Blog o' Gnosis

There are other places much more suited to outdoor celebrations of May Day than the Northern California coast. Our weather is dicey at best in the spring, often accompanied by cold winds that whip in from the ocean. It would make much more sense to celebrate Beltane here in September or October, when the wind is at its lowest and the days are clear and jewel-like.

But this is where we live, so for the last three years my daughter Jojo and I have taken our chances and hosted May Day here anyway. Actually I should say both my daughters, as Lyra takes time out of her intense college schedule to hand-design a flyer for the party every year. She was with us the first year, and with luck she’ll be here again.

I posted last year about how Beltane starts at Spring Equinox. This year the preparations began soon after themebeli new year. The huge construction project of last summer and fall had destroyed garden beds, made a hash of my already sparse lawn, and created piles of rubbish that I slowly had hauled away between winter storms. I found someone to build a garden gate to protect my front yard from the deer, which ate most of the herbs I’d planted last year. As soon as that was done, I could restore the beautiful passion flower vine which over the winter the deer had torn down from the fence and ripped to shreds.

The ivy, morning glory, and Himalayan blackberry had encroached from all directions and had to be yanked out. I didn’t get it all, but I knocked it back enough for this year. Finally, I had a huge pile of mulch hauled in and set about restoring the beds that had been trampled, caring for the plants that had survived, and creating new beds where I want to expand the garden this year. All this activity took me well into the week before Beltane. But that was just the outdoor preparations.

One of the things I have learned is that rituals can be pared way down and still be very powerful, so long as the preliminaries have been done properly beforehand. In the case of Beltane, the ritual essentials are an invocation, good music, nice ribbons, the dance, and delicious food afterwards. It is not all that complicated, but like flicking a glass to hear the tone it makes when it rings, the more prepared your space is the sweeter sound the ritual will create. I wash all the windows and mirrors, clean the bathrooms, dust, vacuum, sweep, refresh my altars, and set things right in my office—one of the places I most want to benefit from the energy of the maypole dance.

The day before, I do a cleansing of the ritual site including the pole, leave offerings where we will sink it into the ground, clean off the old ribbons, and leave it to sit overnight under the stars. Then the day of our party I can focus on setting up the food and drink and answering the phone. This year Jojo helped out a lot, and I think she actually enjoyed getting swept up in the preparations. She made four batches of brownies and cleaned her bedroom and bathroom—dare I say it—happily.

As Oak wrote, there were a passel of teenagers over this year who were pleasant, amusing, and such fun to watch. They’re still in the stage where they run in packs instead of pairing up, which I will appreciate as long as it lasts. Several girls stayed the night after the party. Here are some of them, with Jojo on the bottom left.

The whole day was incredibly sweet for me. It was a wonderful group of people, probably the most beautiful weave I’ve ever seen on our maypole, and the weather was glorious: clear and warm, with a moderate wind. Because I’d started so early with the preparations I wasn’t stressed by getting ready at the last minute, so not only did I enjoy myself at my own party, but the clean-up afterward seemed like a piece of cake.

The best thing about hosting this ritual at my house is that for weeks afterward I get to gaze out my windows and see the colorful ribbons of May Day shining in the sun. So I will end this post with the view that greeted me the next morning, returning home after walking my dog Vince. It doesn’t get much sweeter than that.

Later that morning I drove off to the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, and bought a few important herbs to plant in the new beds. Then I made delicious chicken enchiladas with some of the leftover chicken, and Jojo and I settled in for an afternoon of lazing around, enjoying ourselves. Life is good. May yours be good as well.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 8:10 pm and is filed under Family, Ritual, Spirit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.