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Put the pole in the hole!
Today was Beltaine, and it came to me and Bard to run ritual for the Minoan Temple folks. Now, for the last many years, the people who run this have done vague tame sorts of things having to do with Welsh mythology inexplicably combined with a poorly danced Maypole. Not this year! We combined kissing and not-at-all-subtle sexual innuendo with a poorly danced Maypole!
Rhys dug in the dirt for the first half of the ritual, and did the wiggly "Hey, I'm turning up the volume on the boombox to high, and Mom isn't stopping me!" happy Mayday dance for most of the rest of it. Perfect.
Beltaine's really not just for the straight kids, of course. Some people really appreciated some of the opening comments I put together for the event, so I thought I'd share them with you as well.
It could be said that at its core, Wicca is a fertility religion, and in that sense, Beltaine is the highest of holidays. The world is green and growing after the long dark winter, the green sprouts that will become this year's food are coming out of the ground, baby animals are toddling all around the farmyards, and of course the Gods want us to help! Gerald Gardner liked to have his witches in boy-girl working partnerships. The Great Rite, even in token, is essentially ritualized intercourse. But for modern pagans, especially in a tradition like ours which comes through a queer line, this can often feel inappropriate, and as such, get downplayed. We are not all heterosexual; we are not all built to make babies. This makes us no less as people, or as witches.
At the true heart of Beltaine, and at the heart of our religious practice generally, is a related but separate concept: that of polarity. Things that are different come together, to complement each other with a soft embrace or to clash together with fire and sparks, and in so doing to create something new, in so doing to create magic. We touch, and are changed. There are many axes of polarity that can be explored, each with their own complexities and flavors: male and female, young and old, butch and femme, macho and fey, light and dark, active and passive, East Coast and West Coast, dominant and submissive, creation and destruction, urban and wild, divine and mundane. Any relationship can have a polarity dynamic, independent of the genders of the people involved; no two of us are so alike that there are not places for us to push and pull against the balance and dance something new into being.
And if we learn to dance this dance well enough, we can learn to break the rules, like Hermes who walks between the worlds, or Aphrodite who can still be the epitome of femininity even when she wears a beard. We may not be exactly what we seem, in any moment, or even every day. Every time we allow someone to engage us in true connection, we learn something new about ourselves from the experience.
All acts of love and pleasure are Her rituals. We can honor the joy of coming together without being obscene, and without leaving anyone out.
Rhys dug in the dirt for the first half of the ritual, and did the wiggly "Hey, I'm turning up the volume on the boombox to high, and Mom isn't stopping me!" happy Mayday dance for most of the rest of it. Perfect.
Beltaine's really not just for the straight kids, of course. Some people really appreciated some of the opening comments I put together for the event, so I thought I'd share them with you as well.
It could be said that at its core, Wicca is a fertility religion, and in that sense, Beltaine is the highest of holidays. The world is green and growing after the long dark winter, the green sprouts that will become this year's food are coming out of the ground, baby animals are toddling all around the farmyards, and of course the Gods want us to help! Gerald Gardner liked to have his witches in boy-girl working partnerships. The Great Rite, even in token, is essentially ritualized intercourse. But for modern pagans, especially in a tradition like ours which comes through a queer line, this can often feel inappropriate, and as such, get downplayed. We are not all heterosexual; we are not all built to make babies. This makes us no less as people, or as witches.
At the true heart of Beltaine, and at the heart of our religious practice generally, is a related but separate concept: that of polarity. Things that are different come together, to complement each other with a soft embrace or to clash together with fire and sparks, and in so doing to create something new, in so doing to create magic. We touch, and are changed. There are many axes of polarity that can be explored, each with their own complexities and flavors: male and female, young and old, butch and femme, macho and fey, light and dark, active and passive, East Coast and West Coast, dominant and submissive, creation and destruction, urban and wild, divine and mundane. Any relationship can have a polarity dynamic, independent of the genders of the people involved; no two of us are so alike that there are not places for us to push and pull against the balance and dance something new into being.
And if we learn to dance this dance well enough, we can learn to break the rules, like Hermes who walks between the worlds, or Aphrodite who can still be the epitome of femininity even when she wears a beard. We may not be exactly what we seem, in any moment, or even every day. Every time we allow someone to engage us in true connection, we learn something new about ourselves from the experience.
All acts of love and pleasure are Her rituals. We can honor the joy of coming together without being obscene, and without leaving anyone out.
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Would you have objections if I added a copy to my notes (with appropriate citation, naturally.)
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A very well-written message. I hope you don't mind if I forward a link to another pagan, who would love this...
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Thanks so much for sharing.
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Neat, I really liked the "not all of us are built to have children" part. That probably explains my disconnect from some of the more traditional essences of Beltaine.
Far better to have a Maypole dance that's exuberant and loose than one that's perfectly done but less joyful. I only got to dance a Maypole once, but one of the other dancers was such a buzzkill as she tried to direct us as we were doing it instead of just letting our madcap, skipping fun happen.
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btw--have you gotten a priority mail package this week?
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I couldn't have said it better myself (and I know this because I've tried). Thanks for giving words to a more inclusive meaning of Beltaine - here's one more Pagan who appreciates it.
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