21 Women Marking Beltane Making Ceremony
BELTANE WOMEN May 2020
Fern Smith
21 Beltane Women May 2020
The Idea An invitation to join me in marking Beltane 2020 went out by email on April 28th 2020 to a number of women friends – mainly artists and healers. Beltane is a Celtic word meaning ‘fires of Bel’. It is a fire festival marking the coming of Summer and abundance of the coming year. I received responses back from 20 women.
This developed into a kind of impromptu self-organised,
socially-distant
collective Ritual Art Work. The occasion of this activity was during the ‘lock-down’ in response to the Covid-19 pandemic with social-distancing measures in place and restrictions on travel throughout the UK since March 23rd. The responses below represent a marking of this significant traditional fire festival and describe the intentions and actions of the participating women.
I asked if the women were happy to share their words collectively. This document has been created with a view to honouring and sharing with one another our individual intentions and any insights gained from our time in ceremony.
I would like to thank with all my heart all of the women for joining me and allowing me to join with them. This gave meaning and helped honour a moment which could have so easily passed without notice due to the strangeness and disruption of this time. I believe this form of activity is a kind of ‘sacred activism’ and is powerful in supporting the practise of the ‘art of living’. It is not only of individual significance but is in service of the collective in terms of representing an act of artful prayer in service
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of the planet and all beings.
The Invitation Hello dear women friends,
I’m going to mark May 1st - Beltane as it is called in the Pagan/Wiccan calendar… This time can be marked on May 1st or if’s not possible a day or so either side…
If you’d like to mark this too I’m inviting you to join with me virtually in your own way, in your own time marking this significant celebration in the cycle of the year.
No pressure to join in or even respond… I just thought of you amongst a little circle of other women who I thought might be interested.
I make it a practice to mark these Earth festivals in whatever way feels right. I had a feeling I wanted to do this. I suddenly thought of you as you might be interested in marking this too.
And so...
I will create an intention for myself (something I want to honour, give thanks to or mark, or maybe a question I will take out) and make some time in the day (maybe the whole of it) to be in ritual time and to mark the passing of this Earth festival. This could be done outside or inside. It can be done on your own or with others, maybe in silence, maybe with sound, song, poetry or whatever.
It might be a time of fasting, it could be a time of feasting...
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Bare Bones of the invitation to mark Beltane with me.
Create an intention, Consciously cross a ‘threshold' into ritual time, Spend time in the ‘threshold time’ paying attention to what happens there Re-cross the threshold back into ‘every day’ world, Return with a story/some words/an object/ a ‘something’. Write some words for yourself, draw a picture, make something... Share these words with me and/or any others who might be doing this too
If you’d like to hold this intention too, let me know. Maybe you’d like to share your intention with me (one sentence) and then share some words after… If I get word from you that you are going to join me (and I join you) then I will send you my intention and my words afterwards. We get to witness each other in this way… I get to read and witness your words, I don’t try and make sense of anything for you. I don’t get to comment or advise. I am purely witnessing. You do the same for me...
If I have your permission, I will share this with any other women who will be joining in. If you prefer, we can just do this with and for each other. Let me know.
Fern x
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Words from the Beltane Women
In alphabetical order of surnames, here are the words of the women. I’ve only used first names to respect each woman’s anonymity.
Lorena
Intention My intention is to fully welcome my strength and sensuality.
Ritual/Walk On Friday’s late evening I went to the park with the intention to celebrate my strength and sensuality. As soon as I crossed the threshold I was in awe of the trees at this time of the year, so lush and full of strength. I just revelled in them, the silence and the upcoming night while becoming aware of the dead branches all around me. The next day I went out to the same place and I picked up some branches. In the evening, I made a fire at my yard. It was the first time I have set a fire by myself, for myself. I sat there alone and watched it till it died.
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Julia
Intention It is my intention this Beltane to be exactly where I am - not a step ahead nor a step behind, but right exactly in the present moment. I’ll bear witness to what I find on my ritual walk maybe to the woods at the bottom of the lane, maybe on a walk in a loop, maybe a bluebell bath. I might even lead a little ritual for the whole family if I can! It’s my intention to be as clear a vessel as I can, to clear my chakras and to be here now.
Ritual/Walk I had a lovely walk this morning - I walked the loop from my house (short one, 25 minutes) and then walked to our woods at the bottom of the lane where, about 8 years ago, Tom put an old wardrobe for the kids to pretend they were entering Narnia. It’s a pile of rotten wood now, but still a magical place and there are two trees close to one another so you feel like you’re squeezing through a threshold to a flat area of land by the trickling river Crewi, which also runs past your cottage…
Before I went, I chose a reading at random from Wherever You Go There You Are which I bought in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 2005 - it was my first mindfulness book! It was entitled ’No Right Way’ and about being in the wilderness. Perfect. I can photograph it for you and send it at the weekend if you’d like to read?
Then, this poem from my cherished cloth-bound edition of The Rose Window, by Rilke:
Roman Sarcophagi
Why should we too, though, not anticipate (set down here and assigned our places thus)
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that only for a short time rage and hate and this bewildering will remain in us,
as in the ornate sarcophagus, enclosed with images of gods, rings, glasses, trappings, there lay in slowly self-consuming wrappings something being slowly decomposed -
till swallowed by those unknown mouths at last, that never speak. (Where bides a brain that may yet trust the utterance of its thinking to them?)
