“There is no time like Spring, when life’s alive in everything.”

Christina Rossetti

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Cover art by Lilian Stannard

Bealtaine, usually thought to mean ‘Bright Fire’ or, less used now, ‘Bel’s fire’, is an ancient Celtic festival but the roots of celebrating this day are much older and more widespread than the Celtic celebration itself. A more recent explanation of the name equates it with the Lithuanian goddess of death Giltinė, but more on that in a later post. There is, as you can see, still questions regarding the name itself.

Bealtaine/ Beltane’s traditional date of May 1st represents the midway point between the vernal equinox and summer solstice. However, because of the gradual change in the earth’s axis of rotation the actual astronomical cross-quarter point this year is May 5th here in Western Europe.

The bringing forth of new life has much deeper connotations and, esoterically, a much more complex root. In fact, ‘life-force’, for want of a better term, manifests most likely in ways that we cannot even conceive of. That said, for the ancient people of Europe the union of a god and goddess was a potent way to express this principle. Again, I have no doubt that the wisdom keepers of animistic traditions most likely had a more nuanced and occulted view of what this meant.

Although there were many attempts by the church to Christianize the festival, even going so far as to ban it at one point, the older traditional roots are always close to the surface. A good example of this is the title of Queen of the May being given a Christian overlay upon an ancient goddess figure, or the German festival of St. Walpurgis imposed upon the more traditional ‘witches night’, Hexennacht. Interestingly, in his work The Golden Bough, Sir James George Frazer links the May Queen to tree worship which has some fascinating pathways into Gnosticism and precursors in the ancient Middle East. Fraser, though, was focusing upon the idea of vegetation and new life and I will come back to that in relation to flowers and The Faery Queen in a later post.

As I mentioned, we actually know that the celebration of May Day and this cross-quarter point is pre-Celtic, and the Egyptian festival of Sham El-Nessim is one of the earliest documented. After Egypt was Christianised the date of this festival was moved back to the day after Easter but its original form has been celebrated since 2’700 BCE, at least.

The customs relating to fire and the maypole *may* be connected but scholars still often disagree about this. The argument is that the custom of walking between two fires and leading cattle through them was a type of purification blessing and this procession eventually became a circuitous dance leading to the maypole. Later, ribbons were added to the pole, which was usually a carefully chosen young tree, and these ribbons represented the lengthening days.

Bealtaine, much like Samhain, which occurs six months later, is considered a time when the physical world and the Otherworld converge. This manifests as a belief that contact is more easily achieved between the spirits of the dead and the living, as well as the good folk entering the human world. Sometimes this is phrased as ‘the thinning of the veil’, but many object to this description as it might imply an actual boundary between earth and the spirit/ fairy realm. For other seers and native healers there is no physical separation at all and it is a transformative state of consciousness which allows the travel to take place. So, depending on your desire, sacred and mystical places should be either visited or avoided!

Rev. Robert Kirk, the 17th century writer who was said to have been kidnapped by fairies, speculated that there was a type of balancing act eternally taking place between the human world and the fairy world and times of plenty on earth meant times of scarcity in Fairy. For Kirk, Bealtaine meant that a person should be cautious about bragging or displaying wealth as this might provoke the good people. The idea that otherworldly female spirits would appear on Bealtaine Eve links us back to the beliefs regarding the aos sí, fairies, and the ancestral dead.

This is a very brief overview of some of the history and folklore related to Bealtaine and the May cross-quarter traditions of the ancient world. Coming up, I will take a look at The Hill of Uisneach, connections to star constellations, such as The Pleiades, and the links to summer Goddesses as well as ancient monument alignments. I will also look at fairy lore and symbolism associated with this time of the year. So, I hope this introduction has whetted your appetite.

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