Naturalistic Paganism
The Vernal Equitherm (Beltane) is coming! Before Beltane sweeps over our whole Northern Hemisphere (with Samhain in the Southern Hemisphere), do you have a Maypole for your group? It’s especially fun with a bunch of kids, and they learn to celebrate our Earth too! Easy instructions below, as well as other ways to celebrate and many online rituals to join!
DIY Easy Maypole
Ready to make an easy to use Maypole for your Pagan group? Or use the Maypole to help attract people to form a new Pagan group! This Maypole is easy to put up and take down, while also being easy to make.
First, get a 2X2 maybe 4 to 5′ long. Cut off a short piece (or bring the whole thing) to the lumber yard, Lowes, Home Depot, or such to find the diameter of PVC pipe that it just barely fits into. We could calculate that, but it’s easier to just find the one which fits. Buy an 8′ or so length of that PVC. Spray paint it green or whatever. Attach a top piece with long ribbons.
Cut a point on the end of the 2X2 (this can be done with any of various types of saws – make sure it is the same on both sides to make pounding it into the ground easy). On the day of the Beltane celebration, use a wooden or rubber hammer, or a piece of scrap 2X4 on top for protection from a metal hammer/sledge, etc, and pound the 2X2 about 1 to 2′ into the ground, using a level to ensure that it’s perpendicular. Then slide the maypole onto it from the top. Easy! Get ready to dance!
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The way to dance a Maypole can be found online, or use this basic description. Dances can range from very simple to very complex, with complex dances available here. For a very simple dance (this works great with kids), divide the kids/dancers into two groups. Alternate the dancers in a circle around the Maypole (if you have an odd number of kids/dancers, the extra one simply faces the same direction as the person before them). When the music starts (see our music page here, or get other music), dancers dance forward (so half go clockwise and the other half counterclockwise – deosil/widdershins). Don’t worry about who lifts their ribbon up to let the oncoming dancer pass – let it go randomly. The ribbons will plait down the Maypole – it might not be a pretty as a regular plan would be, but that’s OK – just have fun!
Or for subsequent years, you might want to plan it out more carefully to make a regular plait – or not!
Taking it down is easy too – just lift it off from the 2X2, then hit the 2X2 a few times from the side to loosen it up, pull it out of the ground, and store until next year. We found that a couple big bike hooks in the ceiling of the garage make a convenient and out of the way storage location for the Maypole until next year, with the 2X2 inside it.
Beltane
In the Northern Hemisphere, May 1st time is traditionally celebrated in the Neo-Pagan Wheel of the Year as Beltane. The name derives from the Irish Gaelic Bealtaine or the Scottish Gaelic Bealtuinn for “Bel-fire”. Beltane is reputed as a day of unabashed sexuality, visible in the phallic symbolism of dancing round the Maypole. This sexuality is, of course, approached with respect and consideration.
Earth Day
But before we get to the online opportunities for Beltane celebrations, we also just passed Earth Day! If you haven’t already signed it, consider signing our Pagan Statement on the Environment.
Online Beltane Celebrations
It’s great to see online celebrations staying common after the pandemic! Hopefully this new normal can help far flung Pagans stay connected. Be sure to plan in advance – many of these require registration ahead of time and/or various ritual materials/preparations. Also – looking around your local area (and especially at CUUPS chapters at local UU churches) may well turn up some live events!
Pagaian Celebrations
Glenys Livingstone, author of PaGaian Cosmology, a naturalistic tradition revering the Goddess as a metaphor for the Cosmos, recommends the ritual celebration of beauty, as in the following call and response:
Celebrant: “Name yourself as the Beauty, whom She desires – the Beloved. Speak if you wish, of the Beauty that you are, or simply show us. Let us welcome your Beauty.”
Each one: (wording as you wish … this is a suggestive, and presenting object or photo of Beauty, or describing, as you speak: “I am this Beauty”. AND/OR “I am the Beauty of … . I am the Beauty whom She (the Cosmos/Universe) desires.“ (Put your object or photo on the altar)
Response: Welcome, we saw you coming from afar, and you were beautiful. We saw you coming from afar, and you are beautiful.
(Livingstone, 2008)
Glenys also finds this a particularly appropriate time to use the well-known Charge of the Goddess as an invocation: “all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals.”
Others
NaturalPantheist, author of the Nature is Sacred blog, performs an ADF style ritual using the Solitary Druid Fellowship‘s liturgy format:
“As I stand here on this celebration of Beltane, the sacred wheel of the year continues to turn. As my forebears did, I do now, and so may my descendants do in time to come. The dark half of the year is over and Summer has begun. The earth is alive and the land is fertile. Leaves are once more upon the trees, flowers are blooming all around and insects are searching for pollen. Warmth has returned and it is the season of love and passion, the time of fire. I give thanks for the blessings of the earth mother.”
NaturalPantheist also offers some suggestions for celebrating Beltane inspired by historical practices, folklore or contemporary Neo-Paganism, including:
- Light a Bonfire as the ancient Druids did.
- Extinguish and relight the main fire of your hearth. This could be a literal fire or the pilot light of your boiler.
- Give an offering to the local river. The ancient Celts saw their local river as the embodiment of the land goddess and offerings were left for her.
- “Bring in the May” by decorating your house with hawthorn, yellow flowers and greenery.
- Do a saining/ cleansing of your house. Walk the boundaries with fire.
- Collect dew or the first water of a local well in the morning. The water can be used in healing rites throughout the year.
- Eat a meal of seasonal wild greens. There are many wild edibles around now: hawthorn leaves, jack by the hedge, nettles, goosegrass, wild garlic, dandelions and more.
- Make a protective Rowan cross charm to hang in the doorway.
- It’s a time to focus on fertility and romance, so spend some time with your partner. And have sex — maybe in a forest.
- Visit a May Day fair or parade and watch morris dancers or the May Queen being crowned.
Jon Cleland Host, of the Naturalistic Paganism yahoo group, suggests making Maybaskets of flowers, running barefoot in the grass, washing one’s face in the morning dew, and writing romantic poetry. Other family traditions we have for Beltane include planting the garden and being outside.
Áine Órga sees May sees May as a time to “step away from your altar” both literally and figuratively:
“If you practice a personal, solitary spirituality, the dark months of the year probably see you spending a lot of time in your sacred space. […] Step away from your altar this month – either literally or figuratively. Speaking literally: make your practice more active than passive. Speaking figuratively: you can step away from your altar by changing up your practice. Take your spirituality outside. Rather than revering the divine at your altar, revere it (her/him/them) outside in the wild. Visit the sacred places of the deities you work with, if you can. If not, find a place that feels sacred to them. Make it theirs.”
Áine associates Beltane with erotic and creative energy, “felt as as desire for life, for the necessities to live like food, water, and air. Or as a desire to express yourself, to connect deeply to the world, and to love yourself completely.” She offers these suggestions for celebrating the energy of desire:
- When meditating, focus on the point after you have exhaled all your breath when you feel the desire to take the next breath take hold. Don’t strain your breath, but be aware of the overwhelming need for the expansion of your lungs.
- Consider your personal sexuality and sexual experiences as an experience of connecting to Divine energy. Consider the way you feel when aroused, and the feelings that course through you, and divorce those feelings from any other person. Own them entirely.
- On the other hand, and particularly if you are in a sexual relationship, consider how your sexuality connects you to another person or persons.
Other ideas can be found here. For those on the Southern side of our Earth, preparations for Samhain/the Autumn Equitherm are likely underway…….
This is an updated version of the yearly Vernal Equitherm post
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