Lay Me Merrily in the May

by Andy

editorial

Beltaine is a time of the sun ascendant. The cold grip of winter has been broken and summer is here. In the northern European peasant scheme of things from which much of our pagan tradition descends, Beltaine was thought of as the start of summer. That is why Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is set at the summer solstice. The sun is so important that Beltaine fires are lit so that the image of the sun can shine forth even at night.

What the people wanted from the Sun most was fertility. At Oestara, the planting began and Beltaine was time for the crops to grow. All eyes turned to the heavens to ask the Sun for its blessings of light and heat so that this would actually happen. Fertility means sex, and Beltaine is a time of sex. Sex, lots of sex, in all its forms was and is still celebrated at Beltaine.

As the sun blessed the crops with fertile growth, so did the Beltaine fires bless the mammals. Cattle were walked between adjacent fires so that they would bear many healthy young (the fires also cleansed the cattle of disease). Beltaine's "fertile growth" also extends to people. After the planting and before the harvest was the time of courting. Beltaine was when couples got together and love play was and still is common. The Horned God and Mother Earth make love on Beltaine and so do their followers. The traditional Maypole symbolized the sex between the God and Goddess. The pole is obviously the God, who is enfolded by the Goddess in ribbons topped with the descending ring. The sex between people was playful and fun. People would meet at the fire and retire to the woods. The couples may have been established or newly formed and marriages were (and still are) postponed until June when it would be known if a given mating was fertile. Beltaine fever, a combination of hormones, desire and alcohol, was common. Children conceived of such unions were known as "Beltaine Babes" whose father was said to be the God. Often, as is true in certain other cultures, these were called virgin births.

This issue of Widdershins is devoted to the sun and to sex. Voluntary sex between consenting adults in all its forms is one of the wonders of life and is celebrated here. From the casual, energetic sex between gay men to the ritualized altered states of union between a priest and priestess reenacting the mating of the God and Goddess, it is all sacred. Nonconsensual sex or sex with those unable or too young to consent is a perversion of this wonder. "All acts of pleasure are my rituals!" the Goddess tells us, and so mote it be.

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