Beltane (May Day) Lore
by Maria Kay Simms
Beltane Maypole Dancers
Beltane, with its colorful Maypole Dance, is a favorite Pagan celebration, perhaps the most popular along with Samhain, its opposite point on the eight-spoked Wheel of the Year. As Samhain announces the onset of winter, Beltane heralds the onset of summer. Though Samhain, through its secular celebration of Halloween, seems to gain in mass-market popularity with each year that goes by, Beltane ("May Day") seems to have lost a bit of ground with the general public. That is sad, for it is a day of joy that should be shared. Earth has come to life again, with buds that we saw just appearing on trees and shrubs at Spring Equinox have turned to leaves and flowers. Even in places like Southern California where seasons are not so clearly evident as further north, Nature seems renewed and refreshed. Summer is just ahead-we can feel it, and are energized.
I remember May Day well from the small Midwestern town where I grew up. We always made May Baskets, often as an art project in grade school. A favorite way was by weaving colored paper strips through another sheet of paper with slits cut in it. Then it would be folded, the ends sealed and a handle added. We'd tuck a few May flowers in our finished baskets, and perhaps a few candies, then deliver them to our special people, like Grandma, of course and … yes, there would also be that special friend of our own age and opposite sex. The custom held that you put your basket right at the front door of your target's house, ring the door bell and than run quickly. The recipient was to chase, catch and kiss! May Day was always fun for the whole neighborhood, children and adults.
Though I don't remember Maypole dances in my hometown, I know that they were often part of folk customs in other towns. Just last year a feature in my local New Hampshire paper pictured a large Maypole that had just been rediscovered in an old public building. The custom came to the USA with early settlers from the British Isles and Europe, but has been discouraged in many places due to Puritanical objections to the obvious sexual symbolism of its Pagan origins. The Catholics managed to co-opt May Day, as has been the case with so many other festivals, and render it chaste in the bargain, by declaring it sacred to the Virgin Mary. Each year young Catholic girls hoped they might be the special one chosen to crown the local church's statue of the Virgin with a floral wreath as Mary the Queen of May.
Gwenevere under Hawthorne Branches May Queens were often chosen in Pagan celebrations, as well, along with a May King. The Queen, dressed in white, represented the Goddess as Maiden, and the King was the young Bright Lord who would chase and catch her, then to celebrate the sacred marriage that was a magical rite to encourage the fertility of Earth in the season of growth. In older times, "bringing in the May," was a time when young men and maidens, after following May Eve festivities by spending all night together in the forest, would bring back spring flowers to decorate their villages. They might also find a young tree to cut and bring to the village center where it would be festooned with ribbons for the Maypole Dance. The dance is a fertility rite, in itself, for as the dancers weave around the phallic pole, they weave their magick for fertility and abundance.
Ancient celebrations of May Day have been portrayed in stories from Arthurian legend, and in fact are part of the Lerner and Loewe musical Camelot, when Queen Gwenevere with her Ladies and Knights, leads the singing of "Tra-la, it's May, the lusty month of May, that lovely month when everyone goes blissfully astray…"
Another charming folk tradition is the magick of the May Dew. There's a Mother Goose rhyme that celebrates it:
The fair maid who, the first of May
Goes to the fields at break of day
And washes in dew from the Hawthorne tree
Will ever after handsome be.
The name Beltane, which means fire, likely derives from the Celtic god of light Bel (or Beli, Belenus-the name varies with traditions). The Celts' celebration included the May Eve lighting of Bel-fires on the hilltops. The fires were considered to be healing, protective and to contribute toward fertility. It's said that the people jumped them -quickly and skyclad, so as not to catch their clothes afire. Cattle were ritually driven between the fires on their way to summer pastures.
Beltane in Modern Wicca
The center of most Wiccan celebrations is the dance around the Maypole, with accompanying enactments of the courtship chase of Maiden and Bright Lord, and perhaps a ritual jumping of a small Bel-fire for luck and fulfillment. Fires for this purpose might be made by burning kindling within an iron cauldron. Couples often jump the fire together.
Molly (Starcrafts' owner) & Maria (her mom) at Beltane in the Park The Maypole dance is not only fun, but is also a weaving of magick for the fertility and fulfillment of hopes, wishes and personal intents for the season ahead. Each year in San Diego, the Calafia Council of Covenant of the Goddess holds its open Beltane-in-the-Park. It's an event that always draws hundreds to picnic and to enjoy a ritual that includes a colorful Maypole Dance accompanied by a large contingent of great drummers. In order to allow many more to dance than the pole could possibly have ribbons, the drums will stop periodically, signaling the dancers to pause and hand over their ribbons to a new group of dancers. Then the drumming begins again and the dance goes on.
