Good Beltane to You!

My Beltane Altar. I don't have any images specifically for Beltane, so I used this sketch of Danae welcoming Zeus in the form of a shower of gold. It's sketch for a larger painting, one of a series I did many years ago, reimagining the Ancient Greek tales rape or seduction as instead images of divine love and passion. In this same series I have Persephone and Hades, Leda and the Swan, and Europa being carried off peacefully asleep on the broad back of Zeus as a bull. 

I'm not at all sure how closely my own understanding of Beltane hews to the original meaning - as if anyone can really say. To me, this is the celebration of the yearly renewal of the eternal marriage of heaven and earth. A celebration of the energy and passion that springs from the union of male and female. A celebration of the act of creation that continually remakes the universe. 

My husband went to a neighbor's house and cut me an amazing, fifteen foot tall cane of bamboo to make a maypole. We haven't decorated a maypole in a few years, and it's one of my favorite rituals. I have some witchy friends coming over, and my daughter Rowan, and I'm making a Beltane feast and I'm very happy. 

Welcome to the divine bridegroom, who comes today to wed the Goddess. Welcome the quickening fire. Welcome the bearer of the flowering rod, the staff that brings forth water in the dry places. Welcome the loving, healing embrace of the Divine Masculine, of which this world is sorely in need.