Beltane celebrations anyone?

Actually I lied in an above post. I do celebrate Western New Year and Chinese New Year.

 

Kitty, i have a life, and part of it is involved in the reverence of my ancestors, and part of that is celebration of their holidays.

So my quest for knowledge and understanding of the history and ways of my people is not having a life?

So much for having an itelligent conversation, you resort to childish rantings.

The Neopagan movement has bastardized so many things, and the minute
you point it out, the fluff bunnys start crying that you are judging them.

Kiz, i wasnt saying, or never inteeded to say that you were doing it wrong.
Technically, we (family) has three new years, the Celtic one, the gregorian one, and the Lunar one (my wife is Vietnamese) but we dont celebrate the same one twice, but I guess if i moved to australia before Samhain i would have to celebrate Beltaine again.

Look kiz, i didnt mean to come across wrong with you, i was asking an honest question, kitty is the one who started accusing me of prying and being judgemental, so i kept trying to make my point. All through my posts i keep saying that I wasnt trying to point fingers and who does what wrong, but instead i just wanted to know why you do what you do. Not that what you do is wrong.

Kitty, you can kiss my ass, Kiz, i dont want any beef with you.

 

I don't have any beef with you at all. You are probably right for you, but to me Beltane is not what it is to you is all. You did say "you can't call it Beltane" though, or something along those lines.

To a large extent my celebration of Beltane is a "fluff bunny" one, in the way many Christians celebrate Christmas if a "fluff bunny" way, by giving presents, getting presents, having meals, having feasts, drinking... and oh yeah.. a quick trip to the Church on the 25th. Deeply Spiritual? Hell no. A valid way to celebrate the Christmas period? Seems so for a lot of Christians.

To answer my own question, and am having a hell-load of friends and relatives over. We will be eating all the summer fruits that have just come out, the delicious spring vegetables that are just becoming so cheap right now. We will be having stawberry infused wine, tartlets with true spring onions and asparagus, silverbeet turnovers with the fresh new years greens. I will be decking the house with the abundant spring flowers that bloom everywhere. By the end of October, the mayflower will be out in abundance and the air will be white with it's blossoms. We will be bathing in the mild early summer sun, not too hot, not too cold. What a lovely time of year! Deeply spiritual? Hell no. A damned good way to celebrate this time of year? Seems so.

 

I believe i said shouldnt call it, but regardless, i am coming from the historical Celtic celebration of their father god and their birth from his union with the Mother.

It is very spiritual for me, because i celebrate where i came from, and the ancestors that came before me. We also celebrate the dance between the Divine Masculine and the Divine Femine, which is a major component of my spirituality.

I guess there are two Beltanes, the traditional one, and the contemporary, so celebrate as you will, honestly, it sounds like you will be having a good time.

i do like you, and your answers, there is just enough "non-textbook, new age section" answers in there for me to take you serious

I dont buy into the "i do it that way because i like it that way" thing that was also being said in here, being pagan doesnt mean making up everything in your religion, then arguing it as acceptable.

Being pagan is so much more than that, and it seems to me that you know that too.

Many blessings, and may you have a wonderful...ugggghhh....Beltane, there I said it LOL.

Take care.

 

:lol:

Calling myself Pagan possibly give the wrong conotations, as does my sort of "pagan" celebrating Beltane does. I am very much a Pagan (Gnostic Pagan), and a very sprititual person, in the sense of the Seneca/Epicurus style paganinity (I don't think that is a word ). That is, I am a non-Christian Gnostic. Beltane is not part of my tradition. Be it old-style Kelt, or modern neo-Pagan, the Spring "Beltane" Festival has an enourmous appeal to me. I love the idea, much in the way I like the idea of the gift-giving part of Christmas, which I do celebrate too, though I am not Christian.

The early Pagans (gnostic, non-Christian, not-Kelt Pagans) also had a huge spring celebration, though calling it "May Eve" or a variation thereof, is about as incorrect as calling it Beltane. So those are both out. Hmmm.... and making up a new word is out too.

AAAUUUURRRGGGHHH!!!!! I can't win whatever way!

 

how about calling it Summer fest 05? lol

With spring, your best bet is to celebrate the spring equinox,
which is undeniably something that happens down
there around now. Beltane is technically a summer holiday,
since the Celts only rekoned two seasons.

BUT anyway, do what you want, you can theme it however you please,
its your party ;P

Have fun

 

heron, your tradition is ancestral and historical. but history is not the only basis for religious expression. for example, i'm thinking of what author/activist starhawk said in one of her books, about wicca being a religion of poetry, not scripture. (her history is atrocious, btw.) basing religious understanding on poetic truth, rather than historic truth, is not "making it up as you go along." you have to have a deep connection to spirit, and listen to it very honestly, to find that truth.

in answer to your previous questions in another thread about my worship of pan (not that it is any of your business still) i "worship" him in the same way romantic era poets and painters did - it is a symbolic and poetic worship, not a historical ancestral worship. i really wish you would accept that people are drawn to worship in different ways for different reasons. if your worship is ancestral, obviously that works for you. but some of us are cut off, by choice or by cultural isolation, from our ancestral roots, and so that form of worship is inappropriate for us.

a poetic truth is no less valid than a historic or literal truth, it is simply another form of truth, on a different level. i can say, "my love is like a red red rose", and that does not mean he has petals and thorns and is routinely sprayed for aphids. but it still might be a truth for me, if that is how i percieve my love. (who is in poetic fact actually more like one of those bathroom ferns that lives off the moisture in the air than a red red rose.)

