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May Day-Beltane!
The Eve of Beltane at Amatra
Barbara Mays,
Date: 5/1/2006 10:06:11 AM ( 18 y ) ... viewed 1355 times May 1, 06
7:49 AM
Last night was the EVE of BELTANE
I guess I started my Beltane
without consciously being aware
Saturday night, one day early.
I will leave it to your imagination
what happened.
The garden is definitely pleased
and we honored an old tree making
way for a place where a new Persian Mulberry
will go in.
The Persian Mulbery is putting out
first buds. I am so happy about that!
My favorite tree at Dr. Jensen's was
a Persian Mulberry.
Woke up today, May 1 with troughts of
wanting to visit Jensen's Ranch with a group.
Isn't that interesting?
Last night I was with Amatra Barbara May
at a gathering at her home, on the eve of Beltane.
May for May day.
I made three new friends, and Joanie
gave me a sweet kiss. That is going to be a fun
alliance. There were massage tables set up
all over the place. It was so very healing.
What an amazing Dream!
Imagine this: a room full of professional body workers
who are mystically bent (many of them)
who are used to making their income through
$$$$ working on each other at this Amatra homecoming
coming out afternoon and eve happening!
I had three people work on me.
My friend Johnny just went in for a shoulder replacement.
His old shoulder is about ten times more flexible than mine,
and he went in to get it replaced!
I was thinking when I was at this event with Amatra,
Good God, what can these Body Workers, who are professionals
at this, do for me? I mean, isn't there another way than
surgery to get a shoulder freed up????
This one may was totally enthralled with
"Love Her Always," #5 of The Seven Love Cures.
He was sitting there writing the words of my copyrighted
poem on a napkin. I didn't know what to say at first.
I mean, those poems are my livelihood, why didn't
he just buy one? He didn't get it, but he had worked
on my shoulder.
He was saying that my shoulder had a lot of old stuff
stuck in it and he could get it out of there if I came into his
office. So, I helped him switch his own stuff head a bit
but just trading him "Love Her Always" in the form that
I produce it. I mean, isn;t that silly, sitting there copying
the words on a napkin? Why would I want that?
When I came in, I plopped down next to Joanie and
she immediately starting touching me. Wow! I had
seen her the weekend before at Earthday at the closing.
Later, we went outside, and we worked on each other.
Every place she touches I had to make a sound.
Was it her, or my body, or both?
She really expressed herself. I know the man
who she has been with for four years. It is a very
similar story to my experience with my Best Friend.
The same pattern. Thank God, I am making progress
seeing, owning, and reclaiming my life by taking some Space.
That's what Love Cure #2 is all about:
Taking Space.
Oh well, here I am rattling on!
Read more about Beltane here:
http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=usma&c=holidays&id=2765
Celebration includes frolicking throughout the countryside, maypole dancing, leaping over fires to ensure fertility, circling the fire three times (sun-wise) for good luck in the coming year, athletic tournaments feasting, music, drinking, children collecting the May: gathering flowers. children gathering flowers, hobby horses, May birching and folks go a maying". Flowers, flower wreaths and garlands are typical decorations for this holiday, as well as ribbons and streamers. Flowers are a crucial symbol of Beltane, they signal the victory of Summer over Winter and the blossoming of sensuality in all of nature and the bounty it will bring.
May birching or May boughing, began on Beltane Eve, it is said that young men fastened garland and boughs on the windows and doors of the young maidens upon which their sweet interest laid. Mountain ash leaves and Hawthorne branches meant indicated love whereas thorn meant disdain. This perhaps, is the forerunner of old May Day custom of hanging bouquets hooked on one's doorknob?
Young men and women wandered into the woods before daybreak of May Day morning with garlands of flowers and/or branches of trees. They would arrive; most rumpled from joyous encounters, in many areas with the maypole for the Beltane celebrations. Pre-Christian society's thoughts on human sexuality and fertility were not bound up in guilt and sin, but rather joyous in the less restraint expression of human passions. Life was not an exercise but rather a joyful dance, rich in all beauty it can afford.
___
More here that is alluring:
http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=usma&c=holidays&id=3382
Once the fires were relit on Beltane Eve, and children put to bed, and the wee hours of Beltane morning arrived, the more adult festivities began. And that includes the traditional activities associated with fertility (remember Flora and her fondness for prostitutes? Kinda along those lines). Newly wed couples and new brides were expected to perform fertility rites around the bonfires, to take advantage of their potency and purification. Humans were much more closely connected with the rhythms of the earth in those days, to put it mildly, and no doubt the running of sap in trees, the blossoms and buds bursting forth, the scents of flowers and new growth and damp soil and rain, all stirred the senses and reawakened the body---these days we call it "spring fever, " but in antiquity, indulging such urges was completely normal and expected.
Or, in the words of Lerner and Lowe, from the musical "Camelot":
"It's May! It's May!
The lusty month of May!...
Those dreary vows that ev'ryone takes,
Ev'ryone breaks.
Ev'ryone makes divine mistakes!
The lusty month of May! "
Naturally enough, unwed men and women would also partake of the spirit of these rites, and find themselves venturing off into the nearby fields or forest to perform their own fertility rites. Blessed by the gods on this sacred night, such unions were seen as wholly proper, even when not blessed by marriage; they were referred to as "greenwood marriages." It is also true that betrothed couples would make love at Beltane, and if the union did not prove fruitful, i.e. no pregnancy resulted, they might dissolve the partnership before marriage without repercussion. In fact, the origin of the "year and a day" handfasting custom observed by modern pagans, in which they renew their vows after one year, dates back to this. If new marriages did not produce children within one year, couple often split and married others, with no penalty.
But why sex? If the point of these festivals was to preserve the land and the flocks, why not simply observe fertility in the birth of lambs, the growth of plants? Ah, but ancient peoples believed in sympathetic magic: that practice of a small, symbolic action representing a larger one. By making love in the fields, human beings believed they were helping make the earth more fertile, blessing it with their own activity of producing new life and abundance. And even if the ultimate goal of such unions was not pregnancy, it couldn't hurt to help the magic along!
Which brings me to what is often considered a wholly sexua| symbol, and main feature of ancient May Day and modern Beltane celebrations: the maypole.
http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=usma&c=holidays&id=3382
Floralia
It is not clear where or how the festival of Beltane first came about; Ronald Hutton in The Stations of the Sun mentions the first recorded instance of a bishop in Lincolnshire complaining about local priests who "demeaned themselves by joining games which they call the bringing-in of May" in 1240. May Games were recorded in Scotland in 1432. There is some speculation that Beltane and May Day is related to the ancient Roman festival of Floralia. According to the about.com article, this was "a six-day party in honor of Flora, the goddess of Spring and Flowers, the Floralia was a time of singing, dancing and feasting in the ancient capital." Dressed in bright colors in imitation of spring flowers, citizens would decorate the entire city with fresh blooms. "Hares and goats, symbols of fertility, would be let loose in gardens as protectors of Flora, and great singing and stomping would be heard in order to wake up Spring." Of course, dancing is a large part of May Day celebrations as well.
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