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

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! 

Happy Beltaine!

Once again, the world is waking up and blooming and the power of love and fertility is running like blood and sap and electricity throughout all the land.  Twas a time when May Day, and the Rites of Spring, were looked forward to widely, and celebrated with the greatest of enthusiasm!  The tradition of the Rites of Spring (Beltane) and the Sacred Marriage go very far back indeed, and are found in ancient Sumaria in the union of Inanna and Dumuzi, and more recently, for millenia throughout Northern Europe and the British Isles.  It's rather extraordinary, if one thinks about it or even is aware of it, that this important celebration was removed from the calendar and culture by the Church, and replaced with "international workers day", or simply buried as much as possible in the compost of myth, co-option, and turning something joyful and fundamental to nature and the Goddess into something "evil".  Witness the famous "ride of Lady Godiva" which I wrote about a few years back.

There is a wonderful U.K. Blog, (below) from which I take the liberty of copying writings on Beltaine lore.  BLESSED BELTANE TO ALL!



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.

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.”

Beltane Comes Again!

“Flora” Mask (2013)

 Happy May Day to all!

Ah, the RITES OF SPRING!  I've posted this article before, but I still like it, and felt like sharing previous year's Beltane post once again, for any who may be interested.

May Day was celebrated everywhere in Britain and Europe  with Maypole, flower garlands, May wine and love.  The birth of spring on May Day in Elizabethan England would send villagers into the woods to collect flowers and boughs, and then they would wait for the sun to rise as it brought the fully opened year flowering into spring.  

 

A few years back I found myself  singing "Lady Godiva", an old song  by Peter and Gordon from the 60's.  When I find myself with  mental "muszak"  that just won’t go away, I’m kind of forced  to pay attention.  According to legend, Lady Godiva rode naked on a horse through the streets of Coventry, England, to ease the tax burden of the citizens imposed by her husband, who agreed to relieve the toll if she did this.  Pulling out my Jungian “Inner Pun”  book, I decided that it had something to do with "Lady God", this being what I get from the word.   “Godiva” has both “God” and  “Diva or Deva” which means divine, shining.      Words can tell us much about the origins of  things.“Coventry" is an interesting addendum as well. If you look it up in the dictionary, besides being a  city in England, the actual definition of the word "coventry" means:

"the state of being banished or ostracized (excluded from society by general consent); ie,  "the association should get rid of its elderly members--not by euthanasia, of course, but by Coventry"**

Thus, "coventry" is the opposite of "coven", "covenant", or "to convene", which means to bring together.  So, perhaps in all of this linguistic trail one can see the way the pagan Rites of Spring were “ostracized”.   A Blog friend, Robur D'Amour, wrote a fascinating article about Lady Godiva,  and commented that the origins of this legend are almost certainly found in the ride of the May Queen to the sacred tree (Maypole), the "coven tree".  

 He wrote:

" A very early spelling, 1050, is Couaentree.  I found, by chance, a reference to Coventry as bring a rebus for 'a coven round a tree'…….. There was a widespread practice for dancing round a tree on May Eve, which is the maypole. Perhaps there really was a tree that was used for festivities.  The story that Lady Godiva was protesting against taxes is untrue.  Apparently, at the time the procession dates from, Coventry was a village, and there were no taxes.  The procession is actually a May-Eve fertility procession, many of which are found across Europe.  What happened at Coventry was that there was a Benedictine monastery there. The monks did not approve of  people watching the fertility procession, and so invented the story about taxes. "1

The origin of the “peeping Tom” legend also derives from the famous ride of Lady Godiva -  the May Queen in all of her glory being, from a Benedictine point of view, perilous for  eyes to see.  The May Queen is the young  Goddess Herself, riding to bless the rising fertility of the land and to meet the May King.

Villagers celebrating  Rites of Spring throughout Merrie Old England and much of Europe would bear flowers, all the while capering around the new Maypole.  Often it was only unmarried girls who would be allowed to plant the phallic Maypole into the fertile Earth, which then would be woven in dance by men and women with ribbons or twine.  Dancers took hold of the ends in a weaving courtship dance.  A procession led by  Jack O' the Green (a variant of the Green Man), fantastically arrayed with flowers, leaves and ribbons, might also be part of the celebration.  And of course there would be  Morris Dancers.     Crowned with a garland, the May Queen, no matter how capricious, was to be obeyed throughout the day's celebrations, and everyone would vie for the honor of doing her homage.

“Guenivere as the May Queen” by John Collier

 

 A  lovely ritual with ancient origins in 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 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.  Perhaps, much farther 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 early Christian Europe, church morality may have been suspended for Beltane, as couples went out into the fields to participate in the worlds ripening fertility.   

 

In Italy,  Flora was the Roman Goddess of Flowers and it’s not surprising that her festival was also held on the first day of May. The May Dance festivals of Europe have many of their origins in the ancient  “Feast of Flora”, the ecstatic Roman Rites of Spring.

This celebration of the fecundity of Spring has always made the Church 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, along with Lady Godiva's famous ride becoming a  folk legend about taxes.    For myself,  I am happy to see the Pagan origins of May Day, and the true tale of Lady Godiva,  continually  re-discovered and re-invented.  The re-sacralization of sexuality, in tandem with the Spring  blossoming of the world, which  was the original meaning of May Day,  is truly a  Holy Day.  And I am always surprised by  how little most people today know of its origins.   

*  Robur D’Amour   https://www.blogger.com/profile/02966938808921010638

**http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Coventry