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MAY EVE, EASTWIND SABBAT:
FACTS AND MISINFORMATION
The following contains elements of
a work authored by Mike Nichols, a Welsh Witch from K.C., Missouri. Go to: http://www.sacred-texts.com/bos/bos013.htm
for the original text.
Lord Rhuddlwm, March, 2008
The Wheel of the Year consists of eight
Sabbats. Four are Solar in nature, and four are Lunar in nature; all mark the
passing of the year with natural milestones. All Sabbats are major or minor, the
major Sabbats being Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane, and Lughnasadh. The minor Sabbats are Yule
(Winter Solstice), Ostara (Spring Equinox), Litha (Summer Solstice) and Mabon (Autumn
Equinox). It is through these Sabbats that witches through out the world mark the
passing of the year with celebration and reverence for the deities and events that each
represents. The above named holidays are marked by witches in the Northern
Hemisphere. The witches in the Southern Hemisphere reverse the Sabbats due to the opposite
seasons.
The Beltaine season of April 30-May 1 is
unique. It includes:
A Pagan Sabbat: Beltaine, usually celebrated on or near
the evening of April 30. Mainly celebrated by Neo-Pagans
Two Christian holy days:
A secular celebration, May Day.
A Welsh festival: Nos Galon Mai, The Eastwind Sabbat which
Begins Sundown, April 30. This is the Festival of the beginning of Summer. Our
Goddess presides.
Georgia Pagans -Witches & Druids celebrate Beltaine in different ways.
There is a great deal of misinformation
circulated about this festival; almost as much as with Halloween. Read the following
information and then go to the links to arm yourself with true information.
There are four great festivals of the Witch's calendar.
The two greatest of these are Nos Galon Gaeof (Halloween - the beginning of winter)
and Nos Galon Mai (May Day - the beginning of summer). These two festivals are
opposite each other on the wheel of the year, and divide the year into halves.
Halloween (also called Samhain) is the Celtic New Year and is generally considered the
more important of the two, though May Day runs a close second. Indeed, in some areas
-- notably Wales -- it is considered the great holiday.
Nos Galon Mai, also called May Day, Beltainne:
(pronounced Bel-tinna, also known as Beltain, Beltane, May Day etc.), is a Sabbat celebrating fertility and the union of the
young God and the Goddess. This is a wonderful celebration of the love between
the God and Goddess. It is their sacred marriage. (This is where the God and Goddess
concieve the spring for the following year born at Imbolc.) Celebrated with your loved
one, now is the time to lay in the fertile soil and germinate those seeds you planted. In
Celtic mythology this is the beginning of summer, or the growing time. Colours for
this sabbat: Red and White (red for Her womb and white for His semen. It's a fertility
thing), and green for the background.
At this time, life is renewing itself. Birds and
animals are mating. In the fields, newly planted seeds are beginning to grow.
Great fires are lit honoring the fertility God Belenos. Some leap the fires to show
the exuberance of the season. Maypoles are erected and bright ribbons are entwined
around it. The Maypole, a phallic symbol, represents the masculine. The soft,
colorful ribbons represent the feminine. The union of the two symbolizes the union
of the God and Goddess. This is the time to fertilize your dreams with
action. It is legend that children conceived at Beltane were gifted by the gods.
Nos Galon Mai ushers in the fifth month
of the modern calendar year, the month of May. This month is named in honor of the goddess
Maia, originally a Greek mountain nymph, later identified as the most beautiful of the
Seven Sisters, the Pleiades. By Zeus, she is also the mother of Hermes, god of magic.
Maia's parents were Atlas and Pleione, a sea nymph.
The old Celtic name for May Day is Beltane (in its most popular Anglicized form), which is
derived from the Irish Gaelic 'Bealtaine' or the Scottish Gaelic 'Bealtuinn', meaning
'Bel-fire', the fire of the Celtic god of light (Bel, Beli or Belinus). He, in turn, may
be traced to the Middle Eastern god Baal.
Other names for May Day include: Cetsamhain ('opposite Samhain'), Walpurgisnacht (in
Germany), and Roodmas (the medieval Church's name). This last came from Church Fathers who
were hoping to shift the common people's allegiance from the Maypole (Pagan lingham -
symbol of life) to the Holy Rood (the Cross - Roman instrument of death).
Incidentally, there is no historical justification for calling May 1st 'Lady Day'. For
hundreds of years, that title has been proper to the Vernal Equinox (approx. March 21st),
another holiday sacred to the Great Goddess. The nontraditional use of 'Lady Day'
for May 1st is quite recent (within the last 15 years), and seems to be confined to
America, where it has gained widespread acceptance among certain segments of the Craft
population. This rather startling departure from tradition would seem to indicate an
unfamiliarity with European calendar customs, as well as a lax attitude toward scholarship
among too many Pagans. A simple glance at a dictionary ('Webster's 3rd' or O.E.D.),
encyclopedia ('Benet's'), or standard mythology reference (Jobe's 'Dictionary of
Mythology, Folklore & Symbols') would confirm the correct date for Lady Day as the
Vernal Equinox.
By Celtic reckoning, the actual Beltane celebration begins on sundown of the preceding
day, April 30, because the Celts always figured their days from sundown to sundown. And
sundown was the proper time for Druids to kindle the great Bel-fires on the tops of the
nearest beacon hill (such as Tara Hill, Co. Meath, in Ireland). These 'need-fires' had
healing properties, and sky-clad Witches would jump through the flames to ensure
protection.
