Beltane through Scottish traditions

I wrote a post on the story behind Beltane yesterday, which posed some questions for consideration. It is no secret that for me Beltane has always been triggering and confusing time and the idea of the celebrations never rang true.

Over the last week I have been receiving flashes of insights, which today led me to this woman and her article. Scotland, of course, is at the centre of it. Why am I not surprised? I am blessed with how the land always points me to the answers I can make sense of and directions for me to take.

Particular symbols that did come up was colour yellow, cuckoo bird. Getting married or engaged in May, in my own country traditions have always been considered bad luck (now this is confirmed here). Amazing similarity. It is not such a jolly time and not as simple as unite in a sexual act and let things bloom. It is a major transition through a portal into summer – an important time for crops, animals, community, etc. It is on par with the importance of Samhain (never had any confusion with that one). It’s linked with luck, money, prosperity, being careful with respect and honour of the season that’s coming (summer) and so much more.

It is about saying good bye for now to the winter deity, which is my matron goddess, who this year is refusing to go. I hear her.

Enjoy reading this article and hope you get something out of it. My view of Beltane is now changed and finally settled in me.

https://cailleachs-herbarium.com/2016/04/la-bealltainn-the-gaelic-end-of-winter-festival/?fbclid=IwAR2OInVCq0j8K2O0zRr0VeJrihcVoljDduKyXaYUO9tVkw25ascX5jdpz-I

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To Love, Friendship and Unity

After two hours of working the plot and communing with the soil I felt compelled to relay the energies of today. It is all very new, fresh and to many it will be unknown, but do go with it, embrace it and lessons will be great.

Beltain 2019 is upon us and today is a portal day, which feels like a new opening, a true shift, a push into a slot previously unoccupied. I could feel it at the back of my head and my fingers this morning and it felt good. It was not explosive or buzzing with noise, but subtle and strong like a regular heart beat one might say. The words that I heard were ‘Love, Friendship and Unity in all things’. The spiritual today does seek peace and surrender to a place softer and brighter. It wants connection and true relating for everything and everyone. Even amidst the world’s darkness, fears and wounds today it felt like there is still an invitation to step into your own ‘new’, take a path you haven’t travelled before. The message also was that whatever one chooses to do it doesn’t even have to be big, small steps remaining curious all the way.

Beltain is traditionally a Fire festival of the two joining together and energies rising to bless a forthcoming bounty of the earth and pray for its gifts yet to come. It is the night of dancing, laughter and dropping inhibitions, things that no longer lit our spark and had gone dull. I felt the element of today, however, was Air. Interesting how things shift without having to explain themselves, something we can all take away as a lesson. Hence my altar naturally did not have any candles on this morning or flowers and only incense representing ‘airing things out’ of a space, life, consciousness, etc. It always makes sense to me. However, what I feel will happen later on this week the effect of this year’s Beltain will grow stronger and that is where Fire element will come in, more towards the weekend. I do plan a Fire celebration with friends and family to show love and embrace good, genuine friendships and allow myself be united with everything that this earthly realm can offer. Most of all unity within is an important aspect. Why do we often fight ourselves, hate on ourselves, blame and criticise ourselves – that has to go, as those are obvious blockers to what is possible. Meet your needs, apply self-compassion daily, rest your mind and soul and nourish your body.

Hope everyone has a beautiful Beltain full of renewal energy.

Many blessings!

Renewed signature of Beltain 2018

Beltain this year has been anticipated, which is very in contrast to my usually triggered time associated with the festival. This year everything is newly born, all is different and surrounded and supported by an overarching signature of love and devotion. It has been a truly beautiful energy to immerse in and integrate it as a permanent knowing of what is possible. My usual rejection of the masculine instead turned into curiosity, invitation, some risk taking even and exploration this year.

In my dream the other night multiple memories popped up around various encounters that span throughout my life and I have seen a side of myself, which had long been buried, suppressed, yet this year it is all coming out around this divine timing. I was equally shocked, revived and marvelled at material that jumped out of my unconscious – a wild, fearless, playful, seductive and very relation part of myself stood right in front of me in a kaleidoscope of engagements with the masculine. My sense is now that once again she feels safe in the current union and secure in herself to come out in the open. I also know that the male would very much welcome her in a dance of a deep and passionate connection. She does have passion in buckets.

Love, sex, passion, commitment, tenderness, togetherness, attentive engagement and deeper understanding. Receiving, not rejecting. Compassionate, not cruel. Silently wise, not abusive and loud. Showing and guiding, not expecting. These are vibrations that are present in the current feminine signature of today’s Beltain for me.

