Absence makes the heart grow fonder. If the Spring Equinox is the subtle stirring of an initial thaw, Beltane (May Day or May Eve) is a luscious, tumescent awakening. Beltane cherishes the power of the Sun as it warms the Earth into Her season of fertility. This is no fleeting, adolescent crush. This is that heart-pounding, ecstatic moment you first find true love; the moment you know this is The One (capital T, capital O); the moment the flirtation quickens and grows into the kind of life-affirming love you can trust enough to build your life around. Love that we all share with Goddess and God in this season of reincarnation and generation; a tidal pull far too delicious and compelling to resist. This is a time for lovers in the most Sacred sense.
The lessons now are gentle ones. This is the arousal of love everlasting. The Goddess stirs and awakens fully to her lover’s touch. Pink and white abound, naturally, in the world. Trees burst into flower and deciduous trees are achingly vivid, bright, new green. The green that neon tries, but fails, to capture.
A potent and widely recognized symbol of Beltane is the Green Man, the primal consciousness of the plant kingdom. He is a seed who starts out as an undefined character and, with a kiss from Element of Water, jumps up from Element of Earth at Beltane to join and influence the world of the living, his face hidden in leafy camouflage. He is the resurrected god, reincarnated after death to bring salvation and hope of life after death. Guardian spirits (think Fairy Godmother) in the other world and in this one safeguard the newborn life that it may strengthen and grow.
Element of Air stirs us to rise to the season in small ways at first; with gentle butterflies and raucous hummingbirds. The scents are sweet and wet. We gasp as they waft past. Although appeased through the winter by the savory smells of soups, roasts and wet wool, our sense of smell by the time spring stirs is starved for tastes of the living, resurrected, outside world. We gulp the fragrant Beltane Air deeply with its savor of mud, compost, pollen and flowers. It is a time of opening up. A time for spirited and effervescent conversation; a time for opening ourselves to possibility; a time for allowing fresh air to clear away impeding doubts and gust change into our lives. It is a time to rekindle energy and realize connections. A time to see the missing parts of ourselves and connect with that special someone who completes us. It is a time to let our hidden selves out to play in the moonlight; to invite the child within us to adult wakefulness.
As celebrated by the ancients, Beltane was a fire festival when Element of Fire was propitiated with passion. The blessings of the Sacred fire’s light and warmth were fertility and safety for people, animals and fields alike (over which the ashes from the sacred fire were scattered). Beltane is the season to court, to write love letters and seal them with a kiss. To let our lusty hearts (as Sir Thomas Malory called them) blossom and bring forth fruit.
Although Beltane celebrates the intimate, its blessings are also wide. We throw ourselves single into the circle of time at Beltane and come out multiple. After being cooped up all winter it’s finally warm enough to get outside; get in the garden and get some dirt under your fingernails. It’s time to open the windows and reconnect with the wider community, human and nonhuman alike, who have likewise been cooped up all winter. It is a time to celebrate by leaving your neighbors anonymous baskets of flowers, and lean over the fence to catch up on all the news with them. It’s time to move; to put aside winter’s sedentary enjoyments and dance.
Beltane and Samhain separate the pagan year into summer and winter, into the seasons of the living and of the dead. Beltane is a time to focus on life and renewal as Samhain is a time to focus on the death that must needs precede Beltane’s glorious rebirth and resurrection.
Blush is an excerpt from
The Miracle du jour by Terryl Warnock and is reprinted here with permission of MoonLit Press.
© Terryl Warnock 2024 All rights reserved; License:
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
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