The brightest festival of the Celtic year arrives on May eve. Beltaine (pronounced ("bel-ti-nuh") ushers in the fruitful half of the year as the Celtic season turns to summer.
The festival Samhain, on November eve, signals the advent of chaos, of endings and reckoning with outdated ways. A grim psychic and physical reality accompanies that great festival in the form of the Cailleach, the hag of winter.
But where Samhain heralds dissolution, Beltaine brings reaffirmation. Reaffirmation that the fields of nature and the heart will once again bear fruit, that eyes that have seen too much darkness can once again delight in the greening of the world. It is Danu, the Mother, who walks with us now.
At its centre, Beltaine is a celebration of life, and the potential of a bountiful harvest. For those who lived on the land, the month of May did not mark abundance of food and comfort, but rather the potential for it, the changing of conditions such that long awaited hopes and dreams might come to pass. For us, those dreams may have been forged a lifetime ago and it is only now, in this season of life, that the door opens once again.
Fire is essential to the four great festivals of the Celtic year. The great bonfire that blazes from the hilltop and burns through the seasons of the year is the "oculus mundi," the eye of the world through which we see our divinity and that divinity sees us. The "brightness" of Beltaine is not the strength of the sun, but the strength of return, of faith and hope for a new way. No season and no life is brighter than one that has hope.
Beltaine is not for the stingy, it is for those that love. They that love life, its riches, its journey. Welcome Beltaine, may you bless us with abundance.