As is spoken in this prayer Our Mother:[i] … Her desire is felt/received throughout the Cosmos. I think it is a good prayer for Beltaine … a time for contemplating the Deeper Alluring Power of the Cosmos, which we can actually all feel – present and uniting the Cosmos. We feel it in so many ways – but I like to begin Beltaine contemplations with the often unnoticed sensation of weight:

become aware of your sensation of weight.  Feel this sensation not as “weight” but as Earth holding you. “no being has any intrinsic weight” – this experience you are having is a gravitational interaction with Earth[ii].  This “weight” experience is relationship with Earth – your relationship with Earth, how She holds you. You may feel Earth holding you – the primordial Power of the Universe … it’s as common and intimate as this.

Then there is the common desire for breath:

Breathe deep. Feel your breath as it rushes in, as it waxes towards fullness. Feel your desire for this breath, for this fullness. Breathe deep and feel your breath as it waxes towards filling completely. Feel your desire for this breath. This is how Gaia breathes in our part of the world at this time. The light is waxing towards fullness. Feel your breath as it rushes in. Feel your desire for this breath, this fullness … Earth’s desire for this breath.

Then there are all our other elemental desires – for water, nourishment, warmth;  and emotional ones for love and care; and our passions – to create, to be, for fulfillment.  We may contemplate these as valencies/dimensions of this Allurement felt right now – that unites the Cosmos and holds all things in form.

And we may then contemplate:

one or some that you love deeply …  and feel it in the weight of your bodymind, the sensation itself. Feel it as a taste of the Power that holds you in existence, and receive it. Her Desire is felt and received throughout the Cosmos – bringing all things forth. We may receive Her desire now, in this moment.

Swiftly re-light the flame,

Aphrodite, holy name,

Astarte, hull and spar

of wrecked ships lost your star,

forgot the light at dusk,

forgot the prayer at dawn;

return, O holiest one,

Venus whose name is kin

to venerate,

venerator

H.D. “Tribute to the Angels” 1945, in TRILOGY by H.D. Norman Holmes Pearson, NY: New Directions Books, 1973.

NOTES:
[i] written in 2005 by Glenys Livingstone in collaboration with Taffy Seaborne, and published in Chapter 8 of  PaGaian Cosmology that year (p. 259).  Note that the word “Kin-dom” used in the text is Karen Davis’s term published in her article “A Peacable Kin-dom and the Ethics of Eating”  in EarthLight issue 51, Vol 14, No.2.

[ii] inspired by Brian Swimme, The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos, p. 52. This reference is in a chapter  called “Looking Down on the Milky Way” … Swimme is good for bending the brain: try it – looking down on the Milky Way … why not? we may be “on the ceiling” held on Earth by  Her “gravity”/allurement.