Then from the ancient aqueducts there passed eternal water into them one day: that mirrors now and moves and sparkles through them.
*
While I was in the woods by a small circle of bluebells, I found the dew right next to me and washed my face. Everything is within our field of vision. Sometimes right by us — so close we don’t realise! We just have to look within our grasp, within our reach. No need to go anywhere.
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Carmel
Intention It is my Beltane intention to be at one with earth and sky and water and to focus on the liminal space between life and death and between death and rebirth. I intend to be open to whatever inspiration comes from my experience.
Ritual/Walk My Beltane Intention was to focus on the liminal space between Life and Death and on death and re-birth. This was particularly important to me, due to the death of my younger sister Ros, two weeks ago.
I decided to take an inward journey, rather than a physical one and set up camp in the village, in my special place, not far from home. I’ve written these words to attempt to make sense of the place I am in at this moment in time.
For a long time, I just sat and took in the sights and sounds and smell around me, finding joy in the smallest of things.
The bubbling of the stream as it tumbled over the rocks The sound of the cuckoo The wind in the trees The cheerful and reassuring buzzing of the bees
The delicious coconut smell of the bright yellow gorse Water boatmen, tirelessly skimming back and forth across the water Clouds Tree Roots above the waterline 8
Dead bracken on the Common Startling sight of a Red Kite as it flew past at eye level, carrying its prey Seeing my first daisy of the year The Heron taking silent flight
All this beauty, that would one day die or change form. Death in nature seems more easily understood and acceptable than the death of a human being, particularly a loved one and yet there is no disconnect between the two. As soon as we are born we are on the journey that leads to our death. Each incidence involving a single breath! We wait with eagerness for a baby’s first breath and with anxiety for a loved one’s last.
Life is just footprints in the sand, Washed away by the incoming tide Impermanent, Imprinted and yet gone in an instant But, like a shooting start Whose brilliance has run its course The memory of the moment remains
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Helen
Intention I surround the circle with herbs, salt and honey and medicine books. My intention is to spend time deepening my knowledge and understanding. The card, an earth goddess and the knife for decisiveness and sometimes we need to use it. Maybe a fire outside if tomorrow is fine. But for tonight reflection. (with image too)
Ritual/Walk I celebrated the eve of Beltane with a circle of 13 tea lights, freshly picked herbs, medicinal and ritual, surrounded by my medical books.
I spent time meditating with my heart chakra, observing the plants I had chosen and divining how they might inform me of my soul intention.
I came out of meditation knowing that there was 'work to be done and knowledge to be sought’.
Some days later I attempted to meditate on forgiveness and found it impossible to stay awake followed by a sleepless night of sweats.
This was followed by a scary dream that warned me not to entertain thoughts from my past.
My dream specifically warned me to seek the company and safety of others. It instructed me to examine my mind and destroy any places where sentimental emotional indulgence may hide out, presenting a threat to my welfare.
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Indeed, it is now that we should be pragmatic and turn to the physical world for guidance.
We have been out of touch with her too long.
Image: artist’s own
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Annzella
Intention To be as present as I can be and to remind myself to be present as often as possible
Ritual/Walk My Beltane started on Thursday evening. I decorated the hawthorn which lives at the bottom of the garden. Ribbons I had found from mine and my grandmother’s dressmaking days.
A limited selection of colours - mostly blue and purple, one red.
I made an offering of a slice of Victoria sponge that my mother had made and some bucks fizz.
Friday, I joined the online 'Into the Wild' festival and felt I had entered deeper into Beltane.
Sam Lee singing with nightingales, Mick Collins who gives all his profits from the sale of his books to a charity, Thomas Schorr Kon who spoke from his tiny home, storytelling from Ireland, sacred prayers and blessings from the Ganges, music from Ghana, New Zealand and Devon.
All of us in confinement, all of us connected.
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Theresia
Intention I plan to dedicate the Bealtaine (Irish) month reconnecting deeply with our field here at home. Each day, I will honour with gratitude and humility the immense beauty of the land, doing and recording a small ritual.
Ritual/Walk I went up to the field on Friday afternoon to sit with myself in the red studio and draft my intention knowing that I would need to give myself a durational commitment over a period of a month... to set a precedent, a routine, a habit. So hence the pledge to do this over the month of May... every day, sit with myself and the field... to care deeply both for me and my beautiful surroundings, the land that I have lived on for nearly 30 years... and which I surprise myself discovering anew everyday...
I was in the field briefly on Saturday working with my friend Katja on her storytelling project and found my second item - a piece of burnt wood with fresh moss - for my Bealtaine diary, started the previous day on my Big Bad Braid page... I photographed a big mad display of clematis for my third day, but only posted it today.... representing Exuberance - too much of it to be going on Facebook I guess!
