Happy May Day!

 

Happy May Day to all!

Since Beltane (May 1) is an auspicious day with a truly ancient precedent, I can't resist a bit of his & herstory to honor the day, and a few May Pole pictures.   May the  RITES OF SPRING quicken the weary sap of all, may you find a bonfire to dance around, may the May Queen bless you!

The origins of the May Queen,  and agrarian celebration of the Rites of Spring throughout Merrie Old England and Europe are very ancient indeed, and probably go  back to the "sacred marriage", whereby a couple, representing the young Goddess and God, would make love in the fields, encouraging and participating in the fertility of the world. 

In villages throughout England, a procession would bear flowers, all the while capering around the new Maypole chosen for the celebration. Only unmarried girls would be allowed to plant the phallic Maypole into the fertile Earth........a lovely dance and ritual based upon pagan practices of sympathetic magic.   In other words, "the world is waking up and making love, so we too wake up and make love, and all will bear fruit".

The planting of the May Pole, and the union of the May Queen with the May King (or the Green Man) probably has its origins in very ancient traditions of the Sacred Marriage, going back as far as Sumeria and the marriage of Inanna and Dumuzi - or probably farther even than that, into unknown origins in prehistory.   In ancient times, the spring ritual union of the King with the priestess (representing the Earth Mother) was a very significant rite; in later times, even in Christian Europe, church morality may have been suspended for Beltane, as couples went out into the fields to participate in the ripening fertility.

This celebration of the fecundity of Spring no doubt made many of the early churchmen nervous. In the late 19th century,  May 1 became associated with the growing labor movement, and since then many countries have celebrated May Day as International Workers' Day.  In 1955, Pope Pius XII instituted May 1 as the "feast of St. Joseph the Worker" with the intention of emphasizing the spiritual aspect of labor.........I'm sure the advent of this secondary meaning to May Day came as a belated relief to the Catholic Church, bypassing the phenomenon of sexuality altogether.

For myself, I think the re-sacralization of sexuality, in tandem with the blossoming of the world, that was the original meaning of May Day.....is a wonderful Holy Day, and am often surprised by how few people today know of it's origins.  This  has to do with the de-sacralization of sexuality that has followed closely behind the monotheistic Judeo-Christian-Islamic God - who apparently does not approve of sex, or the raucous  turning of the natural year that becomes spring's fertility.   Not a bad argument for polytheism, where, when there is a multiplicity of Gods and Goddesses, things are a bit more tolerant, people could pick and choose their Deities.

Traditionally, the Maypole was hung with garlands and streamers. Dancers took hold of the ends in a weaving courtship dance.

Boys would dance in one direction and the girls in another, and so flower-clad ribbons were woven around the pole in the form of a braid. There might also be a procession led by Jack O' the Green (a variant of the Green Man), fantastically arrayed with flowers, leaves and ribbons, and followed by Morris Dancers with bells jangling on their ankles. Last, there would be the choosing of the May Queen.

 

  

Flora was the Roman Goddess of Flowers and it’s not surprising that her festival was held on the first day of May, which also has a lot to do with the May Day of European lore. The May Dance festivals of Europe have many of their origins in the ancient “Feast of Flora”, the ecstatic Roman Rites of Spring. 

"Whitman says, "And your very flesh shall be a great poem."............That is the message I'd like to offer on Beltane.  Our flesh is a symbol, a microcosm of the earth we inhabit. Our flesh is what connects us to the seasons; it is where we feel the cold of winter, and -- more and more in the Northern Hemisphere -- the warmth of the sun. It is in and through our flesh that we experience our emotions. We feel love in the flesh; anger in the flesh; exuberance in the flesh. The body is a treasure trove of sensation, and our sensations inform our temporal existence. Sensation may not be all of what life is, and the experiences of the flesh may be subjective and passing. But subjectivity and impermanence do not make a thing meaningless. Flowers bloom for but a short time, and when they do they are beautiful.  We bloom, too. 

We are a body full of color and fragrance. We are a cycle of life unto ourselves, and we have good cause to celebrate our body -- our flesh -- for we have no knowledge of what is to come beyond this moment, this life, this body. We are here, alive, and we can, on the day and in the season of Beltane, choose to celebrate the life that we are living. We can choose to honor our flesh, and honor the flesh of others.  (What a world we would live in if the flesh was not seen as evil, but rather a manifestation of something holy and worthy of respect. I wonder if violence would be so commonplace if we recognized the flesh as sacred.)