Frequently, cattle would also be driven
between two such bon-fires (oak wood was the favorite fuel for them) and, on the morrow,
they would be taken to their summer pastures.
Other May Day customs include: walking the circuit of one's property ('beating the
bounds'), repairing fences and boundary markers, processions of chimney-sweeps and milk
maids, archery tournaments, morris dances, sword dances, feasting, music, drinking, and
maidens bathing their faces in the dew of May morning to retain their youthful beauty.
In the words of Witchcraft writers Janet and Stewart Farrar, the Beltane celebration was
principly a time of '...unashamed human sexuality and fertility.' Such associations
include the obvious phallic symbolism of the Maypole and riding the hobby horse. Even a
seemingly innocent children's nursery rhyme, 'Ride a cock horse to Banburry Cross...'
retains such memories. And the next line '...to see a fine Lady on a white horse' is
a reference to the annual ride of 'Lady Godiva' though Coventry. Every year for
nearly three centuries, a sky-clad village maiden (elected Queen of the May) enacted this
Pagan rite, until the Puritans put an end to the custom.
The Puritans, in fact, reacted with pious horror to most of the May Day rites, even making
Maypoles illegal in 1644. They especially attempted to suppress the 'greenwood marriages'
of young men and women who spent the entire night in the forest, staying out to greet the
May sunrise, and bringing back boughs of flowers and garlands to decorate the village the
next morning.
One angry Puritan wrote that men 'doe use commonly to
runne into woodes in the night time, amongst maidens, to set bowes, in so muche, as I have
hearde of tenne maidens whiche went to set May, and nine of them came home with childe.'
And another Puritan complained that, of the girls who go into the woods, 'not the least
one of them comes home again a virgin.'
Long after the Christian form of marriage (with its insistence on sexual monogamy) had
replaced the older Pagan handfasting, the rules of strict fidelity were always relaxed for
the May Eve rites. Names such as Robin Hood, Maid Marian, and Little John played an
important par in May Day folklore, often used as titles for the dramatis personae of the
celebrations. And modern surnames such as Robinson, Hodson, Johnson, and Godkin may attest
to some distant May Eve spent in the woods.
These wildwood antics have inspired writers such as
Kipling:
Oh, do not tell the Priest our plight,
Or he would call it a sin; But we have been out in the woods all night,
A-conjuring Summer in!
And Lerner and Lowe:
It's May! It's May!
The lusty month of May!...
Those dreary vows that ev'ryone takes,
Ev'ryone breaks.
Ev'ryone makes divine mistakes!
The lusty month of May!
It is certainly no accident that Queen Guinevere's
'abduction' by Meliagrance occurs on May 1st when she and the court have gone a-Maying, or
that the usually efficient Queen's Guard, on this occasion, rode unarmed.
Some of these customs seem virtually identical to the old Roman feast of flowers, the
Floriala, three days of unrestrained sexuality which began at sundown April 28th and
reached a crescendo on May 1st.
There are other, even older, associations with May 1st in Celtic mythology. According to
the ancient Irish 'Book of Invasions', the first settler of Ireland, Partholan, arrived on
May 1st; and it was on May 1st that the plague came which destroyed his people. Years
later, the Tuatha De Danann were conquered by the Milesians on May Day. In Welsh myth, the
perennial battle between Gwythur and Gwyn for the love of Creudylad took place each May
Day; and it was on May Eve that Teirnyon lost his colts and found Pryderi. May Eve was
also the occasion of a fearful scream that was heard each year throughout Wales, one of
the three curses of the Coranians lifted by the skill of Lludd and Llevelys.
By the way, due to various calendrical changes down through the centuries, the traditional
date of Beltane is not the same as its astrological date. This date, like all
astronomically determined dates, may vary by a day or two depending on the year.
However, it may be calculated easily enough by determining the date on which the sun is at
15 degrees Taurus (usually around May 5th). British Witches often refer to this date as
Old Beltane, and folklorists call it Beltane O.S. ('Old Style'). Some Covens prefer to
celebrate on the old date and, at the very least, it gives one options. If a Coven is
operating on 'Pagan Standard Time' and misses May 1st altogether, it can still throw a
viable Beltane bash as long as it's before May 5th. This may also be a consideration for
Covens that need to organize activities around the week-end.
This date has long been considered a 'power point' of the Zodiac, and is symbolized by the
Bull, one of the 'tetramorph' figures featured on the Tarot cards, the World and the Wheel
of Fortune. (The other three symbols are the Lion, the Eagle, and the Spirit.) Astrologers
know these four figures as the symbols of the four 'fixed' signs of the Zodiac (Taurus,
Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius), and these naturally align with the four Great Sabbats of
Witchcraft. Christians have adopted the same iconograp-writers.
But for most, it is May 1st that is the great holiday of flowers, Maypoles, and greenwood
frivolity. It is no wonder that, as recently as 1977, Ian Anderson could pen the following
lyrics for Jethro Tull:
For the May Day is the great day,
Sung along the old straight track.
And those who ancient lines did ley
Will heed this song that calls them back.
For information on all individuals and organizations listed in this
website, or the name of a contact person in your area that can give you further
information on the Church of Dynion Mwyn, contact Laura. Let us hear from you! You may
also call us at 000-000-0000 If you access our voice mail, we will call you back collect
if long distance. Or, you can write to
Laura at: Dynion Mwyn, P.O. Box 673206, Marietta, GA 30006-0036
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