As I keep reminding us both, Beltane is a time of creation and a time of re-creation. The word ‘recreation’ has become rather trite and superficial in common 21st century usage. We use it primarily to categorize non-work activities, but the attitude we bring to most recreational activities is so rigid and demanding that what …
Beltane is not only about looking around us and honoring those persons and places and experiences that have shaped us; it is also about looking within and noting our limitations and our life-giving, expansive well of authentic energy. One of our on-going summer tasks is to notice and to weed the former (insuring that limitations …
Beltane begins with fire – specifically with the bonfires lit from the nine sacred woods (birch, oak, hazel, rowan (mountain ash), hawthorne, willow, fir, apple, and ivy). From that bonfire, the hearth fire in each home is renewed and rekindled. These woods symbolize the female and male energies, wisdom, birth and rebirth, life and death, …