Approaching Beltane One: Little Winters and Lost Beloveds

 Mary Magdalene: Goshka Datzov

Beltane has a strange relation to Easter, and contains several of the same elements in its rites.  

The kindling of the new fire (in the case of Easter a year candle)

The vigil in the dark

The ritual promise of life (eternal or otherwise) and fertility (spiritual or otherwise)

The heralding of true spring and the turning of the year (more on the differences later) and:

The union of the Beloved and his Lady

In Jake Richard’s book, Backwood’s Witchcraft,  he points out that the Appalachians count two seasons most people don’t, called “little winters” In Tennessee they say there are up to five winters. Here in Indiana, you always run into people who, no matter how long they have lived her, become excited when the weather warms up in March or even Ferbruary and, despite the impossibility of such a thing—and the danger —trumpet that winter is over. And then, as snow and cold and ice return and retreat several times until May and, on some occasions, a little past May, these people affect to grumble, to despair, to even be angry. But this is an effect of a world where people are divorced from the seasons and reality. Most of us have forgotten the concept of “little winters”. Though Appalachians have names for them and expect them, we have them too, the occasional and to be expected returns of the cold from March into May. Much to say about this later on, but if you acknowledge these little seasons then the Equinox takes place at the close of one little winter and Easter takes place before the last little winter or even in it. In other words it does not herald summer or even true spring. It is Beltane that marks the end of the Little Winters.

It occurs to me that Beltane also marks the end of something a little eerier called the Season of Sacrifice. In the same way that Easter is not quite Beltane, the Season of Sacrifice is not quite Lent. There is a modern and not entirely unfounded desire to link it to disasters taking place around this time of the year that are scheduled by dark forces probably within our government, and without giving credence—or denial—to this idea, this time was, of old, seen as a time of sacrifice and preparation as we came to the planting season, and it does seem to end the night before Beltane. More or less.

Lastly, for now, let us address the reunion of the Beloved with his Lady, which we will return to at length in our next post. What’s that got to do with Easter, and why would I say that Easter shared this with Beltane? We are used to being patly told the God and the Goddess marry on Beltane, but may have forgotten older and truer stories: Adonis being restored either to Aphrodite or to Persephone, leaving behind the world of death. This myth is seen imperfectly in the story of Inanna and Damuzi and perhaps even in the story of the death of Absalom at the hands of Joab in the second book of Samuel. However, in our current era the restoration of the beloved is glimpsed in the story of Mary Magdalene seeking Jesus three days after his death and finding the tomb empty only to, in her despair over the lost body, be met by Jesus himself. Mary is the spiritual lover and Jesus the spiritual lost and found beloved. On Mary Magdalene’s feast day, the chant from the Song of Songs is:

By night on my bed,
I sought him whom my soul loves.
I sought him, but I didn’t find him.
I will get up now, and go about the city;
in the streets and in the squares I will seek him whom my soul loves.
I sought him, but I didn’t find him.
The watchmen who go about the city found me;
"Have you seen him whom my soul loves?"
I had scarcely passed from them,
when I found him whom my soul loves.
I held him, and would not let him go,
until I had brought him into my mother’s house,
into the room of her who conceived me.

When we return, we will discuss the union of the Lover and the Beloved and its link to the kindling of the Beltane Candle, and the Alchemical Wedding!