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This is the most joyous Sabbat. For us, this is the real spring. At the Equinox many of us were probably still snowed in.
In Britain, where we get the Sabbats from, flowers are blooming now. As they are on our West Coast. But in the rest of Canada, the ground is bare — no snow, but not much green yet either. Beltane is supposed to be a festival of flowers, but we don't have any.
Still, this is spring. Our spring is short, but intense. Almost as soon as Beltane is over, the world will burst into color. Not only the plants will revive, but the animals, birds and insects as well.
This is the time of the mating of the God and Goddess. You will have noted that other Sabbats were such occasions also. Every Sabbat is a celebration of birth, life and death, although there may be a greater emphasis on one or another aspect. For this one, the emphasis is on mating. In the midst of burgeoning life, we must look to the future so that there will be life yet again.
Janet and Stewart Farrar in Eight Sabbats for Witches say that Beltane and Samhain are our biggest festivals because originally they were the only ones. The earliest Celts were cattle-herders, who only had two seasons — winter and summer. At Samhain they drove the cattle into the pens to winter over, and at Beltane they drove them back to the pasture. The custom of driving the cattle between the bonfires of Beltane was to scorch and kill the external parasites that had multiplied during the close confinement of winter (Vivianne Crowley, Celtic Wisdom).
Later on in history, herding was supplemented by agriculture, and people began to mark other intervals on the wheel of the year.
Beltane means beautiful fire, and we generally pronounce it the way it looks. For information on alternate meanings, spellings and pronunciations, see Janet and Stewart Farrar's Eight Sabbats for Witches. They also offer information on the possible derivation of the term and on Beltane lore.
One of the things they say is that the bel might have been derived from the Middle Eastern Baal, which means Lord, and that this is appropriate for a Sabbat that celebrates the Young Lord who is wedding the Goddess. (Baal is not looked on favorably by the writers of the Bible, but in reality he may have been simply a vegetation deity. The writers of the Bible weren't happy about any Gods but their own.)
The Earth is still in the Air phase of her yearly cycle. The atmosphere is still light, lively and fresh before the heavy heat of summer settles in.
The Sun is in Taurus, the bull, an Earth sign. People born under the Sun sign of Taurus are usually described as practical, patient, industrious and sometimes as stubborn. All very bovine, but remember that the bull was a fierce and frightening animal, given to charging and goring, all this in defence of his harem. So Taurus is an appropriate ruling sign for the Sun God coming to mate with the Earth Goddess.
Check to see what sign the Moon is under when you do your celebration.
Put that all together and you should have a powerful Beltane!
May Day is (or was) celebrated in communist countries as a workers' festival. This seems appropriate because the original May Day was a celebration of peasants and villagers, the workers of their day.
This is a time when Morris Dancers get out their ribbons, bells and sticks. Morris dancing is a surviving Pagan custom that had to do with waking up the sleeping Earth. The same holds for riding hobby-horses through the field. In places in England there are spring pageants with a May Queen, a great hobby-horse cavorting about, something like a Chinese dragon in a New Year's parade, surrounded by dancers, music and much carry-on. Nowadays it's just a quaint folkloric thing, but it brings a strange whiff of our genuine Pagan past.
Walpurgisnacht is the Germanic equivalent of May Eve, and was considered a wild time when spirits and fairies were abroad. More likely it was a time for staid people to stay indoors because the young people were out partying.
Beltane was considered a time for mating in the fields to ensure a good crop — any excuse for a party. These days for most people it's a sedate affair, with a few toasts drunk to fertility, and that usually of the metaphorical kind.
We still depend for our lives upon the fertility of the fields and the farm animals. But, as largely city-dwellers, we tend to take it all for granted.
Nevertheless, we should give a thought to the fertility of the land. This is a good time for people with gardens to start a compost pile. At its crudest, it's merely a container or fenced-in area where you throw dead leaves, grass clippings (but only if no herbicides were used) and vegetable scraps from your kitchen (no meat or milk products — they'll smell and attract animals and flies). This is an on-going work for fertility of your flower and vegetable beds.
