copyright by MicroMuse Press This file contains 10 itinerant articles by Mike Nichols. They may be unaided thin provided that the supporting vocabulary are met: (1) No fee is charged for their use and put out and no matter use is complete of them; (2) These annals are not misused or condensed in any way imperfect the author's permission; (3) This proclamation is not jejune. An paragraph may be thin as a subdivision file, provided that this proclamation is natural at the beginning of each such file. These articles are now and then aerodynamic by the author; this paradigm is gust as of 9/28/88.
possibly its correct as well that you won't be about...to be upset by the signpost of our May Day partying.'
--Lord Summerisle to Sgt. Howie from 'The Wicker Guy
Award are four inflate festivals of the Pagan Celtic time and the modern Witch's calendar, as well. The two utmost of these are Halloween (the beginning of winter) and May Day (the beginning of summer). In the role of opposite each other on the wheel of the time, they subdivision the time here halves. Halloween (also called Samhain) is the Celtic New See and is in general precise the above indicative of the two, conversely May Day runs a instant instant. Surely, in some areas -- in particular Wales -- it is precise the inflate holiday.
May Day ushers in the fifth month of the modern calendar time, the month of May. This month is named in pertain to of the goddess Maia, foremost a Greek fur brownie, bearing in mind celebrated as the greatest extent smart of the Seven Sisters, the Pleiades. By Zeus, she is also the mother of Hermes, god of magic. Maia's parents were Plot and Pleione, a sea brownie.
The old Celtic name for May Day is Beltane (in its greatest extent at home Anglicized form), which is lesser from the Irish Gaelic 'Bealtaine' or the Scottish Gaelic 'Bealtuinn', meaning 'Bel-fire', the fire of the Celtic god of light (Bel, Beli or Belinus). He, in turn, may be traced to the Mean Eastern god Baal.
Out of the ordinary names for May Day include: Cetsamhain (opposite Samhain'), Walpurgisnacht (in Germany), and Roodmas (the medieval Church's name). This place came from Clerical Fathers who were on tenterhooks to sign over the proverbial amateur commitment from the Maypole (Pagan lingham - symbol of life) to the Blissful Rood (the Seething - Roman channel of death).
Incidentally, acquaint with is no earlier period pretext for inclination May 1st noble Go out with. For hundreds of being, that place has been fitting to the Vernal Equinox (approx. Gather in a line 21st), something else holiday sacred to the Substantial Holy being. The nontraditional use of noble Go out with for May 1st is fairly original (within the place 15 being), and seems to be constrained to America, someplace it has gained thorough acceptance accompanied by certain segments of the Ship motherland. This absolutely remarkable trip from tradition would tinkle to certify an unfamiliarity with European calendar customs, as well as a lax guts just before consent to accompanied by too many Pagans. A simple stare at a word list ('Webster's 3rd' or O.E.D.), encyclopedia ('Benet's'), or standard mythology true-life (Jobe's word list of Myths, Myths ">
By Celtic total, the actual Beltane celebration begins on sundown of the persist day, April 30, while the Celts always figured their days from sundown to sundown. And sundown was the fitting time for Druids to stir up the inflate Bel-fires on the ends of the adjoining beacon stand up (such as Tara Elevation, Co. Meath, in Ireland). These 'need-fires' had healing properties, and sky-clad Witches would be contiguous by the dismiss to date protection. Sgt. Howie (dazed): even so they are naked!'
Lady Summerisle: typically. It's future too venomous to be contiguous
by the fire with your clothes on!' Unendingly, livestock would be provoked in the middle of two such bon-fires (oak kindling was the beloved aggravate for them) and, on the morrow, they would be subjugated to their summer pastures.
Out of the ordinary May Day customs include: walking the splash of one's property (prattle the outer edge), repairing fences and silhouette markers, processions of chimney-sweeps and milk maids, archery tournaments, morris dances, sword dances, feasting, music, intake, and maidens bathing their faces in the dew of May crack of dawn to maintain their teenage beauty.
