Beltane
+ The Intersection of Worlds +BELTANE READING
“This is the season of Beltane, the intersection of worlds, when the living green emerges again out of the land of the dead, when we leave behind our homes, the secure constructs in which we lived our winter, and venture out on the great plains, following the herds, following our animal instincts, following the paths of the mother through the grass, following the flow of energy through the earth’s magnetic web. now we construct the bonfire, the bone fire, the need fire, of nine kinds of wood and the ritual spark struck from no flint, using no metal. now we burn the remnants of the past, the clinging, the hoarding, the resentments, the guilt. now the worlds intersect, what was opaque becomes transparent, what was solid is exposed as transitory. we sit at the sea’s edge, we sit on solid rock, we watch the patterns form and dissolve in the foam as the swells lift and break – and the shifting and ever-changing sea is just as it was a hundred million years ago, and the rock, once crystallizing in the depths of the mountains, is now exposed to the sky and crumbling away to sand. this morning, at Stonehenge, the sun rose in the arch of the moon’s minor standstill, the gates stand open between the worlds, spirits walk the earth, and mortals awake in the land of the fairies.”
From The Feminine of History is Mystery, facing page 15
ASTRONOMY
The sun arrives at the moon’s standstill. Days are longer than nights, days lengthen slowly.
BELTANE
The gates open between the worlds. This is the time when spirit fleshes itself out into material form. We celebrate incarnation and embodiment. This is the time when spirit creates for itself a material body. Nature weaves leaves out of sunlight, and color appears again among the bare twigs – an event we celebrate by winding colored ribbons around the Maypole.
DANCES WE DO AT THIS TIME
SELLINGER’S ROUND – a traditional Maypole dance
MAY DANCE – a traditional Greek dance, Sfarlis, done to an English song to the Greek tune
MAYMUKI – a traditional Armenian dance
EROTIS INE – a choreography to Greek music “Love Is”
TREAD GENTLY ON THE EARTH, EARTH LOVE, BACK TO EARTH – dances to celebrate the Earth
IVALLA – a Greek Tsamikos or “bull dance” done to celebrate the sign of Taurus
