Beltane

Beltane The Festival of Fire

Beltane is customarily celebrated on overnight from April 30-May 1. Some of us may be well-known with pop culture depictions of Beltane, which focus on the festivity of the union between the Great Mother and her young Horned God. Their combination brings fresh new life on Earth.

Some form of this Great ceremony is passed on this sabbat in nearly every modern pagan circle. The Great Rite indicates the sacred marriage, or sexual union, of the the Lord and Lady. Often the rite is performed characteristically by a male and female who place a knife (a phallic symbol) into a trophy (a female or yonic symbol). In Old Europe, whole villages would celebrate May Day by slipping away into the forest for indiscriminate sexual encounters. But Beltane is more than sex.

Background:

Beltane is the spring fertility festivals. It usually marked the arrival of summer in earliest times. Beltane, and its counterpart Samhain, divide the year into its two seasons, winter and summer. As Samhain is about worship Death, Beltane, its counter part, is about honoring Life. It is the time when the sun is fully released from winter and able to rule over summer and life once again.

Beltane, like Samhain, is a time of "no time" when the masks between the two worlds are at their thinnest. No time is when the two worlds mix together and unite and the magic abounds! It is the time when the Faeries return from their winter break, carefree and full of faery mischief and faery delight...When the veils are so thin it is an tremendously magical time, it is said that the Queen of the Faeries rides out on her white horse. Roving about on Beltane eve She will try to keep  people away to the Faeryland.