May/June Heart of Glastonbury - Magazine - Page 66
CELTIC CELEBRATIONS IN MAY
A Blossoming of the Heart
As though responding to the yellow trumpet calls of last months daffodils, a
twirling romance has begun its dance across the lands. A dance between the sun
and the earth; which touches the soft soil with his rays and encourages her to
weave in passionate play with his warmth. Suddenly alive with the rising saps of
the woodlands, a love affair is unravelling. As the divine union between nature
and light is witnessed in its earthly frenzy, eager vines stretch sensually across the
forest floors, waking up creatures in search of their mate. Saplings reach up from
moss beds and burst forth with their inner offerings and wild flowers arrive like
kisses between the grass. Blossoms dress the sturdy branches of trees like
billowing ball gowns and scatter the ground below in a flirtation of petals.
As we, too, unfurl like the ferns of the wild to drink in the sunshine of May, we
find ourselves at the Celtic celebration of summers doorstep; Beltane. Here,
the Goddess and the God bow and exchange sparkling golden sips from the
chalices they offer one another, with delighted hearts ablaze.
Associated with Belenus, the Celtic God of the sun, the fires of Beltane (or
Bel) were traditionally held at the first full moon after the flowering of the
hawthorn; a tree of the heart. All fires in homes were extinguished at the
hearth and re-lit by the Druids from sacred bonfires across the land, which
were jumped over by the community to encourage fertility for the year
ahead. In the Irish folktales about the Old Gods - the Tuatha De Danann
landed upon the soil of our beloved Earth on Beltane too, creating a golden
age of growth, abundance and a poetic, fertile union between the mortal and
immortal, otherworldly realms.