The Fall Equinox: What Are You Ready to Leave Behind?

Before you carry everything you’ve been growing into the next season, it might be worth asking what still belongs—and your birth chart may have something to say about what you’re ready to leave behind.

On September 22 at 8:05 p.m. Eastern, the Sun enters 0° Libra and we cross the threshold into autumn.

Astronomically, the equinox marks the moment the Sun crosses the celestial equator. The word itself comes from the idea of “equal night”: day and night are roughly balanced before, here in the Northern Hemisphere, darkness begins taking up more and more of the day.

But for witches, Wiccans, Pagans, and others who follow the Wheel of the Year, the Fall Equinox is also Mabon: the second of the three harvest festivals. Lughnasadh began the harvest season in August. Mabon brings us deeper into it. Samhain, at the end of October, marks the final harvest and the beginning of the dark half of the year.

And that makes Mabon an interesting threshold. This isn't necessarily the moment when you throw everything you no longer want into the metaphorical bonfire. We have Samhain for the big death-and-rebirth work. Mabon is more like standing in the field and looking at what you've grown.

What worked? What didn't? What produced something worth keeping? What have you been tending that isn't producing anything anymore? In other words: What might you not want to carry with you into winter?

The Equinox as Divination

This is also a beautiful time for divination. You can pull tarot or oracle cards, work with runes, journal, scry—or use your own natal chart.

And that's what I want to do here.

At the exact moment of the Fall Equinox, the transiting Sun reaches 0° Libra. Everyone on Earth shares that Sun placement. But 0° Libra doesn't land in the same place in everyone's natal chart. So instead of asking the Equinox chart to tell you what you need to release, lay that moment over your own birth chart and see where it lands.

Start with the Sun.

Find 0° Libra in your natal chart. What house does it fall in? That house describes the area of life being illuminated as you enter the new season. Then look to see whether the transiting Sun is making a close aspect to one of your natal planets or points.

Don't immediately decide that whatever you find is something you need to get rid of. Astrology isn't issuing orders here. We're using it as divination: a way of asking a question. Does something you see in that part of your chart connect with something already happening in your life? If it does, you've found somewhere worth looking.

My Sun — what is being highlighted?

In my chart, the Equinox Sun falls in my ninth house, conjunct my natal Pluto and Black Moon Lilith at 29° Virgo. The ninth house rules beliefs, worldview and the meaning we make from our experiences, so my first question becomes: What is actually driving the beliefs behind the choices I’m making?

Pluto and Lilith take that question underneath the respectable answer, into messier territory like power, shame, anger, resentment and the things I might rather not admit are influencing me.

But across the chart, the Sun is also opposing transiting retrograde Neptune in Aries in my third house—the realm of perception, thought and the stories through which I understand my immediate world. That makes me ask: Am I seeing the vision I’m building toward clearly, or are my perceptions being shaped by what I want—or need—to believe?

None of this tells me the vision itself is wrong; it asks me to examine the machinery underneath it. If old wounds, old beliefs or distorted perceptions are helping steer the ship, perhaps those are what I need to think about leaving behind.

My Moon — what do I need emotionally?

The Equinox Moon at 15° Aquarius lands almost exactly on my natal Mercury in my first house, activating a tight T-square between Mercury, my Scorpio Moon in the 10th house and Saturn in Taurus in the 4th. This is a natal tension I know well: the push and pull between emotional authenticity, security, and the way I communicate and present myself to the world. It’s also something I’ve been confronting all summer as I’ve reconsidered what kind of work—and what kind of life—actually feeds me emotionally.

With the transiting Moon sitting directly on Mercury, the question becomes less about what I’m feeling and more about whether I’m willing to give those feelings a voice. What am I ready to stop editing out of my own voice? Where am I still making myself more acceptable, understandable or conventional instead of letting people hear what I actually think and feel?

Maybe what needs to be left behind isn’t a particular job, career or way of life. Maybe it’s the habit of editing myself to fit the container.

My Ascendant — what parts of me need to be considered…or released?

My Equinox Ascendant falls at 26° Aries in my third house, between transiting retrograde Vesta and Chiron and approaching my natal IC at 0° Taurus. That puts the way I’m entering this new season between two deceptively similar questions: What parts of my identity am I protecting because they are truly sacred to me—and what parts am I protecting because they are wounded?

It’s particularly striking because I’ve spent much of this trip asking some version of Who am I now? Am I the writer, the astrologer, the photographer, the traveler—or some combination I haven’t figured out yet? But perhaps the question itself is part of what needs to be left behind. I don’t necessarily have to choose one identity that explains my life before I’m allowed to build it.

As the Ascendant moves toward that Taurus IC and its emphasis on roots and security, maybe the question becomes: What if I stop trying to decide which version of myself is the real one and start building a life spacious enough to hold all of them?

Taking the Equinox With You

You can take this exercise further with any of the transiting planets. Mercury might ask you to examine an idea, assumption or story you’ve outgrown; Venus can point toward changing values, desires or relationship patterns; Saturn may highlight an obligation, rule or structure that needs reconsideration; and Neptune can ask where a dream, ideal or version of reality needs to be seen more clearly—or whether it’s still working. Look at the house the planet is moving through and any close aspects it makes to your natal chart, then use the symbolism to formulate a question rather than predict an outcome.

The Equinox doesn’t have to tell us what happens next. That isn’t how I use astrology. I’m not interested in fortune-telling; I’m interested in using the chart to illuminate the patterns, tensions and questions already alive in our lives.

That’s what this exercise did for me. The Sun brought me back to the beliefs and motivations underneath the future I’m imagining. The Moon brought me to the ways I still edit my own voice. And the Ascendant brought me face-to-face with the pressure I’ve been putting on myself to decide exactly who I am and what comes next. None of those placements gave me instructions. They showed me where the inner work is.

That’s also what a transit reading can do. By looking at where the planets are moving through your natal chart—and what parts of that chart they’re activating—we can explore the themes that are unfolding in your life now and the questions they may be asking you to confront.

Mabon is a harvest, but not every harvest gives us a finished answer. Sometimes what we gather is understanding. Sometimes we recognize what has nourished us, what has run its course, and what has become too heavy to keep carrying.

We take what still has life in it with us, and leave the rest in the field.