In the whole elemental confusion and sorting there is clarify. In recent weeks a lot happened that led me to an even deeper connection to the masculine in my life. I used to say I’d take my soul connection to the land over my commitment to a man. I felt disconnected, resentful, in a place of my wounded Maiden, my scarred May queen. But when the ring I used in ‘a descent to the underworld’ ceremony a few year ago when I ‘married’ the land of my soul, got ruined in water (profound), it felt significant and worth noticing.

When away in Cornwall early last month and not feeling in alignment with the place I also clearly saw my man’s connection to it and it made me re-think both, my commitment to the land of my soul and to him. For the first time in years he came first. I felt and knew it. What I came to realise that letting him be is something unquestionable and all I can do is find another way to say in connection to the land and get that rooted nourishment I crave so often, but not sacrificing what I have in other areas. This lessons had been a long time coming and now it is grounded.

My engagement ring went back on my finger today, before Beltain fires are lit and it now feels right once again. Looking at the ring it is as if seeing it for the first time with a renewed wisdom of its meaning. It has four corners, complete and simple, it signifies my renewed union.

In your Beltain dance of Firy love and passion tonight let things unfold and be. Set yourself and your man free and, perhaps, through releasing and letting things ‘grow and germinate naturally’ a flow of something else will join the river of what is life as it is right now for your both, forever open and inviting to the energies of nature. As above, so below, as within so is out!

Blessed Beltain!

previous years’ posts

My Beltaine darkness

Beltaine 2016 

 

My Beltaine darkness

Here is a revealing authentic post.  Beautiful hawthorn blossoms invite you into the lushness of the forest where the Green man is getting ready for the dance of the year with the Maiden queen. Colours are bright, senses are open in anticipation of the ritual and there is a smell of love in the air.

I am NOT feeling it and instead my whole being is enveloped into a sense of dark pain.

A week or two before Beltaine every year I find myself in emotional darkness feeling my body and soul triggered into innate trauma of loneliness and betrayal. I first became aware of this pattern a couple of years ago when I found myself wanting to hide and in ill health before and during May day celebrations, at a time when everyone is full of joy, vigour and high energy of union and vibrancy.

This year it is no different for me, but what I would like to set my intention on and realise this time round is that, perhaps, it is time to begin breaking the pattern, although part of my process had always been this year accepting and admitting that some things one just can’t get over. Interestingly that admission liberated something within me and now allowing me to look at what practices I could employ to ease the pain further.

I am a deeply wounded and scarred maiden during spring time and in no way looking for a union with the Green man or any other man. This season is bereft with loss, betrayal and heartache for me. As I write this I feel the energy within me very strongly, the energy of complete block to love, softness and utter distrust in anything remotely male.

If I was to visualize this experience I would describe it as seeing and feeling a tear in the skin, in my flesh. A wound, which would be useless to mend, it is completely torn. Mending it or, at least, attempting to mend it would inflict more pain on my being unnecessarily. What, I feel would work best here is letting it go, burring it, mourning it and focusing on the remaining flesh around. Effectively what it looks like is a place where I start from the very beginning, afresh, and create something completely new whether it is a new attitude, a way of being with the experience, a way to think about it and a way of relating. A way that would suit me and no one else. It is also a process of finding out what I can and can’t accept, whether I am able to hold a relationship from this point on and whether I actually need one and if I do, what would it look like.

Other very strong emotions associated with this time of year is love and loneliness – my major wounding places, and this innate sadness and melancholy that I carry around and especially in relation to those things. When I was hurt I was very young and the pain of that betrayal had been the worst emotional and physical pain I have experienced so far. I could physically feel my heart breaking in that moment and my innocence leaving me with my breath, which I felt was going to kill me.

It is great for me to know, accept and admit this pattern of complex interrelationships within my life and my psyche based on my experiences and begin to contemplate a way forward, building a new path for myself, which has a new flavour, colour and texture to it. I feel I need to perform a burial and witness a rebirth of something.  These awareness will translate into my creating an altar this Beltaine representing my intention for this season and the next few month. I might even do some LOVE magic for myself and generally for surrounding areas of my life including people closest to me.

Will I be making love to the Green man and integrating him, I don’t think so, not yet, as redefining my inner masculine is work in progress and I am not looking to merge with anything or anyone till I know what would serve me the best. The Green man is a figure for me to explore more, for sure, as interestingly enough it is quite vague and undefined for me, almost empty compared to the Goddess or other deities within the Wheel of the Year. He is not strong enough, which is my projection on the masculine in general for me generally where in my anger I labelled ‘male’ weak and unnecessary. I banished it into the shadow. Perhaps, working with that anger using Fire might ease some of the growing resentment in my flesh and psyche.

What is present also is a sense of realism, with which comes a sense of hope in the ultimate goodness of the universe and my belief that everything happens for my highest good. I walk the walk of the Goddess through the seasons with delicious awareness of the light and dark of my experience and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Blessings!