Philip Heselton discusses what Beltane/May Day is all about. What it means to modern and ancient pagans. And why one earth get up at 5.20am with the Green Ginger Morris do Morris dancing to call up the summer sun. Come join in the fun.
Photos provided by Gierran Jameson and Stephen Carvill. Film and narration Philip Heselton. Editing done by David Mitchell.
Beltaine has as many different spellings as associated local customs and traditions.
It is a time when Nature really gets going, daylight is dominant, the fauna is busy rampantly mating, hare (a lunar symbol of such randiness) can be witness boxing in the field and the flora is covered in that really nice just from the bud fresh green with its implied future hope and prosperity.
It is also the time when a potent Horned God at his peak impregnates the Great Mother, restarting an intertwined seasonal cycle of death and rebirth. Many young and frisky young couples may also take this opportunity to escort their chosen partners to the greenwood to indulge in some fun and rambunctiousness.
Beltaine is a time for fire. Cattle would be driven between two bel-fires in order that the smoke would cleanse and improve fertility and couples would join hands and jump the fire in May Day marriages for the same reason.
For myself it is a time to witness the sunrise and take advantage of the magical properties of the early morning light, shaking dew down from the hawthorn hedges and showering in droplets of refreshing youthfulness.
Beltaine / May Day is the only time when one may respectfully take the flowering blossoms and boughs from the fae protected hawthorn (whose blossom is said to exude a perfume that no man may resist) to decorate ones home and oneself. Personally I like to make chaplets of interwoven hawthorn and blackthorn. It is doubly special if I can find both species in flower at the same time, the blackthorn (or sloe which flowers earlier) itself representation of the darker crone aspect of the Goddess which I visualise as imparting her possessed knowledge to the more youthful hawthorn Goddess with each winding turn.
Overall Beltaine is a time of indulgence, fun and celebration of arrival of the warmer summer months in expectation of the many harvests to come.