a Beltane blog (inc poem)

cernunnos the horned god (gundestrup cauldron)

It's Beltane, May 1st. In the Celtic calendar the cross-quarters dates – those sitting midway between the equinoxes and the solstices – are as significant as the quarter dates. These four fire festivals, occurring on February 2nd (Imbolc), May 1st (Beltane), August 1st (Lughnasadh) and November 1st (Samhain), are also threshold times.

Beltane is of course dedicated to Bel, the Celtic sun god, 'Shining One'; and is also associated with Cernunnos, the horned god of the Mother Goddess. It occurs to me to wonder whether there is an etymological connection with Abellio, the fertility god of apple trees, and whom I mention in my blog posted close to Imbolc, in early February. 

Lugh on August 1st is also a fire god, the fires at maximum waxing point in terms of the early harvest. I have no evidence for this other than a general hunch based on a long study of myth and archetype, and I don't have the time right now to research it, but it occurs to me that the period of time from November 1st to April 30th, and including Imbolc, February 2nd (incidentally all these festivals begin the evening before) is the time of the Goddess (that is, the receptive feminine principle), and 'overseen' by goddesses rather than gods (representing the active masculine principle); so we have Cailleach, the crone (another aspect of the Triple Goddess associated too with Ceridwen) presiding over Samhain, and Bride/Bridget over Imbolc. During this time we, like the earth in the Celtic Northern Hemisphere, turn away from brightness and extraversion, and make the Underworld journey into the feminine realm ready to be reborn with the returning of the light. Now, however, is the time to light the Beltane fires (well, last night really), jump through them, and continue the growth begun at Eostre with the symbolic fertility rites.

Another thing worth mentioning is that Beltane is the old Celtic midsummer of the year begun on November 1st. 

The Somerset Levels, West Of Glastonbury
Beltane (reprise)

i

Not a leaf moves; not a bird calls.

            I don’t know how long

we stare at each other.

            We don’t know how long we have.

           

There is a drumbeat passes

from cell to cell

             a hot wind hopscotching

                        over the synapses.

ii 

Then again driving the Summer Country

                        with its tides of blossom

                                    – may, cherry, apple

towards dusk

            where couples wind the Tor’s mazey way

and swans pair on the marshes

­– Bel rolling his fiery disc

                        down to join the Atlantic

and me on the road again

          

                                    and a flood of green

                                                in the fields

iii

– wanting to speed

            to squeeze the last millimetre

                                    from the engine, the day

to reach the water before night does

iv

the horses of winter and summer

                        battling it out

            then the horned stag

leaping the ditch and across in front of the car

            where I slew and slow

collect myself again

                        ­– and then another

v

I remember your hands

 

vi

listen – somewhere there is a question

                        knocking      and knocking.

silence your heart

            and listen

            with all of yourself.

vii

winds and moons that drive you to madness

            and love

                        which is always a form of madness.

viii

            I stand in the stream’s conversation

bruised wild carrot and water mint

                        wild watercress peppery on my tongue

                                    the astringency of wood sorrel

buzzard lifting off from the broadcast drift of windflower and bluebell

            something squeaking in vain

                                                Bel is back in the watered sky

– and look, on the path, a glow-worm

            drab in the haze of daylight

                                    recharging its cells

            for its small terrestrial shining

                        its pinprick contribution

            to the sum of light in the world

ix

            This will go on

                                    wherever you are

            wherever or whatever I am

                        or am not.

                       

– Roselle Angwin (May 2005)

A version of this poem appears this month, May 2011, in Bardo, my new collection from Shearsman