Love the body you are in! Love your flesh! Celebrate this High Day with a fullness of being!!"

 Teo Bishop on Beltane, 5-1-2013

Poems of Love and Parting

I started writing this post on  May Day, Beltane, and here it is some 20 days later.   Spring is in full bloom,  the Maypole has been danced, birds are courting in my garden, my bee hive looks like it has produced a new Queen and is getting ready to swarm (I will keep a good distance for a while!), and Persephone is back from the underworld, pollinating everything she touches. The subject I wanted to think about was Love.

Recently I had my cards read by a reader I know from the Faires.  Right on top of the spread was The Lovers.  Which bothers me, because romantic  partnership, all that,  is something I kind of (gratefully) put away, forgot about, and moved on from years ago.  It has become an abstraction.   Thank the Goddess, I'm a happy cat lady these days and my romantic adventures and sorrows seem  over.  She said that I would meet a companion, which seems improbable, but life is full of surprises.

But "Love"........I found myself thinking about love again (the Greeks had some 8 different words for different forms of love). I found in my files many love poems I wrote over the years for men that I loved,  and I realized that I never shared a single one of them with any of the people I wrote them for.  It's too late now, but I can share them here.  Some of them  bring back the memories they wrap,  like a fragrance carried on the wind.   Reading these poems I am graced to realize a profound truth about love:  it is always a blessing, no matter how painful the partings were.

 The first poem, At Beltane,  I wrote after realizing that someone I felt passionate love for  would never  return my affections.   What do you do with love that you realize will not go forward into some future relationship? Make a Benediction, for the gift that it is and was.  In retrospect, I  wish I had given him the poem......

Yellow Sails I wrote when I was about 21.  I don't remember the name of the person I wrote it for any longer, age really does take the names out of things.....but memory is more than names.  We may lose the names  within the stories, but not the heart of them.  This was a boy/man as young as me, and he committed suicide.

In Praise of Waters I wrote after I was divorced, in the dismal wake of that experience so many others have also shared.  One of the  most painful, and yet transformative moments of a divorce  of any kind is the remembering of, not the other's wrong doing, but your own piece of the failure of love, and hopefully the opening of the heart and spiritual growth that brings.  Again, what do you do with that?  You let pain as well as joy in  until your heart breaks  where it must and should, and overflows with the Waters of the World that truly  heal and  mature us.

"The Rune of Ending"  I was trying to make some kind of blessing for myself and my  ex-husband on the occasion of our severing and divorce.  Not long after I left my home on the East Coast and literally rode off, with my cat, into the sunset to make a new life for myself in California.  A canyon that opened between us indeed, a canyon many have had to turn and walk away from, with painful regret, remorse, and finally with gratitude, to move forward into the future.  We have not been in contact in many years, but I do know that indeed he met another woman, and they are still together, and I believe they are well suited for each other.  And I am glad for them.

"I Stood Poised"........I don't know how to explain that poem, the last "love poem" I ever wrote.  The story is complex, but it began with a very strange experience.  I attended a talk, and walked into a room with some 30 people sitting in a circle.  In the back a man sat with a woman partner.  From the instant I saw him, there was no one else in the room - I had an enormous sense of deja vue, like I had been looking for him for a very long time.  Ironically, once the program started, it turned out he was the presenter.  We worked together for a while,  and although he never acknowledged  me other than as a professional,  I believe  there was a relationship between us that spanned lifetimes.  I think what I experienced as  "love" for him was a recognition of other realms of experience, realms that inexplicably opened sometimes for me in his presence, along with many synchronicities.  I cannot explain it here, and ultimately, I had to let all my questions go, and disconnect from the attempt to "understand".  It was a "Mystery" for me, and had something to with what people call Karma and fate.  

The last poem, "The Green Man", is about spring, the great Eros of nature within the Great Round of the year.  That Round includes human beings, as much as we seem to be bent on denying our place in the cycles of nature.  All hearts are renewed with the coming of the Green Man, the  Pagan  catalyst of new life.  He is always there, calling among the trees. 

At Beltane

Set me free now.........

You walked among my dreams, and

I will bless you as I go.

I pause at the door, key in hand

breathing in the last of you.

Pleasure that pierces heart and reason:

there are no words to frame this.

All I can give

is to give it back 

Back to World.

To the dreaming earth

the singing waters,

dancing flames,

to the open sky.

To the Circle at the center of all things.

World, here is my heart's unspoken delight:

I offer it back to you, 

to play among the leaves,

to light  my dappled path.

