I have been away and busy over the past few days and missed out on celebrating the Celtic holiday of Beltane, so instead i will do a little write-up on what Beltane is and what it means to the pagan community that celebrate this festival.

Beltane is an ancient Irish Gaelic holiday celebrated around the 1st May.  The Celts marked Beltane as the beginning of the summer season where their livestock were taken out to pasture to graze on the summer fields and mountainsides.  The lighting of bonfires on the eve of Beltane on hills and mountains are one of the main rituals and held ritual and political significance during the festival.  Beltane fires can be observed during modern times by some neopagan groups, but in majority of cases these are just for cultural revival practices rather than the unbroken survival of the ancient tradition.

The hanging of May Boughs on doors and windows is another tradition of Beltane, these May Boughs consisted of mainly branches of Rowan and Hawthorn; the Hawthorn while in bloom was called the “May Bush”.  There is still a tradition of decorating the May Bush (Hawthorn) with flowers, coloured ribbons and egg shells has survived to some extent today.

On the Celtic wheel of the year, Beltane is marked as the cross-quarter day, marking the midway point in the Sun’s progress between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice (June 21st).

The burning of bonfires at Beltane symbolised purification and transition, and summoning in the season in hope of a plentiful and prosperous harvest later in the year, ritual acts where also taken place for protection of the people from harm by unwontedly otherworld spirits.  It was also a custom for people to pass between two fires to purify themselves, and in Scotland boughs of juniper were also burned on the fires to add a further element of purification.

The celebration of Beltane can be seen today at the Beltane Fire Festival that has been held annually since the late 1980’s during the night of 30th April on Calton Hill, Edinburgh, Scotland, where upto 15,000 people can be seen attending the festival.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 3rd, 2007 at 11:31 am and is filed under Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.