Beltane

What this is

Beltane is May Eve, the fire-feast of the greenwood, the day the light half of the year truly begins. It is the sacred marriage, the hieros gamos, when the Horned One and the Lady meet in their young and ardent aspects and the land is quickened by their union. The cattle are driven between the twin fires for blessing and protection before going up to the summer pasture. It stands opposite Samhuinn, the two great fire-feasts that divide the year into its halves.

What it governs

It presides over union and desire, over fertility of every kind, over the wild generative force of life at its rising. Its element is fire, the twin bonfires of the feast. It rules handfasting and the joining of partners, the may-bush hung with ribbons at the door, and the fairy-tree that is honoured and never cut. The veil thins here as it does at Samhuinn, but toward the living and the green world rather than the dead.

Its properties

Its colours are green and the red and white of the may-blossom, the hawthorn that flowers now. Its rite is to kindle twin bonfires, or twin candles where a fire cannot be had, and to pass between them; to make a handfasting; to hang ribbons on the may-bush and wear a crown of flowers. Its upright virtue is generous, joyful union, the giving of oneself to life and to another. Its shadow is heedless appetite, desire that consumes without honour. The fairy-tree is honoured and never cut: even at the height of wanting, there is a line that is kept.

Where else it appears

The sacred marriage of god and goddess is one rite across the traditions. Sumer kept the joining of Inanna and Dumuzi to fertilise the land; Greece kept the marriage of Zeus and Hera and the rites of Dionysus in the spring; Rome kept the Floralia, the festival of flowering. The maypole and the may-queen carry the same union into folk custom. In every skin the act is one: two powers joined so that the world may bear fruit, the human gesture of love echoing the marriage of the year itself.

Where you meet it on the Oracle

Beltane surfaces on the Seasons section as the nearest sabbat around the turn of April into May, when the Wheel opens into the bright half. When it stands as your nearest station, the reading speaks of union, of passion, of a coming-together to be entered with whole heart and open honour. Read it as the green fire of life saying yes. Pass between two flames, alone or with another, and step into the bright half with you.

Why it matters

Life renews itself only through union, and the feast teaches that desire is a sacred force when it is given freely and kept honest. Beltane asks you to say yes to life with your whole self, and to keep the one line that desire must not cross. To join well is to make the world fertile.

Correspondences

planet

Venus

element

Fire

zodiac

Taurus

colour

Green

metal

Copper

stone

Emerald

tarot

The Lovers