Beltane: The Bright Fire
Plus, upcoming webinars on Relationships, Love & Community.
Happy Beltane friends.
The earth bursts forth with the passion of life as the promise of summer takes hold. This time of year has become significant to me, though it certainly wasn’t the case growing up.
Like many who grew up in middle-class North America, I was bereft of the cultural practices of my ancestors in Ireland, Scotland and England.
From the Trailblazery, founded by colleague Kathy Scott:
Bealtaine translates as the month of May as gaeilge, the native language of Ireland ~ Éire. It means bright fire or mouth of fire. This fire festival marks the transition from the dark to the bright half of the year, from giamos to samos. Like Samhain, on the exact opposite point in the Wheel of the Year, Bealtaine is a time when the veils between the worlds are thin.
The festival of Bealtaine celebrates the God Belenus (Bright one) and welcomes the “rekindling” of the sun with the promise of summer. The ancients saw fire as a purifier, protector and healer, and would have walked and danced around fires as part of their Bealtaine rituals.
This portal of Bealtaine ushers in the sensorial season of blossoming, aliveness, fullness, risk and opening. It’s a time of great fertility, passion and abundance. Bealtaine is an invitation to embrace the dance of the masculine and feminine forces and celebrate the potent energies within and without.
It wasn’t until my first time at the Tamera Healing Biotope in 2015 that I experienced their version of a Beltane ritual, which also marked the opening of the Global Love School.
It had a significant impact on me, which I wrote about the morning after:
Last night, Tamera celebrated the return of the spring with Beltane. The men & women gathered in a clearing, first separately, to reflect upon the role of the relationship between the masculine/feminine, the two elementary polarities of life. Then, two from each side lit their bonfires, throwing red flame upon each others faces.
The women, adorned with crowns of flowers, sang to the men. They in turn, answered their call, dancing to the rhythm of the drum, that great syncopation of life itself. Two couples were blessed by the village, the oncoming children already gathered in, long before they are born.
Shyly at first, each side began the approach. Pan, the archetype of the wild man, surged through the men, threatening not violence, but erotic passion that is tethered to life. The women - maidens, mothers, and crones - were beheld in all manifestations of her, the wild woman in human form.
The bonfires were pushed together and the polarities finally met. Hand in hand, men and women gathered courage and jumped over the fire - it did not matter who paired off, whether you were desirable, whether you were worthy, whether you were "enough."
In the modern era, many who do not fit into the typical expectations of men and women end up carrying deep wounds inflicted by a culture that has confused the elemental with the personal. We are forced to adopt an identity that mutes the brilliant spectrum of gender and sexuality. From this situation, the only sane response seems to be: "Toss the whole thing out. Men and women are the same, and should be treated no differently."
And yet. There is another, older way.What would it mean to willingly polarize in ritual, not to subsume your unique self, but temporarily, to participate in the joy of duality? What would it mean not to suppress the powerful energy of eros, that passion that stirs winter toward spring, to catalyze the act of creation?
Such is the wisdom of the village. Simply by being alive and embedded, your belonging is ensured. You are led into a story much bigger, and much older, than the story of your single life
This theme, the intelligence of village, has become a lifelong inquiry, woven increasingly throughout my experiences working with ritual, community, and cultural regeneration.
More to say, but in the meantime, here’s some offerings that are blossoming in the near future.
Upcoming Webinars
Join me for two live webinars with my co-filmmakers of The Village of Lovers where we’ll discuss how to re-embed relationships into the web of community. They’re free to register.
May 7 - Beyond Just Us: Community as Catalyst for Rejuvenating Personal Relationships
May 14 - Reconciling Monogamy & Polyamory: A Third Pathway For Secure & Liberated Relationships
Latest Mythic Masculine Episodes
Over the last month, I’ve released two powerful conversations on my podcast that explore the realms of eros, love, healing & relationships.
I’m pleased to share that our recent in-person weekend for men AWE (Awakening The Wild Erotic) was a profound success, and we’ll be announcing our next date soon.
My online program The Deep Masculine is also currently running, and I’m so appreciative of the men who are taking this journey. Once complete, my collaborator Deus and I will harvest from this initial cohort and open the next round this Fall. You can join the waitlist by signing up here.
Lastly, believe it or not, I’ve actually been enjoying Facebook (again) these days as a place to stir some rich conversation.
There are a few threads that you may wish to review, including:
I’ll close this dispatch with a haiku I wrote 10 years ago, but seems fitting with this image.
They say it's too late
And yet - the cherry blossoms
Refuse to listen.
IM
To your cherry blossom haiku I would like to offer a riff from Pablo Neruda: " I want to do with you what Spring does with cherry trees. ( Quiero hacer contigo lo que la primavera have con los cerezos.)