I open my hand

a scarlet bird 
flashes among the trees.

Fly free,

Bird of Paradise

fly into the morning

from the other side of forever.

(1989)

Yellow Sails   

Your fey mark 

glows on your forehead

a brand, a signature.

I have covered you 

with my tokens, with kisses I

embedded in you like tattoos, 

each one says

"remember me, remember me"

although I know you won't.

They will dissolve more quickly than memory

in whatever stream

bears you off.

I loved you from the shore, 
never really touching you

still, I regret nothing.

You were that which is worthy,

the pale light of another landscape

a castaway.

I will remember you

as you are now:

a boat, sailing into some brave distance

your yellow sails spread

glad and bright

on the horizon.

(1972)

In Praise of Waters

How are we turned,
again and again,

to find ourselves 

moving into the shadow land

where our best and finest intentions

drift out of true, and into the truly opposite?

     love becomes hate

     hope turns into despair

     inspiration hardens into dogma.

Perhaps

we must find our faces again

in dark waters.

Revealed among fallen leaves

our reflected sins

our cherished scars,

the dappled shapes of light and dark

that surface toward a whole.

There is something that wants us to open

that pours from the crevices

where we have broken

     Something that laughs 
     like a river in the morning.

1997

The Rune of Ending

What can be said now
when all words are spent
when the final word has been spoken?
We go now to our separate houses
relieved, at least.  A course has been named.

     Our lives are severed, our story is told.

We will each surely tell that  story, 
and strive and laugh
and talk late into the night,
and kiss lips salty with tears and with love

     but not with each other.

Here the tearing  ends,
here ends remorse and reprisal
here end dreams and plans.

We will not travel to Scotland, 
to walk among ancient monoliths 
in the white mists of our imaginations.
We will not walk again on a warm beach in Mexico,
toasting each other with margaritas.

That was once, it has to be enough.
I will not call you mine, 
you will not call me yours, 
and our cat is now your cat, 
our teapot is now my teapot.
I touch a potted plant, 
remembering its place
on our breakfast table.

     We divide the spoils,
      humane, courteous, fair

A canyon has opened between us.
we are each old enough
to know its name 
to view its depths without passion.
There is no bridge to cross this time.

Beloved,
I must now forgive myself, and you.
Cast my stone into this abyss
and bless the woman
who has not yet come
to stand by your side
and wave with grace 
from across this canyon's lip

     then turn
     and walk my own path.

1997

I Stood Poised Upon the Edge of Town
and Heard the Blue Stars Singing


Weary ideas rise and fall
into blessed exhaustion 
at last I touch that essence, 
that blood-red honey wine,
this strange distillation.

I entered a lucid dream, 
I found a lucid life.

Through my open window,
I see a black, far horizon
and I hear the blue stars singing 

memories of memories:
I wish I could tell you
what I have seen
in the homelands. 

Perhaps, in that country,
we are of each other at last
You take my hand, we walk together
in that green and splendid meadow.

I offer you a glass,
you raise your cup to mine.
Lips touch
a butterfly rises between us,
flies into the morning
from the other side 
of forever.

Through an open window,
I hear the stars singing.......
But I write this in a small, dark room 
here, and now,
wishing I could be young again,
wishing I could feel
something other than foolish.

I will always remember you
between, 
always between
regret and joy
hello and goodbye
delight and sorrow
truth and lies

that bright 
endarkened landscape

I saw you in.

(2002)

The Green Man

I walked among the trees

I wore the mask of the deer.

Remember me,
try to remember.

     I am that laughing man 
     with eyes like leaves.

When you think that winter will never end

I will come.  You will feel my breath, 
warm at your neck.

I will rise in the grass,
a vine caressing your foot.

I am the blue eye of a crocus

opening in the snow.

I  am a trickle of water, a calling bird,

a shaft of light among the trees.

You will hear me singing

among the green groves of memory,

the shining leaves of tomorrow. 

      I'll come with daisies in my hands,
      we'll dance among the sycamores
      once more.

**My thanks again to Robin Williamson, the Bard indeed, for a few images
     I will never forget, including "eyes like leaves" and "songs of love and  
     parting".  The blood of the Green Man runs true in him. 

Happy Beltane to All!

From the Edinburgh Beltane Festival
https://beltane.org/2014/10/12/welcome-to-beltane-org/

Happy May Day to all!

(I don't jump around fires much any more, but I hope all of you are)  And great photos from the Edinburgh Beltaine Festival!

