Beltane, Beltain, Beltaine,

Today is BELTANE!!!! No matter how you spell it May 1st is one of my Favorite Holidays!!! 

Every year I celebrate by getting together with my coven (friends :) & every person writes a list for all they are grateful for and what they wish to have for this coming season. Then we stand in a circle and read it out loud. Everyone listens as each person tells of their Beltane wish :) We then light a book of matches and burn each list. We give it up to God. When every one's Beltane wish has gone up in smoke we hug & go out to eat :) 

Traditionally Beltane was a festival celebrated by Irish, Gaels, & Scottish. It was the first day of summer and the beginning of the bright half of the year.  May 1st is the midpoint of the Sun's progress between the spring equinox and summer solstice.  The Feast of Beltane included a Great Bonfire to mark a time of purification and transition from seasons. The lighting of a community festival fire  was custom from which individual household hearth fires were then re lit. People would dance around & sometimes jump the fires to purify themselves.

In Gaelic folklore, the village's livestock were driven through fires to purify them and bring luck as well. Beltane marked the beginning of the pastoral summer season when the herds of livestock were moved from the village up into to the summer pastures in the hills and mountain grazing lands. Where they would have fresh grazing for all summer long! Beltane marked this journey for the village's livestock.

Beltane is a fertility ritual and spring time festival of optimism. It is a time to celebrate Gods blessings and abundance. Often part of rituals performed were the blessing and protection of the household and land. The practice of decorating a tree outside the home, the "May Bush", with flowers, ribbons, and colored egg shells was done to symbolize fertility. Boughs were placed on the doors and windows of houses for protection & blessings. Wildflowers especially yellow ones were gathered and brought into the home. In the hopes of a good harvest later in the year. Boughs of juniper were sometimes thrown on the Bonfire to add an additional element of purification and blessing to the smoke. Beltane, like the festival of Samhain (Halloween) which is timed directly opposite, is also a time when the Other world was seen as particularly close to the living. Prayers to the spirit world & offerings were customary.

Today, you don't have a heard to send to the hills or a Bonfire to jump but you do have lots to be grateful for! Create your own Beltane Festival today to celebrate the fertility & growth of your spiritual life :)

xo