For years now, I have been reposting what I wrote years ago for the Solar Holiday Cycle instead of writing anything new, but those of you who have been following this blog know that I am starting to have a bit of a re-think on all of that stuff.
We’re not in the Mesolithic anymore, Toto. We know why the Sun appears to travel South for the winter now. Jeeze, some of us do the same thing.
And the timing of all the seasons is running to chaos, what with climate change mucking up the gears that turn the Wheel. It is nearly May and last night we had temps below freezing, and snow is predicted for Sunday, a mere three days from now. Seriously. I’m dreaming of a white Easter? I don’t think …
And most of us are neither hunter/gatherers nor farmers, so the agrarian metaphors are a little bit lost as well, and though the cycles of planting and harvesting are still essential, most of us are oblivious to them and find it hard to really connect with some holidays.
Aaaannnnnd don’t get me started on the binary. Just don’t.
So Beltane approaches, and as I may have (ahem) mentioned before, the story is … not feeling very comfortable anymore.
We need a big re-think on all of this. In the Neolithic, the point of most ritual and celebration was to ensure the fertility of the crops and the livestock (including the women, just sayin’), and to propitiate the powers that caused the sun to fly south, and who caused catastrophic weather events as well as volcanos and earthquakes and so on. These days, we understand why all of those things happen because we know that the Earth travels around the Sun and is tilted 23 degrees which gives us our seasons, and we understand geology and tectonic plates and water cycles and the jet stream and ocean currents and so on. We understand that stuff, and don’t need to invent gods to explain these seemingly random and often terrifying events, and we especially don’t need to propitiate them in any way, with any offering or sacrifice. Think about it – making an offering of a dead animal or plant to Earth-Mother would be really insulting, redundant and stupid. Like, say you make me a piece of pottery and give it to me as a gift, and I exclaim about how wonderful it is – and then I smash it to bits and hand it back to you saying, “Here, I smashed this pot you made for me, do you like it?” It would be literally that stupid.
It seems to me, and I’m sure I’m far from the first person to have this thought, that the whole point of living an Earth-based religion at this moment in our evolution is really, at the heart of it, to tune ourselves deeper and deeper into:
- the Planetary Intelligence (that guided our evolution into symbiotically related beings sharing an ecosystem),
- the Collective Consciousness (human minds, bug minds, bear minds, tree minds, rock minds, fish minds);
- and to feel deeper into our place in the Ecosystem which sustains us all.
That doesn’t mean ignoring the growing cycles of the food that is necessary for us to survive – far from it. It means always focusing on the most sustainable, most empowering, most loving way to feed people. Living lightly on the surface of the planet, shrinking our footprint, not being part of the problem.
As for making offerings, yes, offer our time, our energy, our work, our creativity. I offer my skills as a sound healer to help tune people into the sustaining energies and winnow away the accumulated garbage that no longer serves them. I offer my thoughts as a Druid to help people ask themselves questions and think more deeply about how they move through the world. I offer my physical labor as I pick up litter in the park or around my neighborhood, or plant flowers, herbs and veggies in my garden spots to feed my friends and my family. I offer my creative energies to write songs that contribute to the enjoyment of the people around me.
Every way that we move through the world can either enhance or detract from our abilities to tune into the incredibly healing energy of this planet. We don’t have to find it, or try to connect to it, because it’s not outside us – it is us, we are part of it, it is part of us. We are already swimming in it, and we can either fight it and suffer or allow it and thrive.
At Beltane, the Sun God marries the Maiden of Spring (who, as you may recall, betrayed him at the Autumnal Equinox by setting him up to be murdered by her lover, the Lord of Misrule), and their make-up sex ensures the fertility of the crops and the livestock (including, as I said before, the women). Tell it to Jerry Springer.
How about, let’s make Beltane a day of celebrating what each of us can do to deepen our commitment to making our neighborhoods, our parks, our homes, our circles of influence, healthier, happier, and more peaceful for everyone around us? If we look at the cycle of the Solar holidays, including the Cross Quarter days, we can see a progression from inward to outward, inhale, exhale.
- Samhain: we are gathering in, focused on preparing our homes for winter;
- Yule: We are gathering with friends and family One Last Time before the weather turns really ugly;
- Imbolc: We are focused on hearth and home, birthing new ideas and preparing to open up to Spring;
- Vernal Equinox: We are venturing out into the world, cleaning up debris from Winter and starting to make plans for what we want to accomplish when the weather turns decent again;
- Beltane: Hopefully most of our gardens are in and starting to sprout, and our immediate environs are becoming less mucky and more green; life beckons, and we gently head out into the world;
- Summer Solstice: We are completely out and about in the wide, wide world, going to festivals and concerts and campouts and generally being feral and free humans of leisure;
- Lammas: We’re eating out of our gardens now, or going to the farmers markets and reaping the bonanza of our local market gardeners, but Summer is clearly winding down so we are out in the world harvesting every last drop of the bounty that community has to offer;
- Autumnal Equinox; Kids are back in school, so everybody is pulling back in, tending to the last of the garden veg, canning and freezing and drying; but we’re pulling in a little bit now, as evenings are getting noticeably shorter;
- And back to Samhain again.
Inhale, exhale; gather in, bust out; focus in, focus out. We have been slowly clawing our way out of hibernation, from the Equinox until now, and at Beltane, finally (hopefully) the snow is done, the winds have tempered, the mud is largely dried up, the days are long and warm and the world is drawing us ever outward. So how can we use the energy of this outward focus to tune ourselves in deeper to the explosion of Spring, in all it’s glory? Get creative. You don’t have to fix everything, just do what you can manage, in your own way, to make as much of a piece as you can handle better. And take the time to feel all of those feels. Feel your place in the ecosystem, and your contribution to the Collective Consciousness. Feel the presence of the Planetary Intelligence, Gaia if you will, not as something external to you, but something integral to you. We are drops in that ocean, sacred every one. Move out into the world gently and with love. Let the Growing Time begin!