joi, 14 aprilie 2011

[Earthwise] Digest Number 2588

Messages In This Digest (4 Messages)

1a.
A May Day Spell For Beauty From: Silver Fox
2.
Beltaine - Beauty Ritual From: Silver Fox
3.
Am Beannachadh Bealltain From: Silver Fox
4.
Beltane Lore From: Silver Fox

Messages

1a.

A May Day Spell For Beauty

Posted by: "Silver Fox" silverfox_57@hotmail.com   trickster9993

Wed Apr 13, 2011 9:12 am (PDT)




A May Day Spell For Beauty
Source Unknown

One of the time-honored methods of improving physical beauty in Scotland and England was to gather morning dew on May Day and apply it to the skin. To adapt this idea using a more spiritual tone, try mixing a little catnip tea with this dew. Anoint yourself thrice over the heart with it, saying, "Loveliness within, loveliness without, let beauty shine, remove all doubt."

If May Day dew is not available, use rain or dew drops collected on the third or twenty-first day of any month. To gather dew, drape a fine linen or cotton cloth over a few plants at nightfall. Just after dawn the next day, wring out the fabric into a clean container. Refrigerate this, otherwise the water will quickly become stagnant and unusable for magic.

* For Internalizing the spirit of beauty. Grace under pressure. Poise and presence. Self-confidence.

* Best Times to use: May Day. Beneath a Full Moon. When the moon is in Leo or Virgo. Fridays, especially during November.

Silver Fox

"It is all true, it is not true. The more I tell you, the more I shall lie. What is story but jesting Pilate's cry. I am not paid to tell you the truth."
Jane Yolen; The Storyteller

2.

Beltaine - Beauty Ritual

Posted by: "Silver Fox" silverfox_57@hotmail.com   trickster9993

Wed Apr 13, 2011 9:14 am (PDT)




Beauty Ritual
By Gail Wood

Tonight is May Eve, and one of the customs for maintaining beauty is to wash your face in the morning dew of May Day. May Eve is a perfect time to seek peace and beauty. Spend the evening doing things that please you and bring you happiness. Rose scents promote a feeling of beauty and pleasure, and lavender promotes peace and joy. Breathe deeply and relax.

As you get ready for bed, use rose-scented soap to wash your face. Gaze into the mirror and touch your chin and say,

"Beautiful is my chin,"

Then touch your lips and say,

"Beautiful are my lips."

Repeat for all parts of your face, paying attention to details of skin, eyes, brows, and more. When you are done, bow to yourself in the mirror and say,

"I honor the beauty within,
And as within and so without.
I honor the beauty of myself."

Blessed be and sweet dreams.

Silver Fox

"It is all true, it is not true. The more I tell you, the more I shall lie. What is story but jesting Pilate's cry. I am not paid to tell you the truth."
Jane Yolen; The Storyteller

3.

Am Beannachadh Bealltain

Posted by: "Silver Fox" silverfox_57@hotmail.com   trickster9993

Wed Apr 13, 2011 9:14 am (PDT)




Am Beannachadh Bealltain
(The Beltane Blessing)
By Patti Wigington, About.com

In the Carmina Gadelica, folklorist Alexander Carmichael shared with readers hundreds of poems and prayers that he had collected from residents in various areas of Scotland. There is a lovely prayer in the Gaelic entitled simply Am Beannachadh Bealltain (The Beltane Blessing), which pays tribute to the Holy Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. This is a much shorter version, and has been adapted for a Pagan-friendly format.

Bless, O threefold true and bountiful,
Myself, my spouse, my children.
Bless everything within my dwelling and in my possession,
Bless the kine and crops, the flocks and corn,
From Samhain Eve to Beltane Eve,
With goodly progress and gentle blessing,
From sea to sea, and every river mouth,
From wave to wave, and base of waterfall.

Be the Maiden, Mother, and Crone,
Taking possession of all to me belonging.
Be the Horned God, the Wild Spirit of the Forest,
Protecting me in truth and honor.
Satisfy my soul and shield my loved ones,
Blessing every thing and every one,
All my land and my surroundings.
Great gods who create and bring life to all, I ask for your blessings on this day of fire.

Silver Fox

"It is all true, it is not true. The more I tell you, the more I shall lie. What is story but jesting Pilate's cry. I am not paid to tell you the truth."
Jane Yolen; The Storyteller

4.

Beltane Lore

Posted by: "Silver Fox" silverfox_57@hotmail.com   trickster9993

Wed Apr 13, 2011 9:14 am (PDT)




Beltane
(May 1st)

But I must gather knots of flowers,
And buds and garlands gay,
For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother,
I'm to be Queen o' the May.'

