Beltane, May Day Newsletter 2023
Celebrate Life Force Energy on May Day,
May Day is the time when nature has truly come alive. Our ancestors joyfully embraced the fertility of Mother Earth; flowers bloomed, offering their pollen to the bees. The Celtic name for this period is Beltane, which means bright or sacred fire. During the festival, great bonfires were lit and animals and fields were blessed in hopes for an abundant year. Traditionally May Day began on the eve of May 1st and was celebrated with feasting, dancing, and merriment for two weeks.
Beltane was a time when lovers ran off to the fields and woods together to honor the Great Goddess with ecstatic lovemaking. The Maypole, symbolizing the phallic energy of the season, was festooned with ribbons. The May Basket was a symbol of the womb and the fertile union of male and female. The ancient traditions show a frank appreciation for the enjoyment of our sexuality and also the understanding that sexual energy is Sacred Life Force. Lovers were well aware of sexual energy as a powerful connection to Spirit as well as its essential role in the abundance of all life.
Many of you who are familiar with Yoga will recognize the term Prana, which refers to breath as also Life Force Energy, but some of you may not have heard of sex as Life Force Energy. In the ancient traditions, both breath and sexual energy were understood as powerful connections to Source. Prior to the suppression of “Pagan” practices, when sexuality became more and more controlled by Patriarchal religions and societal norms, Beltane honored sexual energy as a sacred connection to abundance. If you would like to understand the progression from sex as sacred to sex as shameful and only practiced as a necessary evil for procreation, I’ve documented the history in my book Reclaiming Goddess Sexuality, available on Amazon.
Our culture has a long way to go because we are overwhelmed by distorted notions of sex as marital duty, nasty, or reduced to a genital act known as a quickie, with the only point being orgasm (the kind Tantra practitioners refer to as the sneeze). The truth is that women are hard wired to experience powerful ecstatic states but only when we are fully orgasmic, which only happens when we feel completely safe (from criticism, bored lovers, unwanted pregnancy, and sex that is painful). Nicole Deadone, author of Slow Sex calls these highly orgasmic states “the mainline access to Spirit.”
“We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way.”
Audre Lorde
Enjoy all the pleasure, connection and fun of May Day,
Much Love, Linda