Sunday, I went back up to the field with the intention of going for a nap in the caravan and on the way, lingered admiring the trees and their individual shapes - one oak in particular, stood out as a dancing tree - small but expansive and joyous - also a cluster of young wild apple trees looking like a herd of young horses gathered together. I also saluted 'ChloĂŠ', a Japanese maple with fiery dark red foliage, named after my eldest daughter and claiming its place in the proximity of an oak, as she does now in the wider world. And there is a 'plenitude' of seedlings - hawthorns, sycamores, ash and cherry - sprouting up everywhere.
I made it to the caravan, undressed and snuggled into the bed in the soft afternoon haze and woke up a while later refreshed... I was about to leave when two large piles of files on the table caught my attention; not sure whether I wanted to go near these, I resolved to sift
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through them quickly: they were mostly from the Galloglass days, when I was Artistic director; I picked out a few things - amongst them a Pina Bausch book - but mostly set aside a large pile of files to throw out, not really wanting to spend a lot of time with it... I loved the theatre but it was tough, I felt so much out of my depth and 'not knowing' was such a source of anxiety back then... I want this caravan to be a space of 'light', not burdened by a complicated past... I need to make a fire, don't I? To properly take my leave.
So, I shall continue my journey through the field and around the house mulling over whether I could do more with it... I do enjoy having people here, being the hostess. Should I create a 'proper' place to welcome them? Share my love of trees, wildness, wellness, and ritual? And if so, how?
With humility and trepidation, I have another 26 days to seek and find an answer.
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Emily
Intention My intention is to enter a ritual space in which I can embrace the greenery and abundance of spring, where I can enjoy the world in real time and tentatively pose the question of “what next?”
Ritual/Walk I planted a horse chestnut in our field at the spot that drinks up the very last of the sunset; and together we watched the sun go down. It was a beautiful spot to sit, with the mountains, the trees draped in green, the ponds (full of tadpoles) and the birds all calling the dusk chorus. The moon, as she came out, was the clearest I’ve ever seen - you could see the features on the surfaces so brilliantly. I wonder if it’s because there’s less pollution at the moment. I’ve made a collage to celebrate.
Image: artist’s own
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Amber
Intention To enter Bishopston Valley on May 1st, cross over the stream and discover why I fractured a bone in the middle of my right hand, i.e. what do I need to learn? Also, I want to pay homage to my mother who was Queen of the May as a teenager in Romford.
Ritual/Walk I awoke at 6.45am. Too late to hear the blackbird singing on the telephone pole, a soloist, with a bird orchestra hiding in the laurel tree.
Anxiously, I prepare for an audio Zoom interview from Australia: some Qigong with David; then on my own, my Tibetan daily ritual exercises, albeit adapted to accommodate a broken but healing hand.
Everything takes longer than expected including having a bath. At least I don’t have to worry about what I look like. Though I do consider wearing mostly green with dashes of red - a fairy guise for May Day, but settle for yellow and violet.
I grab a glass of water with my left hand after donning headphones. Breathe to dispel fear and try to connect with Sally at Rahmin Centre in New South Wales. After technical hitches she could hear me clearly, as well as I could hear her warm, friendly Australian voice.
An hour and a half later we finish the podcast recording. I feel utterly drained and incredibly tense. Think of all the things: I didn’t say and could have; and all the things I shouldn’t have uttered but did. I don’t feel like myself at all. What is going on?
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Midday. David and I drive to Parkmill to pick up bread for him and for friends pre-ordered and pre-paid for on-line. This necessary trip allows us to feel justified in parking in Bishopston on the way back. We take the path opposite the Valley Hotel down into the valley.
I haven’t shared my intention with him. Only Fern knows my intention:
To enter Bishopston Valley on May 1st cross over the stream and discover why I fractured a bone in the middle of my right hand, i.e. what do I need to learn?
Also, I want to pay homage to my mother who was Queen of the May as a teenager in Romford.
You are welcome to share this with others. Though I may not communicate what emerges from that intention until the time is ripe - it may be the same day, it may be in ten years.
But I do tell David I need some time alone - 90 minutes to be precise.
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he goes on ahead carrying his tripod. I think of Puck and putting a girdle round the earth in 40 minutes.
Neither up nor down onto the valley floor, I sidle to the left of the wooden steps, sit to draw violets and ponder. The drawing done with my left hand is nothing to write home about. Remembering my intention, I walk down to the rock-strewn path, heading south towards the sea.
I reach to where you can hear the stream rushing underground in a slippery rocky cave. Gingerly I enter this dark subterranean memory, which I have been revisiting sporadically for 55 years. I step over whispering water to balance on an isthmus of rock and step back again. Turning away from the nuanced charcoal black, I gasp at the gorgeous green of the outside world.
Cheered. Walking on I get to the stream above ground. Pushing through and stepping over brambles I look for a lazy pool of water where there used to be a myriad of tadpoles. Where are they now?
So why did I break a bone in the middle of my right hand? I sit for a moment on the bank where the wild garlic, bluebells and hart’s tongue ferns make shapely gestures.
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There’s the simple straightforward explanation:
On 8 April, I chose to cross over the pill (stream in Bishopston Valley) on a sturdy fallen tree trunk. There was a clutter of branches at a diagonal part- way. I grasped one in my right hand. It snapped. My hand dropped sharply colliding with another branch. A levorotation of the hand. An excruciating pain. A spiral fracture of the fourth metacarpal was the diagnosis. Grand words for sheer stupidity. Strangely, I didn’t lose my balance and fall into the stream, but torturously sat down astride the log, as if riding a sleeping dragon, then moved inch by inch, painfully to the other bank.
