24 September 2026

September 24 comes just after the autumn equinox, when day and night have been nearly equal. In modern Pagan traditions, this seasonal turning is associated with Mabon, a relatively recent name for an autumn festival centered on harvest and the movement toward darkness.

For Christians, September 24 falls within Ordinary Time. The day commemorates figures including Thecla and Pacifico of San Severino, while Orthodox calendars remember, among others, the martyr Juvenaly and Peter the Aleut.

In the Islamic calendar, September 24, 2026 corresponds to 13 Rabīʿ al-Thānī 1448—a day without a universally prescribed major festival.

Perhaps that ordinariness is worth noticing. Different traditions have marked this part of the year through harvest, saints, martyrs, seasonal change, and the simple continuation of the calendar. The dates do not all point toward the same religious meaning. They demonstrate something simpler: human beings have continually created ways of paying attention to time.

Spinoza offers another way of looking. For him, nothing stands outside the order of Nature; things arise according to causes and necessity. What appears to us as a sudden change is part of a much larger sequence of things following from what came before.

So today might be a day not for asking what the changing season means, but for noticing what follows.

The equinox has passed. The light is diminishing. Harvest follows planting; evening follows afternoon; one generation follows another. We, too, are things that follow from countless things before us.