On the last night of April the hills begin to answer one another.
A flame stands up on one crest, then a second far off, then a third, until the dark between them is stitched with small points of gold.
Below, the hedges have gone white overnight, heavy with blossom, and the herds are gathered in the lane with their breath rising, waiting for the road that climbs to the summer grass.
This is Beltane, the fire festival at the opening of summer, kept on the night of the thirtieth of April into the first of May.
May Day and Beltane belong to the same morning. One name sits on the village green among ribbons and trestle tables. The other stands on the hilltop with the smoke.
The Shape of Beltane
Beltane stands halfway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice, at the midpoint of the climbing light.
It is one of the four fire festivals of the wheel.
The night is one of the two hinges of the old pastoral year, and a hinge is made to be walked through.
Its emblems are flame, blossom, cattle, dew, ribbon and union. Its work is beginning.
What was planned through the dark months, indoors, by candle and low fire, is now carried out of doors to grow in open weather.
Where Samhain opens the door to the dead, Beltane opens the door to the living, and the living come through it wearing green.
When Beltane Falls
The common date is the first of May. The festival begins the evening before, at sunset on the thirtieth of April, when the light turns copper along the field walls.
The old reckoning counts a day from dusk to dusk, so the eve carries the greater part of the rite.
Some prefer an astronomical reckoning and keep Beltane at the true midpoint of the season, which arrives a few days later, when the blossom has thickened further along the hedge.
South of the equator the wheel is reversed.
Beltane is kept there at the start of November, when the same green rising comes and the same warm air moves through the grass.
Both reckonings are honest.
The date matters less than keeping the same date every year, so that one season may be laid beside another and compared.
Beltane and May Day
May Day is the public face of Beltane, the face that goes about in daylight with its sleeves rolled.
The pole, the garland, the crowned girl and the dancing all belong to the older festival.
They are carried forward in daylight and in plain clothes.
The morning was for gathering greenery. Whole households went out before dawn, into wet grass and grey air, and came back with their arms full of branches, shedding leaves along the path.
The evening was for the fire.
Very little was lost.
The hilltop flame moved down into the bonfire on the common, and the blessing of the herds became a parade along the street.
A Beltane rite does not compete with the village fair. It simply returns the fire to the front of the day.
The Name and the Fire
The name comes down from the Gaelic languages, where the month of May still carries it in ordinary speech.
The second part of the word is widely read as fire.
The first part has been linked to a bright god of light, though that reading is argued over and cannot be settled here.
What is not in doubt is the fire itself.
Every surviving account of the festival has flame at its center, throwing long shadows outward over the turf and pulling the faces of the crowd out of the dark.
Beltane and Samhain
The two festivals face each other across the year like two doors set in one wall.
Samhain closes the pasture and brings the herds down through the first cold. Beltane opens it and sends them up.
Samhain thins the veil toward the ancestors. Beltane thins it toward the green folk, the hollow hills and the wild.
Both are nights when the ordinary boundary goes soft, and something may lean through from the far side of it.
If Samhain is remembrance, Beltane is appetite.
The Two Fires and the Herds
The oldest recorded rite of Beltane is a passage between two fires.
Cattle were driven along that lane of heat and smoke before going up to the summer grazing, hides shining, eyes wide with the noise of it.
The smoke was held to clean the coats of vermin and the herd of ill luck.
People walked the same passage. Sick beasts, new brides and travelers all took the road between the flames and came out on the far side carrying the smell of wood smoke in their clothes.
The household fire was quenched beforehand, so that every hearth in the place went cold and grey together, and then it was lit again from the festival flame.
That relighting is the heart of it.
The year is given a single new source of fire, and every hearth draws from it, so that one flame sleeps in a hundred grates.
A candle serves the same purpose in a house with no field.
Old flame, go out. New flame, come in. Let this house be lit from the fire of summer.
The Green World Awake
Beltane is the moment the year stops promising and starts producing.
Leaf is out. Grass is thick and wet to the ankle.
Bees are working the blossom with a sound like a low kettle, and birds are on the second errand of the day before most people are awake.
The spring festivals asked for patience. Beltane asks for nothing except attendance.
Go outside and look at it.
A slow nature walk on the morning of the first of May, with the dew darkening the hem of everything you wear, is a complete observance on its own.
Name five living things aloud. That is the whole practice.
The Hawthorn and the May
The hawthorn is the tree of this festival, and at the turn of the month it stands in the hedge like something lit from within.
Its blossom is called may, and the tree is often called the may tree. Flower and month share one word.
The bloom is white, heavy and strongly scented, a scent that carries further down the lane than it has any right to, and it arrives near the festival in many years.
Old custom keeps hawthorn blossom outside the house, on the door or the byre rather than the table.
Bringing it indoors is widely held to be unlucky. The custom is respected here without being explained.
A branch set above the doorway is the usual compromise, where it may dry slowly and keep watch over the threshold.
Rowan is used beside it for protection, and birch is favored for the pole itself.
The Maypole
The pole is a tree brought into the middle of the people.
It is cut, stripped down to the pale wood, raised against the open sky and dressed with ribbon and flowers.
Two rings of dancers move against each other, and the ribbons weave a bright sheath down the shaft, red crossing green, green crossing white.
The symbolism is not hidden. A pole standing in the earth at the season of coupling means what it appears to mean.
