“Hurray, Hurray for the first of May. Outdoor [loving and living] starts today!” No one is quite sure where this charming piece of doggerel came from. It’s apparently been around for centuries. But it’s still appropriate today. I’ve modified it to fit these pandemic times and a broad internet audience. Wishing everyone a glorious summer filled with sun, fun, and friends.
There are actually two times in the year when the veil thins and the other worlds come within touching distance. Samhain, or Halloween is the one most folks recognize, but Beltane, its partner on the opposite side of the Wheel of the Year is the other. Ancestors and spooks visit on Samhain and Fairies, or, as Lewis Spence speculates, gods who have diminished in power through lack of attention, visit on Beltane. “At Bealltainn, or May Day, every effort was made to scare away the fairies, who were particularly dreaded at this season. In the West Highlands charms were used to avert their influence. In the Isle of Man the gorse was set alight to keep them at a distance. In some parts of Ireland the house was sprinkled with holy water to ward off fairy influence. These are only a mere handful out of the large number of references available, but they seem to me to reveal an effort to avoid the attentions of… Read More »
Spring is bursting out in Portland. The flowers are amazing this year. We have a huge, century-old Gravenstein apple tree in our back yard that usually puts out a few blossoms every year just to remind us that it really is an apple tree. This year it was covered in pinkish white froth and smelled divine. Flowers always remind me of Beltane 2007, which I spent in Glastonbury, England at Chalice Well Gardens. We stayed at the Chalice Well guesthouse, so I was in the gardens as much as possible, drinking the healing waters, meditating, and admiring the flowers. The Gardens have an immense presence and vitality composed of the combined spirits of its plants, insects, spiders, fungi, and bacteria. It’s almost palpable. One morning as I was meditating and playing in the powerful energy lines that pass through the Garden, I heard a faint hum. I opened my eyes and saw a bee, hovering so close to my face that my eyes almost crossed.… Read More »
If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, Don’t be alarmed now. It’s just a spring-clean for the May Queen. Robert Plant Stairway to Heaven Beltane, the celebration of the union of the God and Goddess which brings fertility and abundance to the land, was probably celebrated in the British Isles in some form centuries before Christ was even a twinkle in God’s eye. I doubt that it was a coincidence that the wedding of the future king and queen of Britain was scheduled for this weekend.