For those who walk a Celtic path, the advent of summer approaches. The great fire festival of Beltaine (pronounced "bel-ti-nuh") begins at twilight on April 30 and dissipates into the evening dusk on May 1.
Last year at this time we shook ourselves awake from the nightmare of September 11, 2001. This year our minds have focused on a war staged beyond our shores--wrongful or not, that has engrossed the world's attention.
It is times like these, despite our best intentions, that world and personal events impose a condition of grinding frustration. Over a period of time, the resulting compression of thought and impotent action gives way to feelings of helplessness, hopelessness and, to some, a proclivity toward violence.
As the vise-grip of present day life bears down, so too appears its remedy. The celebration of this festival of brightness and fertility may seem an eon away from the world that we presently inhabit--but it is not. When the life that we can see too dramatically fills our world-view, it is imperative to look to the unseen and to realize that it writes as largely upon our lives as the events of present headlines and headaches. By interacting with that unseen world, we can again have an effect on the outcomes of the world that so disturb us.
The festival of Beltaine, as with most observations of the Celtic year, concerns itself with creating a time and space wherein the individual and the community can see and communicate with divine agents to procure health, good fortune and, most particularly at Beltaine, the much needed fertility of man, woman, land and beast.
The top of the Hill of Uisneach, County Westmeath, Ireland is not unlike the terrain of its surrounding Irish setting. Grassy, irregular knolls, embedded stones that seem to be placed hither and thither all surrounded by brush of gorse and scrub. Spines of the hill run all directions except east and but for the stone marker at the designated top, it could be confusing to reconnoiter the true summit of the hill.
It is this non-descript summit, however, that marks the centre of the Beltaine tradition. For beneath this tumbled site of brush and stone is a nearly circular 55-metre ditch enclosure of Neolithic origin. Enormous twin fires burned here at Beltaine, signaling to surrounding hills where similar bonfires were kindled to create a web of fire visible almost to the coast.
The site probably was not then, and is not now, considered a "sanctuary" as we would think of it. It is a locale that people have gathered upon for thousands of years, not only at Beltaine to promote ritual communication with their cosmos but also to feast, to meet and discuss important matters and to bolster much needed social ties between tribes.
Another Neolithic enclosure that was similarly used for the celebration of life and cosmos, feasting and the probable strengthening of community ties is the Windmill Hill enclosure located two metres to the northwest of the Avebury henge in England.
Windmill Hill is located on a gently rising hill; Uisneach is a hill which rises about 80 metres above the local road. These areas do not seem to have been chosen because they were the highest, most defensible areas to be found. Neither of these sites are thought to have been permanently occupied.
From the Uisneach enclosure can be seen landmarks in twenty counties. The lighting of the great bonfire web at Beltaine opened the fire "eye" by which both the community and the island goddess, Erui, could be seen. At Windmill Hill, three concentric ditch rings cover nearly 8.5 hectares and were surrounded at the time by dense forest. This encampment may have, over time, become the circular "eye" to the infinite universe through which gathered tribes communicated with their divinities and were able to be seen in their own right.
By bounding a space, one makes an area that is different in a symbolic way. It need not be sacred, though the sacred may dwell there. In such an enclosure, one can create the oculus mundi, the "eye of the world," through which the destructions and frustrations of our world can be viewed through or along with the eyes of the transcendent. In that space, we are not alone and our fears are comforted, our hopes are answered. As Christian mystic Meister Eckhart wrote "the eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me."
Make your space, whether it be a portion of a room, part of a garden or a public site that has special significance to you. Dance it alive, invest in it your hope and feel its comforting arms when you bring it to mind. This is the nature of the Old Ways, and of any true faith. Welcome Beltaine, welcome the mystery of Life.