This was originally posted on Patheos a few years ago. The title is a response to something John Beckett had said, to the effect that complaining about people using "Maybon" as a word for the autumn equinox was "hate". 

It’s that time of year again when I hear the name of a deity I revere on the lips of many people. His name is on my social media feed on a daily basis, too. That would feel great if more people actually knew that the were speaking His name, so this year I’m on a bit of a campaign to get His story out there, since his name is, anyway.
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The name of this deity is Mabon. A few years ago, I made the short video below about how the Autumn Equinox came to be named Mabon in the early 1970s, and a few other cool facts.

You might have seen my post a few years ago on Patheos Agora titled Mabon is a God. It explains Mabon’s ties to the Gaulish/British god Maponos, and mentions his thriving centre of worship in the first century AD along the Scottish/English border. It never occurred to me that any of my Pagan friends would doubt that Mabon is a god, but apparently that’s also a thing, which mystifies me, because I think the evidence for that is pretty sound.
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Brian Walsh seems to agree with me. His Mabon - a God of Spring Misplaced post gets an airing every year, and while I don’t necessarily agree with the theory that Mabon ap Modron and Angus Óg are more-or-less the same deity, I’m glad that other polytheists at least agree that Mabon has deity status. 

An equally important reason that I believe that Mabon is a god, however, is that I have a relationship with Him. Years ago, when I desperately needed to escape from Edinburgh for a couple of weeks, I decided to book a holiday cottage somewhere quiet, and I ended up on the outskirts of Lochmaben. The little town of Lochmaben is surrounded on three sides by three different lochs (that’s Scots for lakes). Perversely, none of them is called Loch Mabon, but it seems like the one called Castle Loch probably used to be.

I definitely needed some emotional patching up at the time, even if I was fine physically, and it was easy to reach out to Mabon there. I ended up making a pilgrimage to the Clachmaben Stone, as well, which was another powerful experience. I went back to Edinburgh renewed in myself and with great respect for the kindness of the god Mabon, as well. He definitely has healing powers.

Over time that experience faded, and I moved on to other things, but I still remember how Mabon’s places touched me. At the time, I’m not sure I was even aware of the Autumn Equinox being called Mabon, so when I moved back to the US and started hearing people say “What are you doing for Mabon?” the question didn’t quite compute. It still makes no sense to me, because from what I can see, most people are doing absolutely nothing for Mabon. They aren’t honouring Him. They aren’t talking about Him. A lot of people only half believe me when I tell them that there actually is a deity called Mabon. 
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When I was researching what I wanted to write about Mabon this year I couldn’t believe that there were no photos of the healing spring Maponos was associated with in the Auvergne region of France. It’s famous largely because there is a museum filled with votive offerings someone once found there during construction work. There are thousands of them. Most take the form of human or animal limbs, as if to show the gods where it hurt, but others take the form of an entire person or animal. Among them was a lead tablet addressed to Maponos. Finally, in a local French paper I discovered that the spring had been neglected and blocked up for decades, but someone has recently cleared it and built a small pool, and there are hopes that eventually there will be a public font. No one is worshipping Maponos there (yet!) as far as I know. I don’t have a photo to show you, but there are several at this link.

I don’t suppose a few vocal polytheists will convince wider Pagandom to stop calling this holiday Mabon, but I am on a one woman campaign to at least encourage people to show Him a bit of love and devotion once a year. 

I have been working on material for the class I’ll be teaching about Maponos and Mabon soon. I’ve been reading papers that are either new, or that I hadn’t had time to read before, and thinking about the site of the spring at Chamalières where the famous tablet inscribed to Maponos was found. Of course, I’m looking for images that will help the students to visualise what must have been happening at Chamalières as the last decades BCE moved into the first century CE. Images like the one of the archaeological dig that uncovered all this, back in the early 1970s seem messy and overwhelming. It made me realise that I have not really taken the enormity of this site in, myself. 

Our ideas of deity vary – some things we can’t shake off from cultural Christianity whether we were really raised as Christians or not, plus our own ideas about what a deity is, or what we think deity meant to our pre-Christian ancestors. It’s very personal. But the enormity of this site, the weight of requests for healing and probably offerings of thanks for healing – today, I just felt the weight of it.

If I came closer to understanding Maponos today, it was only that I came closer to understanding the enormity of what was being asked of Him. Like most modern polytheists, I shy away from thinking of deities as all-powerful or all-knowing. If you want their help you have to get their attention, offer something in return, and accept that they probably have more agency in the world than you do, but how much more is never clear.

From what the archaeologists can know, this site was only in use for a hundred years – probably less. Yet the limbs piled up into a solid mass, accompanied by offerings of gold staters and hazel nuts and fibulae. Maponos waited with open arms to receive all that pain, all those hopes.

I’ve had a few visions of Maponos over the years. One, quite unexpected, where he appeared as a tall, self-assured, young man in a cave with flowing water. I sat with my arm outstretched as He poured water over it from a dipper. I had an overwhelming sense of kindness and compassion, but also of the sort of detachment one often finds in people in the medical profession. Detachment which allows them to do their work, keep their sanity, be efficient. Something else, too. A sense from Him that I shouldn’t be surprised by His willingness to heal. A sort of "It's what I do" matter-of-factness.
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Of course there’s more to Maponos than His healing aspect. We lack any mythology for Maponos. We have to do our best to understand Him through His associations with Apollo and Mabon ap Modron, and maybe even Aengus Óg son of Boand and the Dagda. Their attributes include healing, being imprisoned, music and poetry, hunting, association with the sun, maybe a warrior aspect … Recently, I sensed Maponos reminding me that I need to see deities, Himself included, in all their aspects, not just pick one. 
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​If you want to learn more about Maponos and Mabon there are opportunities coming up soon. I’ll be teaching a class about him starting on Saturday, 18th September. You can join just the first week of the class, as a stand-alone talk, or sign up for the full six weeks. There’s more information at this link.