On the Wheel of the Year, Beltaine falls in the South, the home of the element of fire and the full moon. The energies that fire stirs within us include passion, courage and transformation. It is a time of fecundity and blossoming, of heightened sensual and sexual energies, of creativity and fertility.
In Ireland Beltaine is the season of summer and includes the months of May, June and July. At my Irish home in the west, the cuckoos are migrating from Africa and their cuckoo-clock song is a welcome sound across the meadows in the liminal times of dawn and dusk and is a sure sign that summer has arrived.
The stretch of the day is lengthening and the sun’s arc is increasingly higher in the sky. In the primordial dance the moon now travels lower across the heavens.
The scent of wild garlic mixes with the heady vanilla of blooming hawthorn and blue bells shimmer across mossy woodland floors. Nettle and cleavers and dandelion beckon to be harvested and made into tea and soups and healing tonics.
What are yearly rituals that mark this time for you?
When we come back into natural rhythm with the world, everything changes. We feel a part of something greater, we feel the connection of our own life rhythms with those of the land and the plants and the animals. When we come back to into relationship with the seasons, we feel the resonance of our ancestors and how they may have felt. Engaging with rituals and traditions that have been practiced through the mist of time brings us in relationship and reciprocity. It becomes clear that capitalism and consumption are distractions and destroyers, that patriarchy keeps us from our truest essence.
Invocation for the Season of Beltaine
Standing in the south under Beltaine’s sun, I transform like whitethorn blossom of fleeting beauty and strong medicine.
With air feeding the flame of the sacred fire, I have courage, like oak’s fortitude to shed the weighty branches and root deeper.
In the magic of the holy waters, I am powerful, through surrender and flow, ever fed from the womb of the Earth.
Like the greening canopy of trees, I am radiant life
And remember that the Cailleach walks the land, awaiting my return. And so the wheel turns.
A few Beltaine traditions and stories I love from the Irish Wisdom Tradition include:
Nettlemas
An old name for Beltaine is Nettlemas, named such because the nettle is fully abundant all around Ireland, in fields and hedgerows, around sacred sites and at the edges of woodlands. A folk tradition from Ireland is that the boys of the village would collect bundles of nettles and mischievously roam about the town flaggulating each other and also going dor to door asking for treats or a penny, or otherwise receive a beating from the stinging nettle! As a side note, even though the sting of nettle may leave a welt on some people, the sting is medicinal! Nettle sting encourages the release of serotonin from the brain (a hormone that makes us feel happy) and also can reduce inflammation of arthritis.
Bonfires
Beltaine is called a fire festival because it is a time that bonfires are lit throughout the land for partying and celebration, and also for the function aspects. Farmers would light two bonfires and burn disinfectant herbs on the fires then walk their cattle through the smoke to cleanse and protect them for their journey into the hills, after residing at stable and home for the winter months.
For millennia and to this day, the Beltaine fire is lit on the hill of Uisneach, at the geographical center of Ireland near Mulligar (and about 10 minutes from where my teacher Gina McGarry lives). This fire was lit and then households from neighboring hills would see the light of that fire and then light their own, and then the neighbors from those hills and fields would see those fires burning and then light their own, until all of Ireland was illuminated with Beltaine fires, originating from Uisneach. The Beltaine fire at Uisneach is still lit to this day!
There are many spells that accompanying Beltaine fires involving love and romance and fertility. Jumping over the fires is a unique practice to Beltaine!
Brighid’s Conception (and Outside Sex!)
According to some stories, Brighid, Irish goddess and saint, was conceived at Beltaine. This makes sense because she was born at Imbolc, 9 months later. The story is that her father, the Dagda, was walking through the Boyne Valley at Beltaine, feeling down in the mouth about himself after an unfortunate encounter with the Fir Bolg. The Dagda was the good god, the jolly father, the one who always had a cauldron filled with nourishment, who brought the craic to the gathering and loved to laugh. In this encounter with the Fir Bolg, another tribe who lived on the land of Ireland, he was bullied and made fun of and his normally joyful essence was dejected and he felt downtrodden.
At the turn of the Boyne River he came upon The Morrigan, goddess of battle, death and transformation. She sensed that his manhood needed restored, and as a goddess of sovereignty, made it her duty to do revive him. She seduced him to make love to her and he willingly fell into her enchantment. They made love straddling the River Boyne and it is then that Brighid, their daughter, was conceived.
Having sex and making love outside is a long-held tradition at Beltaine and represents the symbolic connection of our own virility and fertility as an offering to the goddess of the land herself. Perhaps you will weave this tradition (solo or with a partner!) into your Beltaine practices this year.