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Related Deities: May Queen, Stag Lord, Jack-in-the-Green, the Green Man, Aphrodite, Artemis, Bast, Diana, Faunus, Flora, Maia, Pan, the Horned God, Venus, and all Gods and Goddesses who preside over fertility.

Related Herbs: Lily of the valley, foxglove, broom, Dittany of Crete, elder, mint, Mugwort, thyme, yarrow, almond tree/shrub, clover, ivy, marigold, meadowsweet, rowan, sorrel, Hawthorn, Honeysuckle, St. John's Wort, Woodruff, Frankincense, Roses, Lemon Balm, Lemon Thyme, all flowers.

Related Stones: Quartz Crystal, Sunstone, Orange Calcite, Malachite, Bloodstone, sapphire, Emerald, amber, orange carnelian, rose quartz

Animals: Swallow, dove, swan, Cats, lynx, leopard

Colors: Red, White, Brown, Pink, Green

Tools: Broom, May Pole, cauldron

Symbols & Decorations: May Pole, fires, fertility, flowers, growing things, ploughs, cauldrons of flowers

Foods: Dairy, bread, cereals

Other Names: Cetsamhain (opposite Samhain),May Day, Fairy Day,Sacred Thorn Day, Rood Day, Roodmas (the Christian term for Rood Day, Old Beltane, Beltaine, Beltain, Baltane, Bealtunn, Walpurgis Night, Floriala (Roman feast of flowers from April 29 to May 1), Walpurgisnacht (Germanic-feast of St. Walpurga), Thrimilce (Anglo-Saxon), Bloumaand (Old Dutch), Shenn do Boaldyn (Isle of Man), Galan Mae (Welsh)

Beltaine is one of two Celtic fire festivals, a cross-quarter sabbat, and is sometimes referred to as Cetsamhain, meaning "opposite Samhain," because it falls opposite to Samhain in the Wheel of the Year. Likewise, where Samhain is a festival recognizing and honoring the necessity of Death, Beltaine is a celebration of life and fertility returning to the world.

First celebrated by the Celts, Beltaine traditionally begins at sunset on April 30th through May 1st at sunset as they figured their days from sundown to sundown. A fire and fertility festival, the word Beltaine comes from the Welsh words: Bel (name of the Welsh Sky God) and Tan (meaning fire). Combined, the words mean "fire in the sky," an appropriate word for welcoming the Summer. Also, the powers of the fairies and elves are growing and will reach their peak at Midsummer.

By May the light has grown longer and everything is flowering. The virile young lord and fertile maiden celebrate the evident consummation of their relationship. As seen by the Stag Lord and May Queen, an old custom in which every year a boy and girl were trained to play the roles. The boy, in his role as Stag Lord would run with the deer. At some point the dominant buck of the herd would sense the intruder and the Stag Lord would have to over come him. He would return then victorious and unharmed to mate with the May Queen in symbolic consummation of the marriage of the God and Goddess.

It is a fire and fertility festival that celebrates the transformation from maiden to mother through the mystery of sexuality. Beltane marks the return of vitality, of passion and hopes consummated. A time to honor the Guardian of the Home.

By Celtic reckoning, the actual Beltane celebration begins on sundown of the preceding day, April 30, because the Celts always figured their days from sundown to sundown. And sundown was the proper time for Druids to kindle the great Bel-fires on the tops of the nearest beacon hill (such as Tara Hill, Co. Meath, in Ireland). These 'need-fires' had healing properties, and sky-clad Witches would jump through the flames to ensure protection.

Sgt. Howie (shocked): 'But they are naked!'
Lord Summerisle: 'Naturally. It's much too dangerous to jump through the fire with your clothes on!'
--from "The Wicker Man"

Frequently, cattle would be driven between two such bon-fires (oak wood was the favorite fuel for them) and, on the morrow, they would be taken to their summer pastures.
Other May Day customs include: walking the circuit of one's property ('beating the bounds'), repairing fences and boundary markers, processions of chimney-sweeps and milk maids, archery tournaments, morris dances, sword dances, feasting, music, drinking, and maidens bathing their faces in the dew of May morning to retain their youthful beauty.

Maypoles are common, the dancers moving around the maypole in a clockwise motion, the direction of the Sun's journey across the Earth. The pole would remain in the center of the village until replaced the following year and the old pole used to light the new Beltane fires. The fires representing the Sun's lengthening time in the sky. Livestock would be driven between two bonfires during the festival to protect them from disease and ensure fertility for the following year. The frail and sick would also pass between the bonfires as in ancient times, fertility was a matter of life and death and the sick were seldom fruitful for prosperity of the community. It's also common practice too for even couples to leap over the bonfire for fertility and luck.

