¡ Blessed Beltane !
¡ Blessed Beltane : Bee aš eat May !
Beltane is a celebration of the peak of Spring’s vibrant energy, and signifies the start of Summer {midway between spring equinox and summer soulstice}. There are elastic intervals in the pagan Great 8 Sabbats of the year, each of which is celebrated for ~ 3 days {Beltane is April 30th ~ May 2}.
Beltane hilights the boons of passion, creative abundance, and fertility. Let yourself be intoxicated by the full blooming of your life.
Classic celebrations include Maypole dances / weaving, jumping over / walking through two lit bonfires, making flower crowns and decorating may bushes / boughs. Colors associated with Beltane you can choose to wear or adorn your seasonal altar with include green, red, and white.
Themes to Ponder :
Only You Live Your Life
Beltane is a fortuitous time for new beginnings. Consider your purpose, what is it that only you can do? How are you being asked to grow? What messages are uniquely suited for you to hear and share?
Life asks us questions, and we answer in how we live. When we are fully vital we honor the call of life generating more life, losing ourselves in the flow of inspirational service.
How can you live your life as your practice?
Celebrate Commitment
Beltane is a time for hand fastening, a pagan practice of committing to a person, group, or goal for a set period of time.
Who and what are you committed to? How can you bring your community together to witness your commitment?
Move From Heart
The sacred is a living creature, how does it move in your life? What stirring of your Soma could you be subsumed by? How can you move from your heart? How can you love more fully and unabashedly, as though you are a well-wishing well, a gush of goodness, a fount of feral feminine freedom ?
Rooting in Ritual
Observance of the seasonal celebrations can make us transparent to ourselves and wider seasonal themes of archetypal and energetic shifts. How can you be more vulnerable to your visceral joy? What deserves celebration but has been overlooked {starting a new art practice, beginning a new chapter in your life, exquisite self care}?
Playing with Polarity
Each of the 8 Sabbats also invokes it’s opposite, thus Beltane is paired with Samhain October 31st, honoring the decomposition portion of the cycle. Beltane reminds us that everything that blooms was once buried and that rest is rooting. Deep roots, most high.
Beltane is in the belly of Samhain and vice versa, each pregnant with its mirror. Both are fire festivals, a powerful element when harnessed with caution and respect can create light, heat, and power, but can also easily blow through barriers as wildfire, uncontained, cauterizing, and completely cleansing.
Pyromancy for Prognostication
Contemplate your responses to the questions above as you engage in a Pyromancy or divination with fire. Safety first : never leave a lit fire, candle, or live embers unattended. Stare into the flame and allow your mind to relax. What shapes and scenes emerge?
In Person Potentiation
If you are in the Bay Area of San Fransisco, celebrate Beltane this weekend with Earth Body Church : message us and we will weave you into our nature based gatherings.
May you celebrate all that can be celebrated,
Reverend Razma
EBC