POD (Poem Of the Day) for Flora on Beltane:
May Day Maya
Pleiadian Goddess
Bright light of the 7 Sisters
Mountain Nymph transformed,
We ascend your beacon mound
& kindle there
The oakwood of the Bel-Fire
To rival the Sun
& call the Summer heat.
Zeus’s lover
Hermes Mother
Inspire processions
Of chimney sweeps & milkmaids
To leap the healing flames
& sky-clad singing:
“Ride a cock horse to Banburry Cross
To see a fine lady on a white horse”
Walk the circuit
& beat the bounds
With the young Summer King
& the Queen of the May
For the feast of flowers
Is calling forth the consort
Come, come, come unto me
& celebrate with the orders of Elementals.
Bold maidens bathing in the dew of May morn
Sword dancing & singing
In deep forest frivolity
Striking open ancient ley lines in bulls-eye archery
Marking the unrestrained tryst,
A Maypole in Holy-Rood-Mass
Wrapped & weaved in ribbons & ivy
For the May-Eve rites.
Robin Hood makes ready the hunt,
Maid Marian has gone-a-Maying.
~Lady Hazel
This is the Eve of Beltane - The old Celtic name for May Day, means bright fire or fire of Bel, the name of the Solar force, whose feast marks the beginning of the 2nd half of the year.
Wood from 9 sacred trees is gathered, & the great Bel-fire is built & ritualistically ignited by the High priestess or Arch-Druid. People would jump these ‘need-fires’ for fertility, healing & protection.
Torches lit from it were carried home to re-light the hearth fires. The folk would walk their animals in-between them to ensure a productive season – this is the mating season after all for man & beast.
There were other May Day customs, like walking the circuit of one’s property, repairing fences & boundary markers, processions of all kinds, archery tournaments, Morris dances, sword play, & of course making merry with music & Feasting.
May morning is a time when the veil between the worlds can easily be pushed aside; but instead of the spirits coming into our realm from the other side, which is the case with Halloween, the polar opposite of Mayday on the wheel of the year -the fairies can enchant us over into their mystical realms.
This is a magical time, perfect for gathering ‘wild’ water, especially the May morning dew, or water from hidden wells & springs. These wild waters were collected & used to bath in for beauty, or to drink for health.
May Day is considered the start of Summer – the time of milk & honey. This sensuous fertile energy is totally universal, & can be applied on many different levels. When we acknowledge these creative forces in the dance of our lives, it takes us to our own personal, modern-day version of dancing around the maypole, where we weave & combine the opposing energies within ourselves, blending them into one balanced source.
So yes, whether you know it or not, there will be at least one song that plays in your dreamy head on this eve of the 1st day of May, when you become perhaps, the Queen of the May, or Jack-in the Green. Our body like the body of the earth instinctively knows its Beltane, the time of vitality & passion & new growth. And the wisdom of our spirit seeks the natural union of polarities that occur at this time, giving us the opportunity for integration, in the alchemical dance of our souls…
Because under all the sexual innuendo & frivolity, it’s really all about the inner mystic marriage, the union of fire & water -opposites complimenting each other, to become one, bringing all the elements into balance.
You’ll just have to go dancing naked in the forest preserve on your own time…
For now, let’s work to unify the polarities of our being, by sparking the new fire of creative fertility & passion, & marrying it with the beautiful, healing waters of compassion & pure love. So we can truly celebrate the marriage feast of our lives, with a grounded, mindful joy.
So if it is your will – light your Bel-fire, marry it to the water, by floating it in the chalice of your choice. Take the time you need there…To do or not, what you will…Whisper your marriage vows into the water…or dance the 1st dance…or smash the glass…whatever your ceremony calls for…short simple or silent…it doesn’t matter…a 3 day bacchanal, with dancing puppets…it’s all good…cause it’s all about what’s inside…
Peace & Love
~Lady Hazel
30 April 2024 - “Speaking with the Stars”: The last-quarter Moon rises around 2 AM tonight. Before Wednesday's dawn it shines low in the southeast, in southern Capricornus. It turns exactly first quarter at 8:27 a.m. Wednesday CDT.
