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Beltane by Yvonne Rathbone |
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Wheel
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Beltane The Goddess and God get it on. Tree - California
Buckeye Beltane is that most pagan of holidays and therefore the one the Christian Church had the most trouble with. They tried to substitute Roodmas for Beltane. As a celebration of the Cross (Rood), it replaced the Maypole, symbols of life and fertility, with the cross, an instrument of torture and death. Perhaps there is no other place where the pathology of the Christian system is so apparent as this. Why was Beltane so antithetical to the Church? Because it unabashedly celebrates sex! This wondrous activity of pleasure and fertility is celebrated in all it's glory. What a wonderful world the Goddess made that we have such access to joy. And how telling that this joy comes best through an intimate connection with others. Rituals around Beltane usually include having sex. Young couples would go "a-Maying" in the woods. Marriage vows were often suspended for the day. Even rituals that were not actual sex acts, such as riding a hobby horse and dancing around the Maypole, directly symbolized it. It is at Beltane that we see how fertility and ecstasy are intertwined. Around Beltane, the California Buckeye sends up long, erect spikes of flowers. These floral phalluses represent the rampant sexual energy of this time. The leaves of the Buckeye are palmately arranged around a central stem in groups of five, a number of the Goddess, with a flower spike emerging out of the center of the leaves. |
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