My family attended a Beltane festival yesterday, an ancient Celtic celebration of springtime and fertility. We celebrated the outgoing May Queen (curtsy) and King, and welcomed a new May royalty who will hold and embody in sacred trust the ability of the earth and all its inhabitants to bring forth new life.

Flower and herb crown for new life!

That may be literal or metaphoric children. We birth our ideas, we birth our creative endeavors, we birth our changes in our work-in-the-world. We all wrote down what we wanted to bring into life in the coming year on a ribbon and tied it to the Maypole – the sky god’s very own phallus resting in the earth mother’s yoni. We danced and sang and wrapped that phallus with our sincere wishes for prosperity and love and health and world peace. (In true Beltane fashion there were a few wishes expressed for really good sex, too.)
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