The dance can be reduced to a table.
A stick, a jar of packed earth and six ribbons do the same work in a small room by lamplight, with no one watching.
Braid the ribbons slowly while naming what should grow this summer.
The May Queen and the May King
Two figures walk through the festival. One wears white and flowers, and carries the year in bloom.
The other wears leaf and antler, and carries the wild that no field has tamed.
Their meeting is the marriage at the center of Beltane.
In household practice the pair may simply be two candles, green and white, set close enough that the flames lean toward one another, and lit together.
Some circles crown the roles aloud. Others leave them as images on the altar and never name them at all.
Beltane Dew, Wells and Ribbons
Dew gathered at dawn on the first of May is the best known charm of the season.
It is taken from grass, from hawthorn blossom, or from a stone in an open field, in the grey hour when the birds still have the morning to themselves.
It is used to wash the face, and kept afterward for beauty, health and clear sight.
Rise before the sun. Press a clean cloth into the wet grass until it is heavy and cold in the hand, then wring it out into a small jar.
Dew of the morning, water of May, wash the winter from this face.
Wells are visited on the same morning.
A ribbon or a strip of cloth is tied to the tree above the water and left to weather through rain and sun until the color has gone out of it.
The strip is a request left standing after the visitor has gone home.
Use natural cloth, so that what is tied will rot in its own time and go back into the ground beneath the tree.
Colors, Herbs and Stones of Beltane
The colors of the festival are green, white and red.
Green for leaf, white for blossom, red for fire and blood and desire.
Plants named for the season include hawthorn, rowan, birch, primrose, marigold, woodruff and meadowsweet.
Most of these stand within a short walk of any door, in the ditch, along the wall, at the ragged edge of the car park.
A field guide to the herbs is worth carrying on the day itself, in a pocket, going damp at the corners.
Stones often associated with Beltane include emerald, malachite and rose quartz. Take these as tradition rather than law.
A local flower picked at the right hour, still cold from the night, outranks an imported crystal.
Setting a Beltane Altar
Dress the altar for warmth rather than for solemnity.
Lay a green cloth. Set a red candle and a white candle at the back, where their light will throw them tall against the wall.
Between them place blossom in water, a small bowl of dew, and a ribbon not yet tied.
Add tokens of the four elements if that is the habit of the house.
Fire may stand as the honored element of the night, since the whole festival turns on it.
Leave a little space bare. Something will be carried in from outside before the rite is finished, still cold and still wet, and it will want somewhere to lie.
A Beltane Candle Rite
This ritual is used when you wish to mark the turning of the season indoors.
Work after sunset on the eve, or at first light on the morning itself.
Put out every other flame in the room and let the dark come up close to the table. Sit for a while with the grounding technique until the breath has settled.
Cast a magic circle if that is your practice. Light the red candle first, and watch the flame stand up and steady itself.
Fire of Beltane, come into this house. Warm what is cold, wake what is sleeping.
Light the white candle from the red one, carrying the flame the short distance between them.
Blossom of Beltane, come into this house. Cover what is bare, sweeten what is sour.
Name aloud the one thing you intend to grow between now and the harvest.
Say it plainly, in ordinary words, as though describing work rather than asking a favor.
Tie the ribbon around the base of both candles, joining them. Let them burn down together somewhere they can be watched.
The choosing and dressing of the candles is set out at greater length in candle magic.
Words Spoken at the Fire
Beltane words are short, and they are said out loud. Say them at a normal speaking volume, not a whisper. The fire is not a secret.
Spoken at the lighting:
Between the fires I pass, and leave the old year behind me.
Spoken over the herds, or over whatever is in your care:
Health to the beasts, health to the field, health to every roof this smoke can reach.
Spoken at the joining of the candles:
Green to white, white to green, and summer standing between them.
Spoken at the end:
The fire is lit. The year is open. Let it be so.
Change any of these to suit the tongue that speaks them. Words that feel borrowed do not carry well across a dark room.
Beltane Kept Alone
Most of the surviving customs assume a crowd, a hillside, a drum, a great deal of noise. None of them require one.
A single candle, a jar of dew and a branch on the door make a complete Beltane.
The solitary version has one advantage. Nothing is performed, so nothing has to be explained afterward.
Walk out at dawn, while the street is still empty and the grass is silver from end to end.
Wash the face, tie one ribbon, and come home with cold hands.
Beltane in a City
Fire is difficult in an apartment, and fields are scarce. The festival adapts without much loss.
Dew collects on any grass, including the thin strip beside a car park, and on the leaves of a window box.
A tea light on a saucer is a legitimate Beltane fire.
Open a window at dusk on the eve and let the air of the night into the room, cooler than the room and smelling of rain on warm stone.
Blossom hangs over garden walls on almost every street in early May.
Take a single sprig, and take it from a public tree rather than a private one.
The festival was never about the size of the flame.
What Beltane Asks of You
Beltane asks for presence rather than belief.
Go outside on the first morning of May. Look at what has come up while the attention was elsewhere.
Light something. Say what should grow.
Nothing here is required. The festival survives being kept badly, and it has been kept badly for centuries.
Then leave the fire behind and get on with the summer. That is the part the festival is actually for.
The wheel turns again at the harvest, and what was named tonight will be counted then, when the fields have gone gold and the hedges carry fruit instead of flower.