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But what was that really about? Did it teach me anything?
I meet up with David, spy a particularly sun highlighted violet which begs to be drawn. My Mum loved them.
When we finally emerge from the valley, there is a bemusing, seven-foot tall creature, cavorting down the road.
I spent the weekend oscillating between mundane and ritual space. No idea why I kept it a secret: I cannot find the sepia photo of my mother as May Queen with a garland of flowers in her curly hair. But find a tiny one of her in evening dress. I light a candle.
Wipe 7 years of dust from the lowest layer of a wooden trolley. Find Rose’s wedding photos, recall she also wore a garland of flowers in her blonde hair.
Savour the odoriferous floral abundance of Clyne Gardens, where we would walk to celebrate her birthday on the 18th May. This year she would have been one hundred and one on the 5th of May 2020.
At 1pm today I joined a small group meditating to gain a new perspective on the Corona Virus. Sister Gail Worcelo introduced us to the energy of Ocho - the fresh green energy of 20
balance. The figure of eight, a universal symbol passing through our bodies and within that we encounter the virus.
There was a large Victorian Hospital Ward like the one I was in at five years old. A skinny young boy dressed like Peter Pan was shooting arrows at the ceiling. He was the virus. I didn’t understand why he was allowed to run around and play. The rest of us were confined to our starchy beds. He was my friend. Later when I asked my parents, they said he was dying of cancer. I cried. Then back talking to him he said he wasn’t afraid to die. Death approached the right way was an expansion of consciousness. He flitted around, as if with a magic wand, to all the people presently suffering and possibly dying of the virus. I think he was bestowing balance.
That’s what I needed to learn.
All Images: David Pearl
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Ailsa
Intention What does it mean, truly, to be sovereign? We danced the maypole at dusk, in light rain, leaving ribbons entwined with a rough, halfrushed sacredness. Now they stand strong, an emblem of our love gone and yet still living in our mutual dedication to sovereignty... A quest for my medicine Threshold of the green.
Ritual/Walk Realm of practical magic, symbolism in everyday life. Letting go, cleansing, remembering – the threshold bends like a green branch to extend the sacred to mundane tasks – this can get tricky, but for now... I play in ritual time, with fire, with song, tarot cards, sunlight, music. The not-knowing of what will unfold as I open myself to the quest to find my medicine, truly. It is also about sovereignty, a lot. For me, a huge, moment-ous moment of release, of surrender – but also of determination to find my strength, embody my healing gifts, to wait soft and strong for the path onwards...
Made a medicine staff: the power of things rising thru. Song as sap. My medicine comes when I direct my song – when it knows where it is going to. But sometimes it comes when I don’t know exactly – and if it flows, I trust IT knows. How can I hone my art as a better healing practice, so I really become medicine woman? This morning I sing the energy of the rising of green – the inevitability of change, of newness. I dressed in my jester’s hat, sacred fool, not too serious like. The weaving of green, white and red ribbon scraps left from last year’s maypole, bringing union and sovereignty to my own process – an inner marriage and my marriage to – and as – nature. Today and always, I am me, and something much more, and much less.
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Chris
Intention My intention is to go for a walk and ‘to meet myself on the path’
I acknowledged the hawthorn flowers plucked to bring home yesterday, on May Day, in my blue glass dish on the slate windowsill surrounded with various natural and manmade objects as the threshold moment I’m now crossing.
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Ritual/Walk Buzzing of a wasp. Walking along my street I am drawn to an outcrop of purple flowers clinging, at head height, to the wall.
On the other side of the road I notice a spoon bowl shaped tree.
The squirrel hopped across the road a few feet away from me and there was a dead bumblebee being eaten by ants.
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An orange and black clothed boy on an orange bicycle cycled past as I noticed a glimpse of orange wall flower through a concrete fence brick.
30 mph, the sign mirrored in reflection in a net-curtained house window
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Picton Terrace: seven doorways, seven gateways, seven thresholds to cross: 12,11,13: 10: 9: 8:
7, my special number (all white
6: 5:
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A dead rat, covered in flies
Kilvey Hill in the distance, the new building, opposite the train station.
Yet another student housing project, is up to the 7th floor already, 2 big dormant cranes rising above signaling change
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Forget-me-nots
Someone has built steps and a path
Lovely to hear the birdsong, notice the flowers, see the Hawthorne, Forget-me-nots. The colour made me think about blocking the view - the new block of flats by the train station clearing of land, changing city-scape affecting the horizon.
