Bealtaine greetings from Derrynagittah!

This is the major fertility festival of the year. Nature is rapidly moving forwards and the speed of plant growth is amazing. We can see the life force manifesting and bursting with creativity. Right now at Derrynagittah a blanket of green is sweeping over the land, the Hawthorn is about to burst into flower and all the plants are transforming around us.

Bealtaine is a time of creativity, expansion and playfulness, for humans as well as for the rest of Nature. In Ireland it marks the start of summer and is a time to honour the fairies, the Sun and the Earth, as well as our own wildness and creativity.

Typical ways to celebrate include dressing the trees with ribbons and gathering with others to sing and dance around a communal fire. We celebrate love, new beginnings and the power of Nature. This year these group ceremonies may not be possible. In many cases, we have to celebrate while physically alone. However, we can view this as an opportunity to remember that we are never truly alone and to strengthen our connection through the ethers. Good group dreaming practice!

For those of us lucky enough to have a suitable garden or access to the countryside, we can still have an outdoor fire. Even if you are confined indoors, you can light a candle and make your own ceremony. All of us can decorate an altar dedicated to Bealtaine. We can connect through our hearts with the element of fire, giving thanks for life, feeding our own spark of life and connecting with our creativity. What are you longing to create? What stops you? Give any blocks to the fire. These can be put into a stick and offered to the fire for transformation or simply spoken into the flame if you are working with a candle.

We can let this Bealtaine be an awakening of the fire of compassion in our hearts. With Covid-19 we are experiencing a unique spiritual initiation. We can all choose our perspective on this, either love or fear. We can call to the fire in our hearts to transform fear-based reactive patterns that may be imprinted in our energy bodies, compassionately integrating blame, guilt, judgement, fear and unhelpful ancestral or past-life imprints. We can also feed the fire of our compassion and send this out as a blanket of love to comfort all beings who are suffering at this time. 

If fear arises, we can recognise it as a part that needs to be embraced and loved back to wholeness. Let it feed your own heart flame and become the fuel of your evolution. Call to Hawthorn to support and strengthen your heart flame.

Covid-19 is pushing us to find creative solutions to all kinds of challenges. This Bealtaine, let’s honour our amazing creativity and step forward with joy into a new beginning.