In our and Earth’s everyday sacred journey around Mother Sun, we move into the Seasonal Moment of Beltaine/Samhain – as these Seasons are named in many Old European traditions. It is the cross-quarter transition between Equinox and Solstice. In the Southern Hemisphere it is the transition into High Spring/Beltaine, towards the Summer Solstice, and in the Northern Hemisphere it is the transition into Deep Autumn/Samhain towards the Winter Solstice. The Moment will be November 7th at 3:51 UTC … that’s November 7th at 13:51 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, and thus the Season of Beltaine/High Spring is a time of witnessing and celebrating the beauty and relational strength of life, and also then for celebrating 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,[i] 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, and thus 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 – Beltaine a genetic fertility, Sanhain a trans-genetic/imaginal fertility. This fertility may be felt as excitement in bodyminds in anticipation of the fullness of light or dark, 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:[ii] there is intimate connection.
For some Beltaine Poetry: PaGaian Beltaine on YouTube
For some Samhain Poetry: PaGaian Samhain on YouTube
There are Beltaine and Samhain ceremonial videos on my pagaian YouTube channel.
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 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.
PaGaian Cosmology blogs for Beltaine/High Spring
PaGaian Cosmology blogs for Samhain/Deep Autumn
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] See Laura Sewall, “Earth, Eros, Sky” in Earthlight, Winter 2000, for more on this.
[ii] See Elisabet Sahtouris, Earthdance, p.134-135, and Ursula Goodenough, The Sacred Depths of Nature, p.143-149. More can be made of this link between these Seasonal Moments: orgasm has been termed “a little death” in French.
References:
Goodenough, Ursula. The Sacred Depths of Nature. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Livingstone, Glenys. A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Norway: Girl God Books, 2023.
Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. NE: iUniverse, 2005
Matthews, Caitlin. The Celtic Spirit. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2000.
Sahtouris, Elisabet. Earthdance: Living Systems in Evolution. Lincoln NE:iUniversity Press, 2000.
Sewall, Laura. “Earth, Eros, Sky” in Earthlight, Winter 2000, pp. 22-23 and p. 25.
Swimme, Brian. The Universe is a Green Dragon. Santa Fe: Bear & Co., 1984.
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