Feel lucky to call Swansea my home, meeting a variety of people on the path, crossing, passing pleasantries, commenting on the weather, the sunshine back again after two days of rain, sitting on a bench in Bryn y Don Park, remembering Sybil, looking at the new building going up higher and higher blocking the view. Remembering walks up Kilvey Hill, introducing it to Fern, thinking that’s why I am here now at this moment. It is by invitation, from her, to celebrate Beltane with intention. I feel so lucky that I’m able to reconnect with self so easily, to meet myself, to like myself, to appreciate myself, my journey to this point and look forward to the future… and then the
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sun comes out, the path opens up. I eat my little chocolate Easter egg that I put in my pocket before crossing the threshold. The blossom is falling leaving a pink carpet on the ground. Lots of magpies, lots of jackdaws, lots of kids, dogs, people, families… Loving the round school on North Hill, it is just amazing … and there I met the family, the eldest child of three, a girl round the age of eight and then two younger siblings probably around two and one and the dog and it reminded me of me at that age with two younger brothers and another two to come and to remember how special those times were, out as a family in nature…
The panoramic view from North Hill is wide, the sky blue and the quiet, still, Covid-city nestles, cupped in the green land. Back home now recording this because my phone battery died. I didn’t record anything between the top of North Hill and arriving back here. I meandered along with myself for company, inquisitive and mindful. Music is on. I entered the backyard thinking, oh I really want to plant my sweet peas today and, yeah grow things for the future… how easy it was to meet myself but also to realise how important it is to take time for self in these Covid-times. These strange Covid-weeks have been bountiful, a very special time with my daughter but the time will come when she leaves and I know I need to prepare for that - co-dependency is something I recognise and need to be aware of... So, yes planning for the future, enjoying myself, knowing that Swansea is home is very special.
All images, artist’s own
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Donna
Intention My intention is to let go of the old. Surrender to the unknown and welcome the new...whatever form it takes when it comes...I shall sing, dance & write...
Ritual/Walk Carrying a bag of collected stones I headed for the river. I crossed the threshold in to the woods. I walked for a while alongside the river...singing gently whilst finding a suitable perch where I could safely launch my stones of intention one by one... Each and every stone represented a part of me, my life that I was letting go of. I also threw a stone for you in support of your journey, for a moment I felt your energy around me which was beautiful. I started to sing again‌ gently at first‌gradually increasing to a gutteral roar that seemed to come from somewhere else as well as inside me...I sang for the attention of the spirits...I could sense them all around. I felt elated, euphoric. I looked up and a Robin was flying from tree to tree in a chaotic rhythm with me...we were one...I felt at one with all.
Once content that I had released my fears and let go of all that no longer serves me, I decided it was time to leave and return back over the threshold. Just before I left, I broke up some oat cakes and left them as an offering for the birds and spirits.
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Sheena
Intention Listen for guidance on how to use this present time wisely for myself, my work, community & the earth. Write or paint from this-whatever comes intuitively.
Ritual/Walk Beltane is often known for quite a wild energy. I love wildness! :)However, I had what felt like a gentle but sort of deep time!
My Intention: Time: late afternoon /into evening time.
Medicine walk around the land here just listening to the land & what it might want. What I feel drawn to work with on it in next year or so.
Fire ceremony (either inside or out): Herb offerings and drumming Call in 4 directions with my drum Express gratitude to earth/all nature for all she gives - protection, food, beauty: Thank you to all our relations including trees, animals, vegetables etc etc
Intention: Listen for guidance on how to use this present time wisely for myself, my work, community & the earth. Write or paint from this-whatever comes intuitively.
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Medicine Walk About 5pm. I spoke my intention. Smudged self with sage & set off on medicine walk around land just following impulses in whatever direction
Became aware of tiny flowers sprouting in the lawn. Examined them -sense of marvel at their exquisite detail Sat in my 'sit spot' area. Felt barrenness of lake after all work we have done, a sadness is not working yet. Feeling of death compared to so much life budding around. Strong urge to continue to try to create beauty there & to not give up on it. Plant rowan tree & wildflower bulbs & get others on board again to sort water.
Glade in woodland. Recent tree felling letting light in creating sloping glade. Thanking trees for wood for fires and sense of warm welcoming atmosphere in glade. Group collaboration creating space. New growth coming. Urge to plant primroses /woodland bulbs there.
Wildlife pond: felt sense of magic. Light shining on water. Yellow marsh marigold singing out. Urge to plant more wetland wildflower bulbs there too! Kept noticing little magical spots around land, tiny plants or weeds. Flowers seemed to sing. Ended by my beehive. Watched bees busy busy busy flying in with yellow pollen in their baskets. Atmosphere of 'happiness' meaningful work. A guard bee flew around me checking me out & left me. Awe at the intricacies of their work & all life.
Walked back through area we are trying to turn into wildflower meadow...trying to manage/work with land as opposed to wild bits of letting it be......
Fire ceremony: Got home. Set & lit fire in wood burner with herbs and prayers. Drummed & called in directions and elements. Spoke words of gratitude to fire-thanking earth for all she gives us, all life forms all our relatives... Flames seemed to dance & flare in response.
Beautiful feeling of sinking deeply into my heart centre, my heart mind. Sense of so much beauty & abundance & energy of earth/life force. It felt very healing to say thank you from a deep heart ceremonial space.
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Started singing & sounding into fire loving playing my drum as it took on its own life - letting go. Felt as if other beings were with me & very strong medicine around me & connection from inner core to those I know or love &, connection to those in ceremony, & to all I had seen on my walk, the land.
Images of the planet floated into my brain like a film as if I was flying over her -wind in trees, tiny flowers, huge old trees, rabbits, squirrels in the wood, wolves running running wild & free, clear water running, waterfalls cascading, icebergs, deserts stretching out, forests moonlight & starlight.