Sangraal: A Pentecost Pilgrimage
with Mysteria Mystica Americana (MMA)
Saturday 18 May 2024 Noon – 1:30 PM Central Time
Creating Sacred Space on Zoom ID: 705 017 4041 - Passcode: MMA
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/7050174041?pwd=j1AkESGygaKVFaD0T7r2lfV533BWfm.1&omn=87316485500
w/ Richard Cloud, Hazel Archer, Lisa Loving Dalton, Zacharia Mannella. And friends: Dawson Macleod, Alexander Torrenga, Jeffery Levy
Memories of Beltane from 2023.
https://reverseritual.com/interwoven/#comment-35185
So, every May Day has been important to me for 44 years now.
Thanks Hazel for 'Beltane Eve' = with the coming of your Poem Of the Day.
So best wishes if you go dancing naked in the forest!
And may you spark the new fire of creative fertility & passion,
and marry it with the beautiful, healing waters of compassion and pure love.
Yes, celebrate the marriage feast of our lives, with a grounded, mindful joy.
Roy
I wondered whether to put my sonnet Walpurgisnacht, with its notes, into the Comments section, but it might have been too much, going into the story of Faust.
WALPURGISNACHT
'Do you not wish you had a broomstick, friend?
Oh, for a he-goat, rough and tough and strong!
We’re still a long way from our journey’s end...'
So Mephistopheles took Faust’s deep long-
ing to the heights and the flame of the Brocken
for the senses’ riot of Walpurgisnacht –
foretelling of a thin red line round broken
Gretchen’s neck – tortured by what he lacked
this night, sacred eve of the goddess Maia...
Walpurga... Blodeuwedd... archetypal full
moon night, when fire must be put out, that fire
of the rising sun put out the soul’s dull
despair: error be redeemed by the spark,
Celtic need fire, rising song of the lark.
May Eve was originally dedicated in Germany to a weaving goddess, Waldborg or Walburga, later Walpurga, a fertility goddess of woods and springs. E.L. Rochholz’s 1870 folklore study, Drei Gaugtinen (Three Local Goddesses), describes Walpurga as a white lady with long flowing hair, wearing a crown and fiery golden shoes. She carries a spindle and a three-cornered mirror that foretells the future. The symbols suggest connection to the Three Norns, or Fates.
These demigoddesses spun and wove the web of life, casting prophecies into their triangular Well of Wyrd, which watered the tree of life.
The first three lines of the sequence are from Goethe’s Faust. In the beginning of the Walpurgis Nacht scene, Mephistopheles takes Faust to the witches’ party on the Brocken mountain. On the Brocken Summit of the Harz Mountains, magnified images of the observer cast from behind by the diffraction of low sunlight against mist or low-lying cloud have been called Spectres of the Brocken.
The Pleiades, or the Seven Sisters, are on the dawn horizon on Mayday and don’t return to the night sky until Halloween. The first born of the Seven Sisters is called Maia. On May Eve (originally at the first full moon after Easter– see Adam McLean: The Four Fire Festivals) the sacred Celtic hearth fire was extinguished, and rekindled from the rays of the first rising of the summer sun.
The Celtic Fire Festivals, also known as the Wheel of the Year, are deeply rooted in ancient traditions and are closely tied to the phases of the Moon. Unlike the modern Gregorian calendar, which uses fixed dates, these festivals are determined by celestial events and lunar cycles.
'Walpurgisnacht' has another sonnet - about Hitler & Eva Braun's suicide on this night; & is followed by 6 more sonnets
of a war-torn season in 'Yugoslavia May 1999', from May Eve (full moon night in 1999) to Whitsun.
May Eve
The century’s last April night’s completed
moon synchronised calendars. The White Goddess,
mother of the sparkling Danube, ignited
her Beltane fire to keep the sunlight’s promise
while moonlight set, long before she was Eve
of the solar month of blossom and washed
in dew from the hawthorn tree was ever
after handsome as she laughed and danced
and wove within the year the Maypole’s pattern –
for grain, and lads and lasses, must be fertile,
Oberon and Titania friends – but then,
this night, to what rites could we have cleaved, while
Kosovo cleansed, Belgrade burnt and while NATO
bombed… a racist targeted gays in Soho?
(I've just read in the Web how those who lost their lives in the London pub bombing 25 years ago are being remembered today; + Admiral Duncan bombing survivor returns to resume his drink 25 years after deadly blast - Mirror Online)