A Lesser-Known Beltane Custom

Moments in the Flow…In the Life of the Priestess

Hello again,

I had something completely different in mind for my Friday post. But when the Scorpio Full Moon* arrived on Beltane (1:23 p.m. EDT), my thoughts went back to another thing I learned about a customary sexual practice on Beltane…and a surprising revelation about a poem I ‘downloaded’ long before I knew this.

When I was writing the Revealing the Druid Legacy series, I was told the customs for Beltane in Anwen’s lifetime in late 5^th century CE Wales included the practice of a young man being initiated in the ways of love by a Druid Priestess. Not every young man got this special event, but those of a Chieftain or upper-class line would need to be practiced in the art of lovemaking that honored the female partner.

As I’ve mentioned a time or two, the pre-Roman Church Celtic society had equal status for men and women. Violation of a female was punishable by death. This makes good sense for a culture that honored the Goddess and the Gods. They understood the different contributions of Sun and Moon and how both created cycles of growth, harvest, and release to begin again. Nature and its manifestations of thriving plant life at Beltane had the Green Man and a Goddess of Flowers to honor in their ceremonies.

Anwen’s Beltane on the Peninsula

In Book Two, Priestess of the Realms, Anwen attends her first Beltane festival on the Peninsula as a newly Initiated member of the Circle of Nine. She has just embarked on her training, and her first Element is Water. She is noticing greater awareness of the feelings of others and her own and how to respond.

The Circle will stay at the Chieftain’s large home and partake of the banquet. Anwen is viewing an opulence in furnishings and foods in the pre-festival feast she’s never seen before. She meets the Chieftain and his family, all who still follow ‘the old ways’. She knows she will not be called on to initiate a young man, but her new friend, Olwenna, will perform this ceremony with one of the Chieftain’s sons.

The customs of their time are given in detail and we see the ceremony, which includes a handfasting with more couples than usual, which keeps them all in the heat of a sunny day. Despite finding a tent with some shade to lower the heat, after a small meal, she and another Priestess, Rhian, choose to leave the festival and be taken back to the Chieftain’s home.

They decide to do some scrying in a lake on the Chieftain’s property. After this, their discovery of others who also came back to the ‘castle’ leads Anwen to hear more about this initiation process and a surprising outcome. Another surprising outcome awaits when Olwenna returns the next morning. While I was downloading the information, I never thought about another surprising outcome that was in a poem given in my short cycle of writing Bardic style poems.

I had no interest in the ancient Celtic world of my ancestors, and it was years before I would meet the Stranger on the Train who sparked the writing of what became a trilogy. The thought to write a poem on this subject came to me after speaking with a co-worker about her relationship with a younger man she met surfing.

Why did it take a more antique and otherworldly track? I had no idea. Like Rhiannon’s Dance and Selke, it just started coming in while I walked to the parking lot to get my car. But I knew there was a character in the Arthur Legends called Morgana and decided to give my poem the title Morgana’s Lament.

When it was ready, I read it to my coworker, and it made her cry. After reading it at several performance poem events, women would come to me and say they knew these feelings from their own life experience. Maybe a Reader today will, too.

So here is a poem for Beltane and its less well known custom. And I’ll see you next time….Scents for Summer will be coming soon.

MORGANA’S LAMENT

Beautiful boy, becoming a man,

I know you’ll stay with me as long as you can.

I’ll turn down the lamplight to soften my face,

Removing the witness to Time and the traces

That tell us too great is the span of our ages.

I smile to myself as your longing engages

The echoing passion locked deep in my heart.

We fall into feelings foretold by the start

When Moon joined with Venus in Pisces above

Made Memory conjure our bittersweet love.

How cruel the earth’s motion, the Seasons in spin,

The sunrise and sunsets that hasten the end.

How soft your lips tracing the rise of my breast,

Entreating my arguing fears to rest.

And here in your arms now I surely am meant

To break down all boundaries till passion is spent,

And daylight makes moonlight and candlelight fade

While Reason plays tricks with the promise we made.

Still we’ll come together enacting this dance

As long as Moon-Venus rekindles our trance.

But when the spell’s broken, our story is done,

I won’t blame you Love, it’s just Time that has won

A beautiful boy, becoming a man.

I know you’ll stay with me as long as you can.

©Shellie Enteen, originally published in Journey to the Meaning of Love,

(Author House 2010)

*You can read (or hear) my thoughts on the meanings of this Scorpio Full Moon in Celtic and other cultures in this Moondays Report.