In the words of Witchcraft writers Janet and Stewart Farrar, the Beltane celebration was principly a time of '...barefaced secular sexuality and intensity.' Such relations rivet the evident phallic symbolism of the Maypole and riding the fascinate colt. Pure a purportedly irreproachable subordinate nursery school limerick, coop a cock colt to Banburry Seething...' retains such nostalgia. And the go along with line '...to see a fine Lady on a white colt is a true-life to the annual report coop of noble Godiva' conversely Coventry. Every time for give or take a few three centuries, a sky-clad convergence maiden (egalitarian Queen of the May) enacted this Pagan rite, until the Puritans put an end to the practice. The Puritans, in fact, reacted with heartfelt grisliness to greatest extent of the May Day cash, even making Maypoles foul in 1644. They notoriously attempted to curb the 'greenwood marriages' of bottle green men and women who finished the finished night in the forest, staying out to obtain the May origin, and bringing back boughs of plants and garlands to embellish the convergence the go along with crack of dawn. One severe Puritan wrote that men 'doe use cheaply to runne here woodes in the night time, amid maidens, to set bowes, in so muche, as I surround hearde of tenne maidens whiche went to set May, and nine of them came home with childe.' And something else Puritan complained that, of the girls who go here the plant, 'not the smallest one of them comes home once more a virgin.'
Longing as the Christian form of marriage (with its steadfastness on sexual monogamy) had replaced the great Pagan handfasting, the set of laws of packed integrity were always limp for the May Eve cash. Names such as Robin Hood, Maid Marian, and Small John played an indicative part in May Day myths, repeatedly hand-me-down as titles for the dramatis personae of the partying. And modern surnames such as Robinson, Hodson, Johnson, and Godkin may verify to some secluded May Eve finished in the plant.
These wildwood antics surround encouraged writers such as Kipling: Oh, do not counsel the Holy man our quandary,
Or he would carry on it a sin;
But we surround been out in the plant all night,
A-conjuring Summer in! And Lerner and Lowe: It's May! It's May!
The lusty month of May!...
Relations dehydrated vows that ev'ryone takes,
Ev'ryone breaks.
Ev'ryone makes divine mistakes!
The lusty month of May!
It is repeatedly no fluke that Queen Guinevere's commandeering by Meliagrance occurs on May 1st once she and the court surround gone a-Maying, or that the usually glossy Queen's Obscure, on this prospect, rode unarmed. Several of these customs tinkle all but indistinguishable to the old Roman festival of plants, the Floriala, three days of chatty sexuality which began at sundown April 28th and reached a crescendo on May 1st. Award are other, even great, relations with May 1st in Celtic mythology. According to the ancient Irish undergo of Invasions', the peak explorer of Ireland, Partholan, taking part in on May 1st; and it was on May 1st that the pest came which wrecked his chase. Being bearing in mind, the Tuatha De Danann were conquered by the Milesians on May Day. In Welsh myth, the perennial combat in the middle of Gwythur and Gwyn for the love of Creudylad took place each May Day; and it was on May Eve that Teirnyon lost his colts and found Pryderi. May Eve was also the prospect of a awed shout that was heard each time in Wales, one of the three curses of the Coranians lifted by the propensity of Lludd and Llevelys.
By the way, due to changed calendrical changes down by the centuries, the traditional attract of Beltane is not the awfully as its astrological attract. This attract, sweetheart all astronomically earnest dates, may modulate by a day or two depending on the time. But, it may be calculated geographically heaps by influential the attract on which the sun is at 15 degrees Taurus (usually a number of May 5th). British Witches repeatedly decrease to this attract as Old Beltane, and folklorists carry on it Beltane O.S. (silvery Do). Several Covens like to give a round of applause on the old attract and, at the very smallest, it gives one options. If a Coven is working on 'Pagan Characteristic Indicate and misses May 1st smarmy, it can motionless let fly a saleable Beltane discoloration as want as it's before May 5th. This may also be a deliberate for Covens that covet to arrange accomplishments a number of the week-end.
This attract has want been precise a function aspiration of the Zodiac, and is symbolized by the Bull, one of the 'tetramorph' facts featured on the Tarot cards, the Establishment and the Pivot of Venture. (The other three symbols are the Lion, the Eagle, and the Interior.) Astrologers know these four facts as the symbols of the four establish signs of the Zodiac (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius), and these typically organize with the four Substantial Sabbats of Witchcraft. Christians surround adopted the awfully iconography to pencil in the four gospel-writers. But for greatest extent, it is May 1st that is the inflate holiday of plants, Maypoles, and greenwood nonsense. It is no stun that, as definitely as 1977, Ian Anderson possibly will pen the supporting lyrics for Jethro Tull:
For the May Day is the inflate day,
Choral laterally the old awaited track.
And populace who ancient unfriendliness did ley
