On the last night of April the hawthorn is breaking, the cattle go out to grass, and the summer half of the year begins. Beltane is the most joyful of the Sabbats, and the one on which our coven was born.
Beltane is the Irish name for the first of May. It is generally taken to mean bright fire. It stands opposite Samhain on the Wheel, and the two divide the year between them into a summer half and a winter half. As Samhain belongs to the dead, Beltane belongs emphatically to the living.
History and folklore
An Irish glossary written more than a thousand years ago records that at Beltane the druids made two fires with great incantations and drove the cattle between them, to protect them from disease in the year ahead. The lighting of fires on hilltops at the beginning of May went on in parts of Scotland, Ireland and Wales into the nineteenth century. In Wales the day is Calan Mai, the first day of summer, and its eve was one of the three spirit nights of the year.
In England, May Day was the great holiday of the common people. Young men and women went out before dawn to bring in the may, which is to say the hawthorn blossom, and came home with green boughs to dress the doors. Girls washed their faces in the May dew for the sake of their complexions. A maypole was set up on the green and danced around, a queen of the May was chosen, and a figure dressed entirely in leaves, called Jack-in-the-Green, capered through the streets. The Puritans detested all of it and for a time put it down. It came back.
Beltane in the Craft
In the story of the year, this is the marriage of the Goddess and the God. They are young and at the height of their beauty, and their union sets the summer going. It is a festival of fertility in the widest sense: of the fields and flocks, of human love, and of every sort of creative work.
Fire is at the centre of the rite, as it has always been. Where a coven can work outdoors, a bonfire is lit, and those who wish to leave something behind or carry something forward into the summer leap over it. Indoors, the cauldron holds the fire. There is a ring dance, as fast as the company can manage. Lines from a poem by Rudyard Kipling in praise of oak, ash and thorn found their way into the Sabbat rites of Gardner's coven, and have been sung at Beltane ever since.
It is the merriest night of the year. The Craft holds that joy is a form of worship, and at Beltane it acts on that belief.
How our coven keeps it
May Eve is our birthday. The Coven of Cythrawl was founded on this night in 1981, and so for us the festival is also an anniversary.
- After the rite, the year's count is read: how many years the coven has stood, and the names of those who founded it.
- We keep a small fire in the cauldron, and everyone jumps it. The elders are helped over, and are not excused.
- Before dawn on May morning, everyone who can manage it climbs Cythrawl to wash their face in the dew and watch the sun rise.
- We bring hawthorn down from the hill to dress the door, and by firm local custom we do not carry it into the house.
- The supper is the best of the year, and there is dancing in the kitchen.
Keeping it yourself
- Get up before sunrise on May morning and go out. This alone is worth doing.
- Find a hawthorn in flower, and learn its scent.
- Dress your door or your table with green leaves.
- Light a candle, or a fire if you safely can, and decide what you would leave behind in it.
- Dance, in whatever way you dance, with whoever will dance with you.