likewise, if i say i hear the pipes of Pan beckoning me to follow in His cloven hoofprints, that does not mean i must be a greek shepherd from arcadia. it means i have a very personal and deep understanding of his poetic truth and it inspires me, much in the same way wordsworth would "see proteus rising from the sea, and hear old triton blow his wreathed horn." it is no less valid or pure an understanding, and it most certainly is not "bastardized" - it is simply a different understanding than a historical understanding. to me, it is a deeper understanding. obviously to you it is not, but using vulgar words like "bastardized" does come across as judgemental and purist.

i think keats said it best in his "ode on a grecian urn":" 'beauty is truth, truth beauty.' - that is all / ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." he was probably the greatest poet who ever lived, some rate him to be even better than the bard. are you going to call him a "fluff bunny"?

in terms of celebration, there are far more than two beltanes. there are as many beltanes as there are understandings of beltane. i cannot say that there is even one beltane for me: i celebrate a different beltane every year. each has held a different meaning, a different understanding for me. your understanding of beltane, or christmas, or sadie hawkins day for that matter, might be a historical understanding. that is a valid understanding, and obviously bears great meaning to you, but in no way invalidates or "bastardizes" someone else's understanding of the holiday.

btw, i'm not wiccan, although i frequently use wiccan terminology to describe what i do, as it is fairly familiar. my own path is my business, but since you insist on demanding answers, i will concede that it is a personal, contemporary and fairly eclectic path. that does not mean i have "made it up as i went along" or that i merely "do what i like". although there is no historic framework, theology, or cultural myths on which it is based, the poetic understanding of the mythologies of various pantheons (particularly greek) is helpful in describing the spiritual and poetic "language" of that path. (historically ancient greek religion bears no relevance to me or my experience; however, greek thought and roman structure is largely responsible for shaping western consciousness as we know it today.) my personal path is based on deep ecology and poetic truths. it is more concerned with consciousness and personal responsibility than ancestors or history. history is very interesting; as you may have noticed i have a strong interest in art history (otherwise i wouldn't have kept that frickin' heavy book lying around for ten years), but i find historical understandings of religion more relevant to the past, not my personal present experiences. as an artist and a poet, poetic truths are more meaningful to me than what the dogma of my genetic ancestors.

as for why i didn't explain it before, i believe i stated that: it's none of your damn business. it's still none of your business. poetic truths are very personal. i bear no hostility towards you, nonetheless you seem to insist on taking my objections to your demands for answers as an attack. but whether or not it was your intent, you did come across as judgemental. perhaps you (or both of us) need to choose your (our) words more carefully. please consider if those of whom you are repeatedly requesting explainations and answers might have an understanding of the topic on a different level than yours - and, if it is personal in nature, they might not feel comfortable sharing it. and that doesn't mean they "can't" answer the question for lack of historic facts. it means that the question might be invading personal boundaries, and that you may as well be asking the to justify their choice in underwear or what they do with their lover in bed and/or the question might not be answerable in historical terms. it would be helpful, to me, and to all of us i'm sure, if you would please phrase those requests with a little more grace and consideration of viewpoint, and please not try to force the answers into the rigid historical framework that is your own understanding.

 

poetic justification. If that is your answer then that is fine.
But, and this is me personally, it seems like the easy
way out. But if that is what calls you then by all means
follow it.

Maybe i am judgementdal, in that i dont take people
serious from their word, but instead prefer to
know their level of spiritual maturity, and
weather or not i can respect them for what
the say.

I dont just hand out happy, "i like you and your views"
passes to everyone, especially pagans. I expect more
from pagans than anyone, and get disappointed often.

I understand the poetry of faith, believe me it is a
major part of my ways too, the Warrior Poet is
a major archtype of my ancestry, but i also
like to know where i come from, and why
my ancestors believed as they did. I do
cross cultural comparisons and dig
deeper into the roots of Indo-European
origins, and their influence from and on
other cultures. I like to know.

You can call me anal retentive, or nit picky
or whatever other childish names you want,
but to call me xenophobic is just silly.

Define the word, and tell me how it relates
to me, in a multi-cultural marriage, raising
my children with the utmost respect for
their roots, from both sides, and how
i support and adopt her customs with mine?

Never say i am xenophobic, or especially
advocating racial purity, pride maybe,
love of maybe, but purity? never, so mind your words.

 

If a holiday is a solstice or equinox, it makes sense to me to celebrate it on the day that particular event falls on *in your hemisphere*.

If you celebrate an autumn holiday as a harvest festival, it might feel a little wierd to celebrate it in the spring when you cross the equator and move somewhere else.

For me, Beltane is a spring holiday because of the connections with fertility, etc. Nature is beginning to shut down in November in my part of the world, so a Beltane ritual wouldn't seem quite right.

As I understand it, Wicca isn't so much about a big book somewhere as it is about nature. If pagans in another part of the world adapt their holidays and celebrations to fit the way nature is where they live, so mote it be.

Christian holidays aren't so nature-connected. Christians celebrate Christmas on 25 December as more or less the anniversary of the birth of Jesus. Yes, yes, it was put there to coincide with Yule, but most of them don't think of it that way. Let them do their own thing. I suspect that some Australian Christians may make a tradition of going to the beach on Christmas. It doesn't seem to be the case in most of the USA.