A May Festival Candle

With the festival of Beltane/May Day just two days away, here is a simple candle rite, reproduced from my book, By Candlelight: Rites for Celebration, Blessing & Prayer.  The illustrations are from The Victorian Fairy Tarot, created by Lunaea Weatherstone and illustrated by Gary A. Lippincott.

            In moderate climates, May Day (May 1st) signals the beginning of the summer season.  (The astrological cross quarter date, half way between spring equinox and summer solstice, is 15 degrees Taurus, around May 5th or 6th.)  Here in the Midwest, in the last days of April, the leaves on the trees are still quite small, and many are pinkish and yellowish tinted, so they create a visual impression of colorful dot patterns.  Shortly after the first of May, however, you turn around, and lo and behold, most of the trees are now fully leafed out.  Also, the woodland wild flowers are at their peak, garden flowers are in bloom, and the last songbirds are returning.

           At this time, the Celts held one of their most important fire festivals, known as "Beltane" (meaning "bright fire"); they made great bonfires, and some would also ritually rekindle their hearthfires.  With Samhain (Halloween), Beltane divided the year into light and dark halves, and because such transitional points were very magical, it is prominent in the fairy legends.  Around the same time, the Romans had a six day festival in honor of Flora, goddess of flowers, which they regarded as no trivial thing, as this was one of their oldest holidays.  The themes of fertility and festivity survived in customs like the May pole and May baskets.  Through the first half of the 20th century, youths in many American communities rose early to hang baskets of flowers from neighbors' door handles, and some schools arranged May pole dances.

            A modern celebration of May could take up the themes of leafing, flowering, and brightness, emphasizing the ways that all of us may cultivate unique gifts to brighten the world.  (As a verb, leaf can mean to "shoot out" or "produce leaves," and flower "to develop.")  You can celebrate these themes in your own life by lighting a candle and saying:

            As I light this candle,                                                

                        I celebrate the joyful festival May.

            As the green world bursts forth

                        in leaves and flowers,

            and the Sun's light ever increases,

            so may I fill my own world

                        with life, and light, and color.

            So may I leaf, so may I flower,

                        so may I kindle

                                    a flame of brightness.

While thinking about how you could cultivate your own gifts and share them with the world, think about recognizing other peoples' special qualities as well, that each may be valued and encouraged.  Perhaps you could also arrange some celebrational outings, as this is a time to be out in nature, doing something playful and active.

 

HALLOWEEN IN OUR HEARTS

My mother used to keep a Christmas tree up all year, and would tell people, “It’s always Christmas in my heart.”  Meanwhile, I used to joke that, “It’s always Halloween in my heart.”  Looking ahead to Halloween night 2022, I was thinking about creating some spell to capture the Spirit of Halloween, when I remembered the Halloween ritual featured in my book, “By Candlelight: Rites for Celebration, Blessing & Prayer.”  Unfortunately, the book is now out of print, but I’d like to share the ritual, along with illustrations of some cards from Stacey Demarco’s “The Halloween Oracle.”  If you have this card deck, laying out these cards while also performing the candle rite can serve as a spell to welcome Halloween magic into your life.

Here are some excerpts from the book:

"To experience the mystical energies of this season, you can light a candle on All Hallows Eve (and, if you wish, on the nights surrounding it).  … [A]s the focus of a family celebration or kick off a night of party-going, you could perform the following rite, to recover some of childhood’s sense of wonder."  

           

Light your Halloween candle while saying,  

             

 "I light this candle

      in honor of All Hallows nights,

  a time when the human world

      can touch the world of magic

   

                   So at this time,

                       may we also find wonder 

                           in the mysteries of the universe,

                   even as we rediscover

                            the enchantments of childhood.

                 So may our lives be filled with magic:

                       magic in our homes,

                                  and magic in our hearts."

Note that we can think of the days around Halloween as “Allhallowntide,” based on ancient customs where the days leading up to and following a special holiday were also sacred; this includes the old practice of the “octave,” where you have eight days of celebration around an important feast.  By the way, the cross-quarter day associated with Halloween, that is, the halfway point between the autumn equinox and winter solstice, is fifteen degrees Scorpio, around November 7^th.