 Some good words about this sacred day from Celestial Elf Blog:

http://celestialelfdanceoflife.blogspot.com/2011/03/beltane-blessing-beannachadh-bealtain.html

The Beltane Festival

Beltane or Beltane is the Gaelic name for the festival that begins on April the 30th or Beltane's eve and continues on 1st May and is a celebration of purification and fertility. The name originates from the Celtic god, Bel - the 'bright one', and the Gaelic word 'teine' meaning fire, giving the name 'bealttainn', meaning 'bright fire'. Marking the beginning of the Summer season with the lighting of two great bon-fires on Beltane's eve signifies a time of purification and transition, these fires may be made of the nine sacred woods, Alder, Ash, Birch, Hawthorn, Hazel, Holly, Oak, Rowan and Willow.

Heralding in the season in the hope of a good harvest later in the year, Beltane festivals were accompanied with ritual acts to protect the people from any harm by Otherworldly spirits.

Significantly, as the Goddess (Brigid) moves through her various phases, Beltane sees the womanly aspect of the Summer Goddess banish the Old Crone aspect of the Winter Goddess in readiness for the maternal time and the fruits of nature to follow.

As this is one of the magic turning points of the Sacred Seasons, the veil between worlds is thought to be especially thin, and as a result many of the Fairy Host, the Sidhe and the Tuatha De Danann may be seen crossing between the worlds.  Particularly, the Faery Queen is thought to travel about on this night and if you gaze too long on her enchanted beauty she may whisk you away to live in her Other realms outside of time for an eternity.  The Faery Queen also represents the May Queen, although in practice the honor is usually carried out by young women who are soon to be married.

For the May Day is the great day, 

Sung along the old straight track. 

And those who ancient lines did ley 

Will heed this song that calls them back.

........Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull.

https://beltane.org/2014/10/12/welcome-to-beltane-org/

The May Queen at Beltane

Along with her May King, mythically a Jack in The Green, the Green Man or Horned God, is to take part in the Great Rite and so Open the way for the Summer. This is the Sacred Marriage of the God and Goddess, often reenacted by a symbolic union during which the Athame (magical knife symbolizing male energy) is placed by the King of May into the Chalice (Sacred Cup symbolizing female energy) held by the Queen of the May.  For a more detailed account of how this ritual was enacted in earlier time, I refer the reader to Marrion Zimmer Bradley's moving account in her fiction The Mists of Avalon.

Following this union which serves to Open the way to the Summer Lands, festivities ensue, particularly that of dancing around the May Pole. The May Pole itself is a symbol of the union of the God and the Goddess, as the red ribbons represent the fertility of the Goddess, the white represent the fertility of the God. Men begin the weaving by dancing under the upheld ribbon of the first women facing them, accompanied by music, drums beating or chanting. The dancers move forward, stepping alternately over and under each person who’s dancing toward them. The dance continues until the Maypole is completely wrapped, then the ribbons are tied off and the wreath from the top is tossed to the earth to bring its gathered power into the ground.

Whilst such public festivals are not as widespread as they once were, famously at Padstow in Cornwall there still is held an annual 'Obby-Oss' day, which is believed to be one of the oldest survivng fertility rites in the United Kingdom.   St. Ives and Penzance in Cornwall are now also seeing a revival of similar public festivities.


Beltane Lore

During Medieval times, a man might also propose marriage by leaving a hawthorn branch at the door of his beloved on the first day of May. If the branch was allowed to remain at her door, it was a signal that the proposal was accepted. If it was replaced with a cauliflower, the proposal was turned down.

The Celtic Moon month of Hawthorn is the time for lovers to attend to matters of the heart, as the Celtic fire festival of Beltane heralds the start of summer.  Crosses of birch and rowan twigs were hung over doors on the May morning as a blessing and protection, and left until next May day.
The dew on the May day morning is believed to have a magical potency - wash your face and body in it and you will remain fair all year.

Going 'A-Maying' meant staying out all night to gather flowering hawthorn, watching the sunrise and making love in the woods, also known as a 'greenwood marriage'

Oh, do not tell the Priest our plight, Or he would call it a sin; But we have been out in the woods all night, A-conjuring Summer in! 

Beltaine andThe Sacred Marriage of Inanna and Dumuzi

From "The Rainbow Bridge Oracle"

Well, that most auspicious day is here, Beltane, May Day, a Celebration of the Earth's fertility with ancient and universal roots, indeed, one that made the Church fathers very nervous,  so nervous that they managed to demote the holiday if not extinguish it's meaning all together, along with demoting erotic love to, well, something to feel guilty about.  Birds may do it, bees may do it, but holy men, God, and the Virgin Mary, in the tradition many of  us have inherited, definately don't do it.

