Hi! It’s Wendy and I am reveling in the beauty of the spring, as I hope you are. It’s the time of year when we can clearly see the intersection of nature and spirituality. Walking under the flowering trees can open your inner eye and fill our soul with beauty.
Beltane or Mayday is the irrepressible holiday. Centuries of clerical disapproval have not kept people from building maypoles or creating bonfires. Many towns and villages in England and Scotland have maypoles, parades featuring the Greenman and the Maiden or Belfires to celebrate the excitement we feel at the coming of the good weather and the blooming of the earth.
So, our Beltane is coming to be traditional we should celebrate with flowers and dancing and fire. I’ve done a lot of Beltane rituals and thought I would share some ideas with you.
The traditional ritual includes dancing around a Maypole. You can make a nice Maypole with PVC pipe, if you can’t handle a long length of wood. Attach ribbons of many colors and decorate with silk flowers. You can use a sturdy Yule tree stand, anchored into the ground.
A bonfire is also traditional. If we are going to jump over it, I use a small grill set on the ground (mine is so small that one participant said “hey, I can step over that”). If we are going to circle it chanting, I use a firepit. Keep a fire extinguisher close in any case. If you are jumping, kilt your long skirt up and keep your trailing sleeves away from the fire. A nice variation is using the variety of woods mentioned in the Wiccan Rede. Oak, apple, ash, birch, hawthorn, willow, holly, hazel, and alder are the traditional nine woods. Another idea is using species that represent the 4 winds: hawthorn or birch for the east, oak for the south, apple for the west and holly for the north.
If you don’t have a backyard or need to stay inside, you can create a mini-maypole, put it in the middle of an altar and walk around the altar, creating the wrapped maypole. Each person takes a color, saying what the color means to them Or you can make a color pole. Each person takes a color ribbon and one by one, the pole is turned and the participants braid their color around the pole. The pole is turned as many times as needed to get the interlaced ribbons to the bottom of the pole. A few spots of double-side tape here and there help the ribbons stay put, especially as you start. Solitaries might consider this as an alternative to a maypole.
We have also used flowers to create a mandala on the altar, which was then used as a device for meditation. Another use of flowers is to create a pool of flowers and candles, with each person floating a candle and a flower. The pool can be jumped over, like a bonfire, but lots safer. This would work as a solitary ritual as well.
Hope this puts you in a Beltane frame of mind. Be joyous! Dance under the trees in the springtime!
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