There was also desecration, forests cut down, burning, pollution, oil industrial areas, shock horror at what man is doing but mainly it seemed to show the incredible awesome beauty of planet.
I went quiet. Into stillness.
Some guidance for my own life -how to use this present time -came to me. I won't write all of it but main message seemed to be:
'Use this time to surrender. Stop being busy finding things to do. Surrender & listen to the inner urges & impulses that come. Act from them. The quiet whisper or tiny impulses. Follow them.'
An old Zen poem came to mind (which I can't find): 'Does not matter what you do as long as you care, just sit in your garden, just sit as long as you care' Another poem by Mark Nepo came strongly to mind (have written it below.)
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-"we are reborn each time we touch what matters". Doing this ceremony connected to others I felt was 'touching what matters'.
I ended and sat by fire a long time.
Bare Bones by Mark Nepo
When I can be truth It grows more & more clear when it is necessary to tell the truth
That is, when I have access to the place Within me that is lighted. I don't have to speak heatedly. I can just give away Warmth. When I am still enough to brush Quietly with eternity, I don't have to Speak of god. I can just offer peace To those around me
They say that animals recharge Their innocence each time they hoof The earth. And we are reborn Each time we touch what matters.
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Judith
Intention My intention is get clues about life going forward. Today I am going to use some divination with my cards. Whatever needs to go I will write out and burn. Then on I think Sunday I will go for my first walk out of Victoria Terrace to see what the steps are.
Ritual/Walk I decided I would do divination cards on 1st May. Burn what needed to be let go on 2nd and walk on 3rd. Divination I realised I had been visited by a squirrel, butterflies and a bat and looked up their messages. Prepare for the future change is coming Death and rebirth.
A goddess card said bring in new energy.
Angel for May is light with the message observe your triggers and let go and don’t gossip.
Make a vow to yourself for the future and step forward.
Complex Tarot. Little movement until July.
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Burning I found an old journal which had poems in it about painful life events going back to teenage years. I did not read the rest of the journal. I got the chiminea out on Saturday to have a ritual burning. It took 6 matches to light the paper!! I used all the matches and the match box in the end. It was as if it was dense energy. Eventually it all burned with a lot of smoke. The walk It was dawn chorus day so I got up at 4.30 to sit in my small garden to listen to it. I have a side entrance with a very basic lock. Sat there I thought I’m not going out for the walk (I’ve been strict self-isolating for 6 weeks), it doesn’t feel right. It’s not going to be difficult walking through that door when it’s open. The David Whyte poem ‘Sometimes’ came to mind. I decided to do a Frameworks for Change spread. I intend to be future focussed. It was interesting giving food for thought!
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Marega Intention the one that calls mostly is one of ‘Letting Go...“ In its Broadest sense… I think part of the ritual will be in potting on some seedlings i have,,,,,, I always put it off because i am scared of kiLLing the poor little Feckah’s...
Image: artist’s own
I know they need potting on=more space,,,space to breathe etc. - but often in that process, my fear is i manage to kill a few...or they simply dont survive my paw like hands..... so it’s easier to just Hope that they will be OK.... - I’m sure this is a BiGGer metaphor for other things in life... relationships - some i need to nurture, others -let go of....
Ritual/Walk The Kale got rePotted The Beltane egg got laid = Bella/TanYa It got hit down the hill with sticks... ( yolks are stronger than you think ! ) There was light and darkness No-body died in the process
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All Images, artist’s own
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Ailsa
Intention It is my intention to honour the elements and especially at this time the sun’s fire, the rising light and abundant growth.
To allow my heart to take me by the hand through a gateway of unknowing into the land of interconnection, of five dimensions of awareness, and to bring back ‘my next steps’ for love and light, for the good of myself, all my relations and all life on earth.
Ritual/Walk I walked through 9 gateways and 5 dimensions.
There are 9 gateways in movement medicine but these physical gateways were - my home’s threshold, two farm gates marked ‘private’, a wooden farm gate, a wooden path gate (not for kissing this one), a stile, a stone gateway, a stile, and another stile
I wanted to see what this journey could tell me at this time about interconnection with self, other, community, ancestors, divine (these are the 5 dimensions)
Here are some messages that I brought back:
bring out the blackbird wings and sing a knowingness about death and its place in life I am a girlish crone in her hut in the woods with her beautiful flowers and a pet crow the dwelling is a shelter, a haven
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We are pioneers (bioneers) into the uncharted territory of soul and community there are clear, visible, consistent and urgent warnings: take note!
there’s work to be done ... remembering my ancestors into presence to inhabit the border between worlds where they are washing up against our shores there is a fear of the edge, the border - take care! it can be dangerous... on the return, I find beauty and courage in this place
I want to fly a heart shaped kite with a tail
divineness as beauty, as golden scent and as a wild tumultuous thing not to be described in human form, I see it now as moving points of light, gathering, scattering, always changing
dappled sunlight, quiet, calm greenness, beauty
thresholds bounded by kite and buzzard circling together
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Eres
Intention I'm going to light a fire at dusk this evening and go the woods at dawn to be with nature.
