As we prepare to celebrate alone, but together, once again, we look to find ways to celebrate and take time to mark the season’s change. Whether that be through meditation, a sensory walk, or a dram of whisky by a fire.
Our Blues have provided this ‘Beltane At Home’ guide, with ideas and suggestions for how to mark the occasion in your own way. It sits alongside Bower’s Community Ritual Pack.
In the week running up to Beltane….
Take some time – inside, or outdoors – to reflect on the winter, and to look forward to the seasonal change ahead.
Clear a space, and let your thoughts drift.
Connect with your breath.
What is it that no longer serves you?
What is that you’d like to invite in?
For many this has been a time of sorrow, difficulty, and isolation. Be gentle with yourself. Not all changes have to be big ones.
Gift yourself an hour in nature, and collect three items – one to represent the past, one for the present, and one for the future. (You likely want these things to be biodegradable, to return to nature in some way.) In choosing these things, think about the energies and ideas around you that you want to let go, and those you want to manifest for the future. Let these small items represent those things.
Take some green material, ribbon or thread, and bind these items together three times: once for the past, once for the present and once for the future. As you do that, think lightly on what intention you want to set at Beltane. Keep this bound package somewhere special or sacred to you, ready for Beltane night.
On Beltane night….
Prepare your space – as the Bower has suggested, or in whatever way most suits you.
Light green candles, light incense or sage, or that from whichever saining tradition is most meaningful to you.
Clear a space, and let your thoughts drift.
Connect with your breath.
What is it that no longer serves you?
What is that you’d like to invite in?
Unbind the items you collected. Sit with the intentions you have mulled over during the past week. Take as little or as long a time to picture them. If you’re moved to, manifest them through writing or another creative act, without judgement, or pressure to share. If it feels right to commit these things to an element, then let them go: to air, to earth, to water or to fire. Release your intentions to the ether.
Consider how you would like to close your ceremony, perhaps blowing out the candle, washing your hands, saining, singing. Remember that closing a ceremony is as important as doing the actions themselves, as it marks out this time as a precious moment, with an understanding of letting things go, unfurling in their own time. You have just created space for something separate from the everyday: make it special to you, and enjoy.
These are suggestions, let your imagination run wild and go with what feels instinctively right.
As you close, a message from our May Queen and Green Man:
A toast for Beltane night:
In whatever way you participate,
We extend an invitation to celebrate.
Be it with delicious ritual, food, drink, dance, or drumming
We wish you well; to new growth, to community, to summer…or something (else)
With much love, many blessings, and a wee bit of magic!
Prepared by Ella & Sara Blue, border by Nate Kelso (in PDF).
22nd April, 2021.
Beltane Fire Society 
