Beltane is coming

My favourite festival (and that of other Pagans too, so it would seem) - the encapsulation in one festival of the joyous Pagan expression of love and sexuality in all its forms - glorious life bursting from every tree, flower, animal and bird.

Bo and Justine have been a-Maying in the woods, in one of the most beautiful descriptions of a ritual that I have ever read:

It began to get dark as Justine and I pushed on into the wood, a soft dusk-mist greying the wash of bluebells. Hazel and sweet-chestnut trunks were very black under a roof of green. A great tit swung his unchanging two notes out over the twilight, as though skimming stones on the surface of a lake. (Read on...)

Narbled Gonsense offers a meditation for Beltane based on a Waterboys song:

Then you begin to notice that something is happening. You feel different, something more intense than before. This feeling is sweeter, it emanates from inside of you, from inside your heart. You can hear your heart beating. It’s like an engine burning in your chest. It feels vast, an ocean of fire. Then emotion runs through you, like a quickening. Its like all the loves of your life rolled into one. You feel spectacularly and absolutely alive.

Hecate suggests that we should let go of our notions of the 'perfect' ritual and get Dionysian, let our hair down:

As you prepare this week for Beltane, for the fire festival on the high hills, for our religion's most important celebration of acts of love and pleasure, I hope that you feel free to let go. Goddess knows, I mean to.

She also offers a Mary Oliver poem for Beltane:

Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?