I have a prayer / intention for myself and a prayer for the collective. My intention for myself is to manifest the full potential of my creativity and spirituality, in service to Spirit. My prayer for the collective is for the healing and empowerment of the divine feminine, to envision and lead us in birthing a world governed by wisdom, love and peace.
Ritual/Walk On the eve of Beltane, I collect wild flowers and hawthorn blossoms and create an altar.
I dance, reaching a state of ecstasy and release. I abandon myself to it. In the churn of chaos, an eddy catches me and sets me spinning. I become empty.
I journey to a wood in Glastonbury where I sit with a circle of women around a fire. It’s the past but it is also happening now. I feel an intense contraction in my womb.
I open my mouth to gasp for breath and low howls of anguish emerge.
Now I stand in the centre of a wide circle of women ancestors, a multitude. Nothing happens, stillness, no time.
Afterwards, I write a few words – A feeling of maternal love and protection. Care.
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Healing mother and daughter relationships. Healing of all women. Accepting the rejected parts of yourself – womb, hips, vagina. Women rise, take your rightful place.
I take a salt bath, with candles, oils and incense. I feel empty, dreamy, floating in time.
I remember the old women weaving in the desert. Weaving time.
Beltane. I dress for ceremony in green, paint my eyelids gold. I walk through some woods, alongside a river, heading upstream. When I take a path I haven’t taken before I feel myself enter ritual time. I try to take a photograph but as soon as I touch it, my phone, which I had charged before leaving home, instantly dies. I reach a circle of redwoods, and stand leaning against the tree in the centre. I feel peace. I acknowledge and feel acknowledge by this peace. I walk home, feeling loved and embraced by Nature.
I return home to find my altar is covered by ants. The following day, there are ants on my meditation mat, and on Sunday, ants on me. I take the lesson they bring me: a call to hard work, organization, co-operation, duty, stamina, forbearance, focus, and strength.
I join my sweat lodge community in ceremony via Zoom. We have prepared altars for the ceremony and we witness each other as we are
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called upon, one by one, to offer our prayers. Our elder tells us:
Speak to the water. Sing to the water. Stand out in the rain and let it soak you to the skin.
Let yourself be soaked in the beauty and sorrow of your life.
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Andrea
Intention My intention is to see and cherish the love and light that I and each one of us are.
Ritual/Walk Some words came in the night! Here they are: I need help, so, dear Shin please help me do my intention.
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Fern
Intention it is my Beltane intention to continue to travel downwards through the many gates into earth and darkness and be with the light and the fire and the earth and the air and the water. To welcome in the light from that place of darkness and maybe to re-enact some kind of ritual death/letting go at each of the 7 gates into the underworld..
Ritual/Walk I rise at 5 and go outside in preparation to see the sun rise. My threshold is to light some incense crystals and place them in a little earthen-wear pot under the apple tree in the garden I visit often and place offerings under. Loud bird song as I climb the bracken red hill by the common. I spy the wind turbine above Melinbyrhedin in the middle of a field I’ve never been before. It feels the right place to go – up high with a 360 view of the high round topped hills. Ten minutes later I’m laying in the sheepshit under the turbine, looking up and taking a picture. The blades spinning fast though there is little wind and it feels like a calm and sleepy morning. Before leaving the field of the turbine I cross to the hedge. There is a tiny dead lamb. Been there some weeks. Little flesh, only fleece. Pitiful. I stay with it and want to find a flower to put by its side. There is nothing only stinging nettles around. I find a piece of desiccated brown skeletal gorse caught in the wire fence next to the lamb. I place it next to the lamb honouring its spirit and small unnoticed death.
Later in the day after an interlude of other commitments I return to ritual time and collect papers I’ve been saving and sorting from the past ten, fifteen and more years – admin papers, from special projects I thought I must save, notes from courses attended, Clore interview notification (which I see is Friday 1st May 2009 at 3pm). This marked a new chunk of life which I’m now kind of honouring and letting go… I notice it is now just about 3.15pm. 11 years ago I would have been in my 40 minute Clore interview when I was to become Clore Leadership Fellow for Wales. A heady few years of busyness and incredible experiences, then starting Emergence years, then leaving Volcano years, training as a Cruse Bereavement Counsellor, Sesame Drama Therapy practitioner. I burn and burn the papers every single one of them in a big metal cauldron in the sun, stirring and poking with a poker I made myself 4 years ago to mark 20 years of mum’s death. The papers burn. Lots of smoke. I look at each one. All special all important. All must go. I’ve been saving a little box
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of my hair too – I save all the hair that comes out and stays on my hairbrush. Since menopause this is a lot. I’ve given this hair to the earth and buried it before and also took a load to Bardsey Island to let the wind take. This time I want to consign my old hair to the fire…. Satisfying watching it burn and smoke. I stir the ashes for half an hour after with the poker, stirring, stirring from white to grey, still hot. The cauldron is full of ash.
