As our planet Earth, and we Her inhabitants, orbit Mother Sun in our everyday sacred journey,[i] we move into the Seasonal Moment of Beltaine/Samhain, the cross-quarter transition between Equinox and Solstice. In the Southern Hemisphere it is the transition into High Spring (or Beltaine, as it may be named) towards the Summer Solstice, and in the Northern Hemisphere it is the transition into Deep Autumn (or Samhain as it may be named) towards the Winter Solstice. The Moment will be November 7th at 16:18 UTC … that’s November 8th at 2:18 EST Australia where I am (+ 1hr for Victoria and NSW). Other global times are available at archaeoastronomy.com
In the Southern Hemisphere the light part of the day continues to grow and to dominate. The Season of Beltaine/High Spring is a time for witnessing and remembering the beauty of the dance of life, and the essential deep desire for it. Desire is essential for anything to happen, and may be recognized as Holy Desire. This recognition, enjoyment and wonderment is so needed in these times. Beltaine/High Spring may be a time of ceremonial celebration of the power of allurement, the holy desire that brings all things forth. It is a Moment of celebration of the power of Light and its processes: the warmth received, the manifestation of flowers, fruits and beauty, the diverse colour wavelengths received into eyes awakening the senses,[ii] and the passion enkindled, out of which relational connections deepen; and even just whatever it is that gets you out of bed in the morning. The creative nature of passion and desire deeply felt and expressed multivalently, is worthy of much contemplation, and not repression as many have been taught in this era.
In the Northern Hemisphere it is the dark part of the day that continues to grow and to dominate. The Season of Samhain/Deep Autumn is a time for remembering all who have gone before, those who have passed into the night, the ancestors, which may include all beings over the eons. It may be a time of ceremonial celebration of the power of transformation, as the year turns, as the era turns; and a time for dreaming and conceiving the new – for new re-solutions. We may feel it particularly in these times of cataclysmic change. It is a Moment of celebration of the power of the Dark and its processes: which may include the comfort and rest it may bring, as well as the breakdown and composting of so much that belongs to the past, making space for the new to emerge. The Dark is the ground of being, and is a sentient fertility rich with possibility, in which the new may be composed/conceived.
Beltaine and Samhain are essential to each other – one cannot be without the other. They occur at the same time: that is, they are co-incidental. Appreciation of the moment of Now, its gift and its beauty is intimate with knowing a sense of death, the knowing of the passing of all. And further, life is built on death: this moment and all presently manifest beings would not be here, if all had not passed before. Death is actually the Mother of us all – we may be thankful in this moment, remembering that we are united with all who have come before us, in their desire, in their longing. We may sense the wholeness of form and trans-form, the flux and unity that this event of life actually is.
Both Seasonal Moments have traditionally often been times of celebrating a wild fertile space – one a genetic fertility, the other a trans-genetic/imaginal fertility. It could be a kind of excitement felt in bodyminds in anticipation of the fullness of dark or light, the climax (as it will be at Solstice – Summer and Winter). In the evolutionary story the advent of meiotic sex is connected to the advent of death:[iii] there is intimate connection.
For some Beltaine Poetry: PaGaian Beltaine on YouTube
For some Samhain Poetry: PaGaian Samhain on YouTube
Many will celebrate the Moment of Beltaine/ Samhain on the traditional date of 31st October or November 1st, and yet others will enjoy it closer to the astronomical moment of 7th or 8th November. At my place in Australia we will celebrate Beltaine ceremony close to the Moment, and I invite others in this way:
Earth tilts us further towards the Sun – the Source of Her pleasure, life and ecstasy
You are invited to celebrate
BELTAINE
This is the time when sweet desire for life is met
… the fruiting begins:
the promise of early Spring exalts in passion.
This is the celebration of Holy Lust, Allurement, Aphrodite …
Who holds all things in form, Who unites the cosmos,
Who brings forth all things,
Who is the Essence of the Dance of Life.
…oOo…
PaGaian Cosmology blogs for Beltaine/High Spring
PaGaian Cosmology blogs for Samhain/Deep Autumn
Beltaine/High Spring and Samhain/Deep Autumn meditations are offered in PaGaian Cosmology Meditations CDs, available also in digital format at that link.
Some Beltaine and Samhain story (and offered ceremonial scripts) may be found in my new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos, Chapters 8 and 4 respectively, and/or Appendix F of PaGaian Cosmology may be referred to.
Blissed and profound Beltaine/Samhain transition to you.
NOTES:
[i] Our everyday sacred journey around Mother Sun could be named as a Turas. Turas is a Celtic word meaning “journey”, “pilgrimage”, and refers especially to the circular, spiraling prayer used by people in Celtic countries as they walked sunwise around a sacred site. (Caitlin Matthews, The Celtic Spirit, p.31)
[ii] See Laura Sewall, “Earth, Eros, Sky” in Earthlight, Winter 2000, for more on this.
[iii] See Elisabet Sahtouris, Earthdance, p.134-135, and Ursula Goodenough, The Sacred Depths of Nature, p.143-149. More can be made of this li
PaGaian Cosmology 
Glenys if you or friends are planning to travel over this period of Samhain or Nollag I can only wish you ‘Turas sla’n agus Beannacht leat’, ‘Safe journey and may blessings go with you’.
I am intrigued to notice that the word ‘Beannacht’, ‘blessing’ begins with ‘Bean’ (pronounced ‘Ban’ rhymes with ‘fan’) which means ‘Woman.’ I’ve never seen that feature analysed by any scholar. It could refer to the holiness of womanhood protected and granted by a female supreme being like Sile/Sule/Seele/Soul/Celine/Celeste.
The vocative case of Bean in Irish is ‘Bhean’ pronounced ‘Van.’ ‘Van’ is the name for ‘Woman’ in the Iranian language, I believe. Coincidence?
Just a few more particles in the trail of crumbs which leads us to, um, I don’t know where. Yet!
Thank you Aidan for your wishes and blessings. I hope you received my text and photo of Moon over Trinity College sent this morning. We visited Brigid’s well in Kildare today – it was magnificent. We will visit the Geology building at Trinity tomorrow – and thinking of you. My host’s son studied there also.
The trail of language crumbs is interesting.
Hello Glenys
No I haven’t seen your text message or photo. I was not even certain that you were actually travelling.
I have never seen Brigid’s Well. In my youth it was never mentioned, supposedly the private property of the nuns’ community there, with no external admissions. A lot was hidden in the pious Catholic Ireland of my youth. Like my youth that Church authority has as good as vanished. People go to Mass still, though much fewer now, I understand, and get baptized, married and sent off in Church but it is no longer untouchable. There was one betrayal too many. Ireland has matured so much since De Valera died. He held the country in a childish spell for so long.
When you go to Rath Croghan you might pass through Elphin. I was born in the Bank of Ireland House there, it is on my Birth Cert. It is probably something else now.
I wouldn’t expect too much at Rath Croghan. These people were not Pyramid builders and the place has largely returned to the Earth that bore it. There is supposed to be an entrance to the Underworld near it, called Uaimh na gCait, the Cave of the Cats. It might have been why Maeve and Allill sited Cruachan Ai there.
Best of luck. Beannachtai Brigde libh.