Wheel of the Year: Beltane
On Friday, May 1, Pagans celebrated Beltane, one of the four traditional Celtic fire festivals marking the transition from one season to another (Imbolc, Lugnasadh/Lammas, and Samhain). As with the other festivals, Beltane celebrations depended on the local climate; the date was fixed on 1 May only as calendar systems were codified across Europe and influenced by other fire festivals, such as Walpurgisnacht.
This is a festival to mark the transition from Spring (sprouting) to Summer (growing). For the Celts, it was the time to move the cattle to the summer pastures and the start of the growing season for crops. They lit bonfires for people and cattle to walk between or around for protection and to promote growth; sometimes people would jump over small fires or the embers. The ashes were sprinkled over the fields and daubed on people and animals; household fires that had been doused before the celebration were relit from the Beltane fires. Doors, windows, byres, and livestock could be decorated with yellow or white flowers such as primrose, hawthorn, rowan, marsh marigold, and gorse.
Public celebration of Beltane had, more or less, died out by the mid-20th century, but in some places it has been revived as a cultural event. Butser Ancient Farm, an open-air archaeology museum in Hampshire, England, has held a Beltane festival since the 1980s. Since 1988, a festival inspired by Beltane has been celebrated on Calton Hill in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 2009, an annual Beltane festival began on the Hill of Uisneach in Ireland.
For modern Pagans, two sources have had an important influence on the understanding of Beltane: Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough (3rd ed., 1906-1915) and Robert Graves’s The White Goddess (1948). Graves’s version was responsible for the conventional view that Beltane as focused on sex, a view that has less and less currency among Pagans.
The concepts associated with Beltane are growth, connection, fertility, and creation. Growth, warmth, movement, and vitality are visible everywhere. Birds are building nests, trees have leafed out, and flowers are blooming. We are celebrating the start of a season of participation and play; doing rather than observing, creating rather than planning.
Beltane signals a time to act on new ideas, plans, and projects; to look forward to an abundance based on our work; a time to notice what is growing in our relationships, work, daily life, and in the society around us. Beltane is a time to follow what feels energizing and alive to you, to reconnect with the body and the senses. What you and our community work on now will grow during the Summer and be harvested in the Fall; what do you and we want to harvest?
~ Leslie Peet