Beltaine – Celebrate Life, Light and Love

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Celebrate Life, Light and Love on Beltaine

by Mara Freeman, M.A.

The Celtic festival of Beltaine, on the First of May, opens wide the gates of summer in the northern hemisphere. This is the time to surrender to the irresistible rising of the life-force under the warmth and light of the growing sun. There is a promise of love and a reminder of the constant greening and renewal of life.

 
Beltaine and the Ancient Celts

The lives of the ancestral Celtic people were naturally attuned to these cycles as to the rhythm of a spiral dance. They celebrated with dance and song and rituals designed to promote a joyful communion both with each other and with the world of Nature. In Scotland and Ireland, fires were kindled on top of sacred hills. Fire is an earthly reflection of the Sun, once seen as the great Source of all life. When the Druids gathered the wood of nine sacred trees and raised the Beltaine fires on hilltops throughout the British Isles on May Eve, they were performing a real act of sympathetic magic, for the fires were designed to bring the sun’s light down to earth. When the wood burst into flames, it proclaimed the triumph of the light over the dark half of the year. In Scotland, every fire in the household was extinguished, a brief time of darkness followed, and then all the villagers climbed the hill to rekindle their flame from the new source with great rejoicing.

In Wales and the Isle of Man, country people turned out for a mock battle between two teams dressed as summer and winter, with, of course, summer winning the day. The victorious team’s captain chose a handsome young man to be the May King and the people picked a pretty May Queen, who were both led to their “court” in a green arbor and crowned with flowers. So every Beltaine does the Bride of the Earth wed her lover, the Green Man of the blossoming year. The offspring of their love will be the fruit of the year’s harvest.

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