Beltaine

Season of Beltaine begins around May 1. It is the celebration of the birthday of the sun god Beale. He is the consort of the mother earth goddess Danu in the Celtic tradition. He is an archetypal solar sky father god. Summer is the most masculine of the four seasons. It is the time when the child is born into the world into material form. It is time of long-growing season; the time of most activity, like playfulness, enjoyment of fruits of the world; the time of youth, sexuality, sensuality, dating, mating, the body, physical activity, prowess, and achievement. In the Celtic tradition, it is the time of the many-colored land, celtic heaven, eternal summer. Time of color, fruits and flowers and brilliant light. Full expression, action, the heroic self, of really going for it. Time of youth and the warrior, time for heroic actions, being present in the physical world.

Ritual for the season:
It is performed in the Monarch Bear Grove, in the Celtic cross circle, dedicated to the sun.The ritual occurs in Monarch Bear Grove and focuses upon the maypole dance. In the maypole dance, participants tie ribbons of different colors around the maypole and dance in a circle. Half of the participants dance clockwise and half of them dance counter-clockwise. The clockwise movement involves pulling down of energies from the sky, creating the cone of power, and the counter-clockwise movement involves the pulling up of the energies from within the earth, thus creating a vortex of power. This powerful ritual involves the inter-weaving and inter-marriage of a multitude of energy polarities being brought down from the stellar and the solar realms and brought up from the underworld and faery realms and interwoven within the middle-world of the earth. This interweaving of polarities includes masculine and feminine, and sky and earth and a multitude of others. Frequently at Beltaine, we honor and toast our mothers and fathers. This is the time of purification through fire. Time to celebrate one's sexuality, whether male or female. Time to welcome faery beings and to commune with them since their world is very accessible at this time.

The time where the spirit fully manifests within the body and the material world of manifestations and polarities. In spring time we are a fetus in a physical form we are spirit and body protected within our mother's womb; at Beltaine it is the time of coming out being born into the material world, becoming fully spirit and body existing between the polarities of the material world. Beltaine is beginning of the light half of the year, time of the manifest, it is the ending of the dark half the year, which is the time of the un-manifest. Beltaine is the polarity of Samhuin energetically. Samhuin is the beginning of the un-manifest (inner) part of the year and Beltaine is the beginning of the manifest (outer) part of the year. Beltaine is based on several event in the outer world, like the rising of the Pleiades, which occurs sometime between May 4 to May 8, and also the blooming of the hawthorne trees (sacred trees of the faery queen.) Another aspect of this season and ritual is the crowning of the May King and Queen to honor the polarities of this season.