About
Our Organisation
The Beltane Fire Society is a community organisation that puts on the Beltane Fire Festival on Calton Hill and the Samhuinn Fire Festival on the Royal Mile, in Edinburgh, Scotland. The society was formed in 1988 for the second Beltane Fire Festival (the first on Calton Hill). The BFS also organises events for the other Celtic cross-quarter days, i.e., Imbolc and Lughnasadh and Samhuinn, and occasionally for solstices and equinoxes.
Beltane Fire Society is a not-for-profit registered charity in Scotland, Charity Number: SC040137 (http://www NULL.oscr NULL.org NULL.uk/search-charity-register/charity-extract/?charitynumber=SC040137), Company Number SC341753 (http://wck2 NULL.companieshouse NULL.gov NULL.uk/eb8a10f415284c7a985593040a86187e/compdetails).
Our Festivals
There are four quarter-day festivals, each one marking the change of the seasons each with a special ritual and symbolic significance. The Beltane Fire Society holds events to recreate these ancient festivals and re-establish the oft-forgotten link between ourselves and the seasonal passage of the year.
Beltane - Lughnasadh - Samhuinn - Imbolc
Our Groups
The Beltane Fire Society festivals incorporate many characters in different guises – some traditional, and some from our own modern interpretation. Different characters take on different roles at festivals, but all have a special place within our events.
The Procession at Beltane consists of the May Queen and her consort the Green Man, her White guard, the Processional Drummers, Nightwatch, the combined forces of Torchies and Stewards, and the guardians of the ritual, the Blues.
May Queen - Green Man - White - Processionals - Nightwatch - Blues
The elements of nature are brought together in the Beltane Festival as a collective representing – Air, Earth, Water and Fire, and are visited in the underworld after passage through the Fire Arch.
Other performing groups include the Reds, chaotic and lively counter of the Whites, Fire Arch, entrance to the underworld, and No Point, who have no point…
There are many other faces in Beltane, working with the crowd or hidden away behind the scenes at the festivals.
Production - Front of House - Bucketeers - Photopoint