For those of us who lean toward the pagan end of the spiritual spectrum, Beltane or May Day occurs this weekend as April turns to May. It's the mid-way point between spring and summer, and for many pagan practitioners, it's a time to celebrate the abundance of nature. But this year, I'm just not feeling it. Maybe it's holiday burnout. After all, I just completed a whirlwind Easter holiday with family, and now Beltane is here. Maybe that's just the way it goes when you try to observe two different sets of holidays.
But I think the real problem is that I've yet to find or identify the spiritual center of the Beltane holiday. This exercise is something I've done for years with every holiday, whether pagan, Christian or even a civic holiday like Memorial Day. I ask myself, "What is the essence of this holiday and why should I honor it?" Call me crazy, but I believe holidays are more than just a day off work or an excuse to drink more alcohol; after all, holidays are "holy" days.
Other holidays on the pagan calendar are easier for me to grasp. I understand the emphasis on nature's balance on the first day of spring and fall, and I find inspiration on both the summer and winter solstice, when the earth is tilted closest and farthest, respectively, from our sun. Maybe these holidays are easy for me because they're obvious reminders of the cycles of nature. But Beltane feels more abstract to me, sort of like Flag Day in June (I mean, seriously, does anyone notice Flag Day?).
As a good pagan, I want to care about Beltane (and Flag Day, too). After all, a holiday traditionally given to colorful maypoles and whispers of lovers' trysts in the woods sounds exciting, right? These May celebrations were once so exciting that the Puritans -- those guardians of all that was decent -- banned maypoles in many places. Today, some Beltane celebrations crown a May Queen with flowers, have participants jump over a fire for good luck or employ Morris Dancers to awaken spring with their lively steps. Maybe I drew the short stick because, here where I live, that sort of thing just doesn't happen.
In other words, if I want to celebrate Beltane, I gotta do it myself (even Flag Day gets some attention locally!). I need to find the spiritual soul of Beltane, at least the one that makes sense to me. Taking someone else's word on any spiritual exercise is never a healthy thing, in my opinion.
No matter if it's Beltane or another celebration on the pagan calendar, I believe each holiday should reconnect me somehow to the natural world and its cycles. Sure, I get that Beltane is all about the fertility of nature, but all the typical "lover/maiden" talk just makes me giggle and feels slightly juvenile. Taking the growth theme a step further by focusing on what I want to "plant" or "nurture" in my own life just seems pedestrian and uninspiring.
So what does inspire me about Beltane? Running throughout all of these May Day traditions is a sense of unbridled joy, of youth sprinting across a flower-covered meadow beneath the warmth of the sun, with a mischievous and happy gleam in his (or her) eye. It speaks not of planting or consummating or doing anything -- but of simply being alive in that moment, with a hint of bright tomorrows to come. Can I bottle that feeling and hold it forever? That's what I want from Beltane this year, and I don't think you can manufacture that spirit out of anything organized.
For me, Beltane simply is. Anyone got a maypole I can borrow?
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Beltane - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Beltane is also a time *for* the youth, in a sense it's *about* them (It's not the people off in the fields (Which admittedly is usually more a matter of talk than practice at Pagan events, anyway) that leap the fires, of old: *they* are the ones who embody the new Spring of the land, and for them it's not about 'that' so directly.
Fact is, that's not *about* everyone being either sexual or left out somehow.
We're a little too used to being treated as 'adult subject matter,' by people all wound up about *sex,* as Pagans today, but our teens are no less teens than anyone else's. Much of the ritual context is not about such things.
For the younger ones, it's about celebrating *being* the new Spring, so to speak. (Even if it takes a relative old biddy like me to say, 'Don't make me be the last leap,' :) Of old, I'm sure that it was scarier for adults, when the fires were *made* by fifteen-year old boys, but I suppose it's better than handing them the keys to an IROC or something. :) )
(more follows)
Just jumping fires. Which look bigger than they are. Promise. :)
Being from New England, myself, a long tail of winter just means it's time to stomp the more. :)
Thank you for the comments thus far. They too are enlightening about earth-centered spirituality.
Simple happiness in the new warm weather and the promise of more to come.
Happy Beltane!
No wonder you can't feel it.
It is the transitory nature of life that makes moments within it worthwhile.
I rather think that's missing the point of any festival - never mind one as profound and joyous as Beltane. Starhawk put it well in that chant - "She changes everything she touches / everything she touches changes". ILife, no matter how you identify your spiritual path, is all about change, about cycles, about movement. Beltane is one moment - the beginning of summer, but wanting to hang onto that one moment is as foolish as wanting to remain young forever.
Nothing can stand still. Everything changes all the time - maybe that is the most profound realisation of this Beltane.
BB
grow a garden, get an aquarium and watch them and work them for half an hour each and every day, and you get to crave that change and awakening that Beltane calibrates. i try to get people to understand that my fish tanks are in facts alters and little worlds that i get to share with others. these are my children but they teach me far far more than i have ever taught or given to them. the same with my garden. i don't take anything out of it that i didn't watch grow and thrive in my own little circle.
we just have to fight a little to keep these things in this modern world.
As a fire festival, it's much *about* rekindling the sacred fires, (Old ones traditionally were extinguished and new ones rekindled from the balefire. ) With that in mind, perhaps consider that it's a time of waking the land as well as our own fires of inspiration and community: as such, the observances themselves can be exactly what you need when you're feeling a little spent in that way. Sometimes I think it even takes a little effort: after something of a tough winter in many ways, it's not too surprising that some ate
It's a mistake, I think, to take the, ah, playful talk, as though that's all there is about it. ;)
The fullness of Spring takes many forms, so let there be songs and dance and as we wake the land, we wake ourselves. :)