to celebrate, you might bring a piece of writing or music that you completed over the summer. "This is extremely individual," she says, "but it might be a ritual of thanks for this wonderful bounty.

• Letting go, because winter is coming. The equinox marks the entry into a darker time of the year, so it's time to discard what will hold you back on that journey. Practitioners "will write on scraps of paper the things they want out of their lives — a bad habit, a way of thinking, baggage from an old relationship — and burn it as part of a ritual" Magliocco says. "Y ou want to give thanks for what you received and purify yourself, because we’re going into a darker time of year where you naturally turn inward."

Still, it's actually a relatively minor feast compared to others on the pagan calendar, like Samhain (know better as Halloween). Lots of pagans either already celebrated last Sunday or will celebrate over the weekend, since it can be hard to fit seasonal rites into busy schedules.

Sierra Fox, a 25-year-old Philadelphian who "quietly identifies" as a pagan, made the trip up to Syracuse, New York, to observe the change of seasons last weekend with members of Central New York Pagan Pride.

They shared apples cakes and apple cider to mark the day, and carried out group rituals.

In one memorable case, fifty or so celebrants gathered in a circle and took a handful of bird seed each. "We held it and focused our intent, what we were thankful for," she says. "We chanted 'thank you, thank you' louder and louder, and threw the birdseed into the air, yelling out what we were thankful for — throwing the gratitude out into the world, and feeding the birds, which is always nice."

Contrary to what you might have heard, the autumn equinox isn't about animal sacrifice or casting spells.

Fox, who grew up in a household that was "mildly pagan," says that the celebration is a way of recognizing the chapter of the year. "Pagans would argue that the seasons are magical, nature is magical," she says. "The things that inspire wonder and awe, they don't feel mundane. There is something magical and sacred about these natural events. They are natural in that they are part of nature, but not natural in a throwaway mundane term."

It's an "epic day of grace," according to Beth Ann Mastromarino, the president of New York Pagan Pride . Pagans, she maintains, try to look back at how their ancestors observed the world. And with a harvest holiday, it has lots to do with food.

Back in the day, you couldn't grab an apple at the supermarket, you had to pluck it from a tree. So the equinox is a moment for appreciating the struggles and fortune that produced the bounty that sustains everybody.

"This is the time to see what you’ve harvested and plan what you want for the next year," she says.

Even if you're not a pagan, if your family is setting out decorative gourds to welcome the autumn, it's acting from the same instinct.

"People do these things without realizing why or where these traditions come from," Mastromarino says. "All day I have seen wreaths and pumpkins and mums planted specifically for the season. people will welcome in the season in what we now consider mundane ways, but to decorate for a holiday is a way of celebrating it as well."

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The plot is full of twists and turns, keeping readers on the edge of their seats. The complex relationships between characters further add depth to the story, as Emilio's loyalty and morality are put to the test. Overall, "Find the Witch and the Beast" is a gripping manga that combines excellent artwork with a captivating storyline. Its dark fantasy setting and memorable characters make it a must-read for manga enthusiasts who enjoy thrilling and suspenseful narratives. So, if you are looking for an exciting manga to delve into, be sure to find "Find the Witch and the Beast" online..

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