The Power of Story. The Cosmic Storyteller: The Wheel of the Year – Beltane 2024
Grounding in The Change
The Wheel of the Year: Beltane, the Season of Blossoming.
I have to admit, Beltane is my favorite season. Perhaps because I’m a Beltane baby. It certainly is a time of year that is joyous, uplifting, beautiful and surprising. Walking in the forest or around my neighborhood, I find myself ‘surprised by Joy’ (as C.S. Lewis once said) at the colors, fragrance (especially lilacs!), and birdsong. It’s a mild season here in New England, warmed by the growing sunlight, cooled by the sometimes brisk winds. And a much needed break from the clouds and gloom of the past few months.
It’s a season for feeling blessed, especially when so much of the world is being devastated by wars, famine and climate change.
Since our leaders can’t agree on the changes we need to make to create a better future, perhaps each of us can make those changes. Through working with our imaginations, we can access the quantum field. Whether we imagine a change of heart, or unusable amunition or a heartfelt desire for peace, perhaps we could send quantum care packages to those in need. When my kids were young, we took a page from Bilbo Baggins and gave each other gifts on our birthdays. So, I’m imagining sharing all this Beltane peace and flowering energy with those in peril and need. Hopefully, through this quantum care package, they’ll have a moment of respite, a moment of a deep breath taken, in the midst of darkness. Especially the children and mothers.
The ancient Celts celebrated the beginning of Summer at Beltane. Now it is certain that the light and warmth are back for another year. Plants and shrubs push up through the soil and open up to the Sun. Life is back and it’s good!
Beltane occurs astrologically when the Sun is at 15* Taurus, the power degree of the fixed signs. Earthy Taurus is concerned with manifesting Aries’ fire of life in an appropriate form. The form-giver, the manifestor.
In Ellias Lonsdale’s 360 Degrees of Your Star Destiny, 15* Taurus says this is the degree where we have to radically die to our old form so something greater can materialize. In surrendering our ego control over what we can’t change, we let go of our cultural conditioning and let Life itself guide us to our purpose.
This is the season to open ourselves to Mother Earth’s call for renewal, to awaken to our beauty and to delight in our life. Drop the worry. Drop the need to control. Let go of the ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’. It’s May. The lusty month of May.
With the Uranus/Jupiter conjunction behind us, now is the time to use that energy to embody our authentic Self. Let Jupiter expand our inner sense of abundance and possibilities while Uranus awakens us to what we really need in life. And if we listen to our instincts (our embodied wisdom) we’ll know how to live a balanced life.
I believe we’ll discover we need less things and more heart-connections. So take this time to simplify your life (the Gene Key gift: The Alchemy of Simplicity) into the basics that you need. This is the radical change, away from our society’s consumerism into an intrinsic knowledge of what sustains life. Then you’ll have space in your life in the coming years to fill it with new things/people/ projects.
What if we all stopped buying things we don’t need? Even the capitalist spirituality of New Age ‘laws of attraction’ is often billed as a way to ask for more money, have more things. Bigger is not better. More is not progress. Greed is one of the 7 deadly sins.
I believe that it is Aphrodite’s ‘law of attraction’ that really counts – who and what attracts our attention and calls to our soul. This is what makes life worth living and is the real promise of America. When the Declaration of Independence says we have the right to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’, this is what it means. To have the freedom to BE ourselves. So shake off those patriarchal corporate chains!
Let’s Take a Look at Ourselves
Fairy tales are ancient teaching stories that helped people navigate throught life. There’s an ancient fairy tale that speaks to this need for more, for bigger. (You can’t even buy small strawberries anymore. They’re all giant sized!). For never being satisfied with what we have. And what the results are to that need.
The Fisherman and His Wife (a Grimm’s Fairy Tale)
Once upon a time, a poor fisherman lived with his wife in a hovel by the sea. Every day he went fishing. One day the fisherman sat with his rod, looking at the clear water. Suddenly his line jerked down and when he reeled it in, he had caught a large flounder. This flounder told the fisherman that he really was an enchanted prince, and wouldn’t be very good to eat. So the fisherman kindly releases it. When his wife hears the story, she says he ought to have had the fish grant him a wish. She insists that he go back and ask the flounder to grant her wish for a nice house.
The fisherman reluctantly returns to the shore but is uneasy when he finds that the sea seems to become turbid, as it was so clear before. He makes up a rhyme to summon the flounder, and it grants the wife's wish. “Go, then, she has it already.”
The fisherman is pleased with his new house and new wealth, but the wife is not and demands more, and demands that her husband go back and wish for a castle and that he be made a king. Reluctantly, he does but the water is more turbid. However, the fish comes and grants his wish. But again and again, his wife sends him back to ask for more – to be Emperor -- and more – to be the Pope. The fisherman knows this is wrong but there is no reasoning with his wife. He says they should not annoy the flounder, and be content with what they have been given, but his wife is not content. Each time, the flounder grants the wishes with the words: "just go home again, she has it already”, but each time the sea grows rougher and rougher.
Eventually, the wife wishes to command the sun, moon, and heavens, and she sends her husband to the flounder with the wish "I want to become equal to God". The flounder just tells the fisherman to go home, stating that "she is sitting in her old hovel again". And with that, the sea becomes calm once more, and the fisherman and his wife are once more living in nothing but their old, dirty hovel.
Will we be like the fisherman’s wife, always wanting more things, more power? This is our entitlement problem. We feel we can have everything we want without cost to what happens to the rest of the world.
The inner feminine of patriarchy is like this now. She’s so starved for her real life-affirming power that she just gets greedy and can’t seem to stop. Because the feminine aspect of patriarchy is repressed and belittled, this feeling energy is twisted and appears like a witch to force our ego into getting things we don’t need.
So free your inner and outer feminine nature from the shadow energy of consumption, addiction and greed. Shed old patriarchal beliefs and rules. Live in your body and listen to its instinctual wisdom. That way, you’ll keep it simple yet you’ll be connected to Mother Earth’s mycelial network, which puts the abundance of nature at your fingertips.
The Celts believed that at Beltane, the veils between the worlds grows thin and the fair folk come into our world and bring the May flowers with them. Fact or Fantasy? Why not both? Something powerful pulls life out of Mother Earth’s soil. Why not imagine it as the magic of the Elder Ones, the spirits of Nature and Life.
It heals us when we believe in something greater than ourselves. Life is a great Mystery to us, despite all the science behind it. This Mystery helps give meaning to our lives. The best way to engage in that Mystery (non-religious) is to reconnect with the beauty, power and mystery of Mother Earth. That’s what Beltane is all about.
May your Beltane season be full of beauty and delight.
Absolutely lovely & then Jupiter is in Gemini, saying "Let's get this party started!"