Crowns of Flowers
Beltane Crown of Flowers Of all Wiccan rites, Beltane is the one most likely to find many, if not all, the women crowned with wreaths of flowers. These can be fun to make, either as permanent wreaths of silk flowers, or if enough fresh flowers are in bloom in your area, a fresh flower crown. The base for fresh flower wreaths might be vines or supple branches of flowering shrubs that can be formed into a circlet and bound with floral tape, light wire or twine. Then extra flowers can be easily woven into the circlet. For a wreath of silk flowers, you can start with a circlet of heavy coated floral wire, but I've found that building a wreath quickly can be most easily done by starting with ivy or leaf garland. Cut a piece long enough to form a circle that fits your head nicely with just a bit to spare so you can neatly wire the ends together. Then you will have a good base of leaves into which you can easily twist stems of a variety of silk flowers, securing them with a bit of floral tape where necessary. A cascade of narrow ribbons tied at the back makes a pretty finish.
How to Do the Maypole Dance
You need a long and sturdy pole, firmly anchored. When I lived in San Diego I had a pipe permanently sunk into a small concrete slab that at other times of the year was covered by a heavy mosaic pentagram. The pipe firmly held a tall 2" thick dowel rod. I have seen tall dead tree trunks still rooted in the ground and kept for Maypole use. Permanent structures are not always possible, though. Here in my New Hampshire circle, we use a method that should be easily available to anyone. The base is an extra heavy metal one sold for use with outdoor umbrellas. Its clamps hold the pole firmly in place. For the top of our heavy wooden dowel, there's a wooden knob attached with a double-pointed screw. Ribbons are stapled to the top and then capped with the knob. You should have a long ribbon for each participant. The ribbons should be long enough that the end can be held out at a distance at least the length of the pole, as is shown in the Maypole dance about to begin for Circle of the Cosmic Muse's Beltane 2002.
Beginning the Maypole Dance
When all participants are standing around the pole, each holding the end of a ribbon, count off alternately one and two around the circle. Then have all the Ones turn to face deocil (clockwise) and all the Twos turn to face widdershins (counter-clockwise), and to proceed in those directions as the dancing begins. Instruct the Ones to first lift their ribbons and the Twos to duck under, then alternate. As the dance continues, the two groups of dancers, moving in opposite directions, alternately pass their ribbons over an approaching dancer and then duck under the ribbon of the next one. Dancers are to visualize, as they move, what they wish to weave into their lives for the season ahead. Above them on the pole, the ribbons weave.
Maypole Dance in Progress - note the braided ribbon at the top of the pole
In the second photo, you see the pole nearly halfway woven. Notice that there is something resting atop the extended ribbons. That is the floral wreath that the Maiden wore at the beginning of the ritual. When all ribbons were held out, and just before the dance began, the Maiden places her head wreath over the top of the pole, where it will gradually descend as the weaving proceeds-yet another act symbolic of the sacred marriage of Maiden and Bright Lord, Earth and Sun, with all the hope and promise for the future that it inspires.
Drumming accompaniment inspires especially good energy for the dancing. In recent years we've been fortunate to have at least two or three good drummers who'd rather drum than dance. Or, the dancers might also chant. Here's one possibility, from the Beltane ritual that is in The Witch's Circle:
Weave, weave, it is our fate we weave
By choice, not chance
With love and will
It is our fate we weave.
As the weaving progresses down into the bottom half of the pole, the dance becomes progressively more challenging-especially for we Crones and Sages who are less agile than the young-and is usually accompanied by quite a bit of laughter, until finally the High Priestess calls the dance complete. The ends of the ribbons are tied off in a festoon at the end of the weaving.
The woven ribbons will later slip right off the pole in a pretty cylinder pattern. Like all magickal charms, once their time is ended, they should be ritually released. An appropriate time and method would be in a bonfire for Fall Equinox or Samhain.
Wiccan Handfasting at Beltane
Beltane Lovers Beltane, traditionally a rite of the sacred marriage of Earth and Sun so necessary for fertility and abundance in the season of growth, is also an especially popular time for Wiccan handfastings. A coven Beltane rite might include the handfasting of a couple. Handfasting may also be a legal marriage ceremony, but is not necessarily so. Sometimes a handfasting is a commitment made for "a year and a day," perhaps preliminary to a full commitment. Wiccan couples who do marry legally, whether at Beltane or at another time, usually prefer a ceremony that incorporates the ancient handfasting tradition.
At the central part of a handfasting rite, the couple joins their hands to be bound with cords as they are questioned about their intents toward each other. At the end of the questioning, with a series of cords lightly draped around their clasped hands, the couple must then gather the cords and tie them into a big knot at the center. In this manner, they have "tied the knot." At the end of the rite, hands held with their cords within, the couple runs around the circle and jumps a broom laid on the ground in emulation of an ancient folk method of sealing a marriage. In many modern-day handfasting rites, a broom and sword are laid on the ground in a cross to be jumped, the broom symbolic of the woman's dominion over the home, and the sword symbolic of her man's role to protect her and their home.
