Beltane: Celebrating the Arrival of Summer in Wicca

I was once in conversation with a fellow Wiccan and heard him say that if you could only pick two Sabbats to celebrate, they should be Beltane (pronounced Bel-tin) and Samhain.

He was wrong, of course, because they're all important in their own ways; and they each have a function on the Wheel of the Year. But I could see what he was saying.

Go back a couple of millennia and there were only ever two seasons - summer and winter, the light and dark halves of the year.  The turning point between them was marked by the two major Sabbats: Beltane (May 1st) and Samhain (November 1st).

Except we have a second consideration too. The Celts celebrated their days from sunset to sunset, hence the Sabbat celebrations start on what we'd think of as the eve.  Beltane begins at sunset on April 30th; and Samhain at sunset on October 31st.

They've entered the Christian calendars as May Day and Halloween. In Gaelic, the word for May is Beltane, hence May Day being a direct translation.

There is a lot of hope and energy at Beltane. The perils of darkness and cold are behind us. The seeds have been planted. The summer is here.

Fertility plays a major role in this festival (it has a reputation for greenwood marriages and couples emerging from quiet corners straightening their clothes). Nature is bursting with new growth and the promise of a future harvest. The ubiquitous May Poles are highly symbolic of this, with their brightly colored ribbons woven around an upright shaft.

Beltane is a fire festival too. The old wood and bones are burnt to make way for the new. Leaping over them is a blessing. It tells you that you're on your way into the bright, renewed year. You have entered the light.

To truly grasp the significance of Beltane, you must first understand the ancient Celtic view of reality.

The here and now, the physical world, was not all that there was. The dead went to another plane of existence - Annwn in Welsh and Tír na nÓg in Irish Gaelic. But there were other worlds too. The Otherworlds where even more ancient Gods and Goddesses dwelt; or the realm of fairy. The two were not necessarily different places.

These endless realities spiraled around each other, as evidenced in the Celtic knotwork of the time. Separate strings interwoven, but never usually open to each other. Unless, that is, one waited at the time between the times.

The edges of things were sacred to the Celts; or, should I say, those aspects which are neither one thing nor the other. 

Take, for example, a shoreline, which is neither the ocean nor land. Or sunsets, which were neither day nor yet night. The same could be said for the dawn. New Year is another one. It's not one year or the other.  This is the origin of midnight being the Witching Hour. It's between two days.

This brings us nicely to Beltane. It stands at the junction between one half of the year and the next. It's the border of two seasons, whose celebration dates from a time when there were only two seasons.

At sunset (neither day nor night) at Beltane (neither winter nor summer) is the boundary between dark and light. This is a triple edge; thus a time between the times.

When realities thin, then the dead can be glimpsed or the denizens of the Otherworld can ride into our own. The prevalence of the May Queen can be seen in terms of the Mother Goddess or as the Queen of the Fey.

More than anything else, this is why Beltane is so special to Wiccans.

There is a sense at Beltane that the abnormal and strange becomes commonplace. The opening of the veil makes visions more acute; hauntings better perceived; and things happen.

Last year, in the lead up to Beltane, I was very stressed. I needed to get away. I didn't know where or what I was going to do, I merely needed a break. I packed my car up with camping equipment and took to the road.

By now, my journey wasn't entirely aimless. The night before, a foreign friend, who didn't know my country at all, had decided that I really should turn this into a quest. She gave me directions off the top of her head. I was to drive south for 75 minutes, take the third left, then the first road beginning with the letter 'G', then the next left after that. Wherever I ended up, I was to stay there for Beltane.

There was little traffic on the road and I made good time. I didn't cheat; then was stunned to discover that those directions led me straight into Glastonbury. There are few towns in Britain where Beltane is more widely and openly celebrated in huge community events.

I heard music and found what appeared to be half of the town congregated in the garden of the Goddess Hall. They danced around the May Pole, men in one direction and women in the other. Each dancer held a ribbon. They ducked under, then reached over, each brightly colored strand grasped by the people they encountered.

The ribbons wrapped around and around the stiff pole in their center. The drums beat time; the fiddles and pipes played a wonderful melody; we all sang until the whole shaft was engulfed in tightly bound color.

This wasn't the only May Pole in Glastonbury that Beltane. There were at least three more. In some ways they symbolized the wheel of the year itself, meeting at a junction at this Sabbat.

Mostly though they represented exactly what the innuendo implied. The duality of the energy - male and female, god and goddess - interweaving in throbbing fertility.

Once the pole was secured in its ribbon sheath, it was time for the Beltane fires to be lit. In the old days, these would be two enormous bonfires with cattle and other livestock driven in between to bless them.

In our days of fire health and safety, the Beltane flames tend to be smaller. After all, we are all about to leap over them.

They come alone or in pairs. Couples holding hands to jump, then landing in a hug and a kiss. Friends and strangers reaching out in fondness, grasping fingers together to make the leap.

The woman before me in the queue, as we awaited our moment to leap, turned and asked me if I would take the jump with her. I agreed. We got chatting. Her name was Alexandra which, incidentally, is also the name of the friend whose off-the-cuff directions had brought me to this place.

This was Beltane and the parties went on throughout the night. There were rituals, yes, but it was the energy and atmosphere that made that festival. The May Poles and the fires; and the wildness in the air. The carefree times had arrived.

It's almost cliched to approach Beltane with optimism, but that's precisely how I find myself at this time.

There's hope in the future and a path which I can take.  At Yule, I considered all that I wanted from my life. Work enough to fund travel; and a job that involved writing lots of articles.

By Imbolc, I had several options open, seeing which would work best.

By Ostara, I knew the way forward and it was merely a matter of fine tuning the most promising routes.

Now it's Beltane; and all of that preparation and energy is coming together. At this very moment of writing, I've just refreshed my traffic statistics. For the second time in a week, I've just had one thousand people reading my articles in a solitary day.

One thousand is the golden mean for on-line writers. It means that you're on your way.

I've had a couple of day-trips and, in the near future, a friend is taking me on holiday. The travel is falling into place. And are the articles paying? My Runescape ones have earned me a tour inside the hallowed Jagex Studios. That will happen at Beltane.

So yes, writing for Wizzley has brought me travel. The Beltane energy merely cut out the middle means and linked the two directly.

It feels like something is building. A life that is both bright and full of promise and potential; and that, for this festival, is exactly right.

Blessed Beltane all!