I leave the garden and walk a loop round the valley here, the sun out, I’m wondering about my onward direction. I want to honour all the elements and have chosen to be out 4 hours this afternoon to do it. (Though I feel like I did honour ‘air’ this morning on my dawn walk… I decide I will see what happens.) I meet a distant neighbour I’ve never seen before, we talk about little things, passing the time. A genial meeting in a back leafy lane in the gentle sunshine. I leave him, cross a stream, climb over a fence and into a sheep field walking the stretch by the stream I know well and love. I want to connect to Earth, after walking through the mossy beautiful forest I enter another sheep field and sit by a large brilliant white quartz rock. I lay down flat on my stomach breathing in the earth, imagining myself being taken down, deeper and deeper into the depths. It’s relaxing, enjoyable but feels a bit forced. After a while I get up and am called back to the stream where it joins another.
I know this section and secretly wanted to come here with a half-plan of walking up the stream bed. I’d been there first a year ago and was stunned at how deep and wild the gorge and rocks were on either side of the stream/river. Like an Ecuadorian rain-forest I thought the first time I saw it. I’d put wellington boots on for the very purpose. I over barbed wire farm fence as this place is kind of hidden, off-bounds, cut off. It makes me want to get in more. I climbed in the water holding onto rocks and tree limbs. I was in the high narrow gorge in no time. Water gushing, no way to climb on the banks due to the steepness of the sides. I hung to rocks and took the plunge, ending up wading through upto my hips through the icy water. No way to see how long it would go on for. Slow progress, treacherous and only a half mile from my home. I had to climb over trunks of dead trees at points, holding onto their branches for support. Foolhardy, scary, my wellington boots full of water. Trousers, knickers, leggings sopping wet. I kept stopping to raise my legs and let the water pour out of my boots and then waded back in again, constantly thanking the rocks and the river for looking after me, talking aloud all the time. If I slipped and twisted an ankle or cracked my head here, no one would find me. I would be like the lamb of this morning. I felt I was truly making my descent and walking through the understory, no visualisation or imagination needed … Soaked but exilarated I found my way back after maybe an hour of water walking, to known territory and exited the stream/river by a little wooden bridge by a copse of oak trees that I know and love. So very thankful to emerge in one piece, everything
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wet from the chest down wards. I offered seeds to the river and thanked it for helping me out (see it has become a river now) then trudged back home as it lightly started to rain.
Back in the garden, I felt a need to complete by doing something with the ashes from my earlier burning, thought of putting them in the river/stream but didn’t want to dirty the waterway, wanted to bury them but I found as I burnt my finger that they were still hot. Nothing to do but leave them for another day. Something left over that needs to be buried.
An incense offering to mark my final threshold back into the everyday.
Image: artist’s own
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Jenny
Intention To honour the abundance, light and colour of the natural world and to value my connection with it.
Ritual/Walk I leave the house in the afternoon, picking up a perfect camellia flower that has fallen under the bush to take with me I walk down the road and immediately meet a woman who used to teach the boys in primary school. We chat about families and the virus, she is very kind and cares about the boys and how they are doing now. I felt irritated that I had been distracted from my walk! I walk on up the lane and meet another neighbour, and have a chat, again I have known her since the boys were tiny. I walk on, noticing the abundance of so many different flowers. The sun is warm, the colours are rich and I see an oak tree covered in new yellowish leaves. I walk this way often but had not noticed this tree before.. I enjoy the time to enjoy this place. On my way down the lane I meet more neighbours and now I’m thinking how lucky I am to live in such a community, where the neighbours are all friends. I value my connection to the community. I continue down to the beach and place my camellia in a rock pool as an offering to the sea. I look at the pebbles and notice a beautiful white one to bring home. I bring it into the house to put next to my favourite pot.
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Clare
Intention It is my intention to find a silence that brings me to an understanding of patience and its beauty This is the work of years...
Ritual Beltane was a stretched time Joining with others over internet and being aware of dates and times and moons and evenings and rain and changing my three boxes, my monthly ritual of 20 years, the month changed as days stayed in solitude
so my ritual was in solitude
A walking
Alone
early
unseen, unknown
watched by birds and sheep
A well known route
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with its deviation into a wood
and to a black pond
with its sailing island
sitting
I practice my intention
the learning of patience
and know
again
this is a daily
and life long
pursuit
I walk on
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Holli
Intention To release all parts of me from the need (while not undoing the longing) to try and find in another a replacement for the constantness of 'mother'. To honour the qualities of Mother Earth so that I may also begin to humbly recognise them in myself.
Ritual/Walk Footsteps on rarely trod sand This yellow-brown sometimes-visible stretch of land. Maze etched, finger-size furrows, grains displaced Forming an up-and-down boundary like a heartbeat line. Grey-green jewel-offering matching exactly the shade of the sea, Cradled in my hands, Imbued with my musings, Palms that read the place where surfaces-skins meet Also hold in prayer the fragility of all things. Be-held now by Heart Skin Stone Sand, And soon to be caressed, bathed, soothed by the returning sea
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Reclaimed Transfused into the Whole To be one with Her Whose very nature is creativity and growth, Solidity and the rhythms of Come and Go, Flow Sustaining Nourishing Protecting the balance with interconnectedness And sometimes wild and terrifying forces that ravage landscapes But then re-settling And always breathing and offering home And belonging.
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This is dedicated to the energies and spirit of the earth, the air, the fire, the water and all those that honour them.
Thank you to all the Beltane women.
Fern Smith, May 2020 www.fernsmith.uk
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