People in apartments might consider worm farms and give their compost to friends with gardens. Some municipalities are starting communal composting to divert household waste from dumps and to deal with garden refuse and fall leaves. Even treated sewage sludge is being used in some places to fertilize farmers' fields.
Sometimes we want fertility in its most literal sense. But more often we seek fertility and growth in a metaphorical sense. We want to do more and better, we want to have more effect on our corner of the world, and sometimes, let's face it, we just plain want more money.
Most of what we need for personal growth is from the composting of our past. What did we do wrong? Let's do less of it. What did we do that worked? Let's do more of it. We need to read, educate ourselves and observe other people's successes and failures as well as our own. Knowledge and experience, if we subject them to contemplation, are rich soil that can give us the kind of growth we're looking for, both material and spiritual.
A Beltane ritual should feature flowers, seeds and seedlings. People could wear flower wreaths on their heads — if they can find any flowers. In these parts we might be forgiven for using the artificial kind. People can also bedeck themselves with ribbons and little bells.
And, of course, no Beltane celebration is complete without a Maypole.
The Maypole is central, so to speak, to the Beltane ritual.
For some Wiccan groups there is a whole mini-ritual around the pole — first of finding it in the woods. The women go out and find a suitable fallen tree or, if necessary, cut down a living tree. A dead tree should have the remains of a branch near the top so ribbons can be secured. Or, if it is freshly cut down, it should be stripped of branches with a shaggy top of leaves left at the top.
Meanwhile, at the centre of the circle, the men have dug a hole in the ground deep enough so that the pole will be stable when it's installed. The women carry the pole into the circle and then get it standing upright and ease it into the excavation.
All this, of course, is accompanied by suitably raucous jokes.
Precautions should be taken so that the pole doesn't fall down. Wedges of wood in the hole and and heavy stones all around should take care of it.
For a gigantic pole, with dozens of people dancing around it, the ribbons have to be attached before it is raised. This is what the Earthspirit people in Boston do at the Rites of Spring, where the pole is 30 feet high.
For a shorter pole, it's fun to raise it first and then fasten the ribbons to the top. People tie one end of their ribbons to a small circlet of ribbon or twine. Then the men raise the “maiden” (usually the youngest or possibly the lightest woman) and she loops the ribbons onto the top of the pole.
Viviane Crowley mentions in Celtic Wisdom that some people do one round of weaving the ribbons, one of unweaving them, and a third one of weaving them again. However, despite your best efforts, the weaving will not be perfect, and then the problem will be magnified when you come to the unweaving. You can avoid the problem by using three sets of ribbons. That entails the maiden being hoisted three times. (She usually doesn't complain.)
Ribbons can be alternating white and blood-red to symbolize life, or they can be of various colors as the participants wish. Long strips of cloth tied together can substitute for ribbons. And people often like to write their wishes for the coming season on their ribbons.
You need an even number of dancers. If there's an odd number, then someone should stand outside, leading the song and keeping the beat. To start, you need people to pair up and face each other. Ideal pairs would be one man and one woman, but it usually doesn't work out that neatly. Besides, the Maypole is especially fun for children to take part in. First the people facing clockwise take a step in, closer to the pole, and the people facing counter-clockwise take a step outwards. When the weaving begins, the clockwise people (who are closer to the pole) go under the ribbon of the counter-clockwise people. Those who went under go around the next person, and vice versa, so that all the dancers are moving their ribbons alternatively under and over the ribbons coming at them.
This may be a little awkward and slow to start, but soon you get into the rhythm and it becomes quite hypnotic.
After the Maypole people like to jump the bonfire, or the fire in the cauldron, for good luck. Couples often hold hands and jump together. (Note:- The cauldron traditionally would be over the fire, with a stew or soup simmering inside, but often people make a small, safe, contained fire inside a cauldron instead. You can still make a soup or brew some herb tea on a grate on top.)
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