Still remnants of the most ancient and sacred act of love, the union of the Goddess and the God, the "Sacred Marriage" with it's ancient hope of fertility and abundance, have survived throughout the world, even to this day.  Consider the story of the May Queen, "Lady God-diva", and her famous ride to the Maypole.  Or for that matter, the marvelous symbolism of the May Pole, where in the maidens of the village plant the phallic Pole into the ripening earth, along with much festivity.  In earlier times, the festivities usually ended with couples going into the fields to celebrate, as a pleasurable form of sympathetic magic, the sacred marriage, the idea being that their pleasure would encourage the earth and the animals to do the same.  

One of my favorite examples of the de-sacralization, and descent, of not only the power of Eros in our world but also of women is the use of the word "whore".  We all know that "whore" means a degraded woman, an insult.  And yet the origins of this word go all the way back to the Hebrew "Hora"(and to this day a circular fertility dance called the Hora is danced at Jewish weddings)  or "Hara" (healers still refer to the womb/generative center as the "hara" center).  This root word originally meant both "fertility" as well as a title for a woman who was a priestess.

That rich sense of participating in the sacred sensual lifeforce, so vibrantly felt at the ripening of Spring, the "Sacred Marriage" is something I believe people long for in our guilty and cynical times.  People talk about "having sex" with the same consumer disposibility as "having a beer".   Somehow in the long years since Inanna called to Dumuzi to help her "plow her high field" the sanctity of physical love has been lost, along with the potent magical  sense of participating in the generative, mysterious,  love act  of nature.

So to honor this day, I copy below from the wonderful translations of 5,000 year old poetry by the literary and archeologist team of Diane Wolkstein and Samual Noah Kramer, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer (1983)

Inanna and Dumuzi

Inanna bathed and anointed herself 
with scented oil.
She covered her body with the royal white robe.
She readied her dowry.
She arranged her precious lapis beads 
around her neck.
She took her seal in her hand.

Dumuzi waited expectantly.
Inanna opened the door for him.
Inside the house she shone before him.
Like the light of the moon.
Dumuzi looked at her joyously.
He pressed his neck close against hers.
He kissed her.

Inanna spoke:

   “What I tell you let the singer weave into song.
    What I tell you, let it flow from ear to mouth,
    Let it pass from old to young:
    My vulva, the horn, the Boat of Heaven,
    Is full of eagerness like the young moon.
    My untilled land lies fallow.

    As for me, Inanna,
    Who will plow my vulva?
    Who will plow my high field?
    Who will plow my wet ground?
    As for me, the young woman,
    Who will plow my vulva?
    Who will station the ox there?
    Who will plow my vulva?”

Dumuzi replied:

    “Great Lady, the king will plow your vulva?
    I, Dumuzi the King, will plow your vulva.”

At the king’s lap stood the rising cedar.
Plants grew high by their side.
Grains grew high by their side.
Gardens flourished luxuriantly.

Inanna sang:

   “He has sprouted; he has burgeoned;
    He is lettuce planted by the water.
    He is the one my womb loves best.
    My well-stocked garden of the plain,
    My barley growing high in its furrow,
    My apple tree which bears fruit up to its crown,

    My honey-man sweetens me always.
    His hand is honey, his foot is honey,
    He sweetens me always.
   
Dumuzi sang:

    “O Lady, your breast is your field.
    Inanna, your breast is your field.
    Your broad field pours out the plants.
    Your broad field pours out grain.
    Water flows from on high for your servant.
    Bread flows from on high for your servant.
    Pour it out for me, Inanna.
    I will drink all you offer.”

Inanna sang:

    “Make your milk sweet and thick, my bridegroom.
    My shepherd, I will drink your fresh milk.
    Wild bull Dumuzi, make your milk sweet and thick.
    Let the milk of the goat flow in my sheepfold.
    Fill my holy churn with honey cheese.
    Lord Dumuzi, I will drink your fresh milk.
    My husband, I will guard my sheepfold for you.
    I will watch over your house of life, the storehouse,
    The shining quivering place which delights Sumer
    The house which decides the fates of the land,
    The house which gives the breath of life to the people.
    I, the queen of the palace, will watch over your house.”

    I would go with you to my garden.
    There I would plant the sweet, honey-covered seed.”