Beltane 2008 Issue

The Magic in Beltane by H. Byron Ballard

We tend to overuse the word “magic” nowadays. Stage illusion is magic, new cars are magic, sports teams are magic. There’s magic in extravagantly-paid film personalities and oven-cleaners work like, well, you know.

With so much “magic” all around us, is it any wonder we miss the real thing when it presents itself? Sitting in my yard in late March, I could feel a subtle change in the wind and smell an old and potent scent. The Earth rouses herself in the fullness of spring, the green is vibrant in a way we’ll not see again this year. It is the oldest and yet newest of mysteries: the transition from winter to spring, from sleep to waking, from death to life. All cultures in temperate climates have celebrations of this magical and glorious transition. In Western Europe, the Celts called the successful completion of this transition Beltane. It has passed down to us as one of the great Cross-Quarter Days and one of four cyclical fire festivals.

Beltane is May Day, the opening of Celtic summer and the most unabashedly sexual of the Pagan holidays. The ultimate phallic symbol--the Maypole--is erected with a crown of flowers and streaming ribbons, one end pushed deeply into the fertile soil. Until recently in Europe, farmers went into the field at this time of year and sat naked on the spring soil to determine if it was ready for plowing and planting. Scholars believe this was left over from old European religions that encouraged couples to copulate in the newly-plowed fields to ensure the success of the growing season.

The Victorians and the effects of the Industrial Revolution subdued the overt sexuality of the season as it was expressed in rural folk tradition and May Day became a holiday for children. Girls and boys wearing new white garments and necklaces of flowers delivered May baskets to friends and kin. They skipped around the Maypole in choreographed dances, prettily winding the ribbons around the tree. One girl was selected the May Queen and ruled the subsequent events of the day. Many egg games were devised (the egg being another symbol of new life and fertility) that included tossing raw eggs from person to person, balancing an egg on a spoon while running a relay race and rolling eggs downhill.

Modern inheritors of the Victorian spirit, the Religious Right, found themselves shocked by all the Paganism expressed in May Day and several years ago developed a Christian response to this most “pagan” of holidays. May Day became “Pray Day“, a time to seek Higher Guidance and mortify the flesh. Ironically, fliers for Pray Day encourage school prayer groups to meet at the flagpole to hold their vigil. The posters scattered throughout school campuses bear a cheery “Meet Me at the Pole!”

Why not put a prayer crown on top with colorful prayer ribbons and tie up our requests and praises as we dance around the pole? There’s an opportunity for real commonality here: a chance to build some bridges between two groups of pray-ers. Does it matter that we’re praying for different things and (possibly) to different deities? Maybe not. Maybe if we spent more time dancing our prayers and less time mortifying our flesh, we might learn to live in peace with our Mother Earth.

Now, that would be magic.