Flowers and greenery symbolize the Goddess. The maypole, the God. Weaving and plaiting, the joining of two things to make a third is the spirit of Beltaine. Traditional colors of Beltaine are red and white, representing the blood from a woman when her purity is taken.

In the words of Witchcraft writers Janet and Stewart Farrar, the Beltane celbration was principly a time of '...unashamed human sexuality and fertility.' Such associations include the obvious phallic symbolism of the Maypole and riding the hobby horse. Even a seemingly innocent children's nursery rhyme, 'Ride a cock horse to Banburry Cross...' retains such memories. And the next line '...to see a fine Lady on a white horse' is a reference to the annual ride of 'Lady Godiva' though Coventry. Every year for nearly three centuries, a sky-clad village maiden (elected Queen of the May) enacted this Pagan rite, until the Puritans put an end to the custom.

The Puritans, in fact, reacted with pious horror to most of the May Day rites, even making Maypoles illegal in 1644. They especially attempted to suppress the 'greenwood marriages' of young men and women who spent the entire night in the forest, staying out to greet the May sunrise, and bringing back boughs of flowers and garlands to decorate the village the next morning. One angry Puritan wrote that men 'doe use commonly to runne into woodes in the night time, amongst maidens, to set bowes, in so muche, as I have hearde of tenne maidens whiche went to set May, and nine of them came home with childe.' And another Puritan complained that, 'Of forty, threescore or a hundred maids going to the wood over night, there have scarcely the third part of them returned home again undefiled.'

Long after the Christian form of marriage (with its insistance on sexual monogamy) had replaced the older Pagan handfasting, the rules of strict fidelity were always relaxed for the May Eve rites. Names such as Robin Hood, Maid Marion, and Little John played an important part in May Day folklore, often used as titles for the dramatis personae of the celebrations. And modern surnames such as Robinson, Hodson, Johnson, and Godkin may attest to some distant May Eve spent in the woods.

These wildwood antics have inspired writers such as Kipling:

Oh, do not tell the Priest our plight,
Or he would call it a sin;
But we have been out in the woods all night,
A-conjuring Summer in!
And Lerner and Lowe:
It's May! It's May!
The lusty month of May!...
Those dreary vows that ev'ryone takes,
Ev'ryone breaks.
Ev'ryone makes divine mistakes!
The lusty month of May!

It is certainly no accident that Queen Guinevere's 'abduction' by Meliagrance occurs on May 1st when she and the court have gone a-Maying, or that the usually efficient Queen's Guard, on this occasion, rode unarmed.

Some of these customs seem virtually identical to the old Roman feast of flowers, the Floriala, three days of unrestrained sexuality which began at sundown April 28th and reached a crescendo on May 1st.

There are other, even older, associations with May 1st in Celtic mythology. According to the ancient Irish 'Book of Invasions', the first settler of Ireland, Partholan, arrived on May 1st; and it was on May 1st that the plague came which destroyed his people. Years later, the Tuatha De Danann were conquered by the Milesians on May Day. In Welsh myth, the perenial battle between Gwythur and Gwyn for the love of Creudylad took place each May Day; and it was on May Eve that Teirnyon lost his colts and found Pryderi. May Eve was also the occasion of a fearful scream that was heard each year throughout Wales, one of the three curses of the Coranians lifted by the skill of Lludd and Llevelys.

By the way, due to various calendrical changes down through the centuries, the traditional date of Beltane is not the same as its astrological date. This date, like all astronomically determined dates, may vary by a day or two depending on the year. However, it may be calculated easily enough by determining the date on which the sun is at 15 degrees Taurus (usually around May 5th). British Witches often refer to this date as Old Beltane, and folklorists call it Beltane O.S. ('Old Style'). Some Covens prefer to celebrate on the old date and, at the very least, it gives one options. If a Coven is operating on 'Pagan Standard Time' and misses May 1st altogether, it can still throw a viable Beltane bash as long as it's before May 5th. This may also be a consideration for Covens that need to organize activities around the week-end.

This date has long been considered a 'power point' of the Zodiac, and is symbolized by the Bull, one of the 'tetramorph' figures featured on the Tarot cards, the World and the Wheel of Fortune. (The other three symbols are the Lion, the Eagle, and the Spirit.) Astrologers know these four figures as the symbols of the four 'fixed' signs of the Zodiac (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius), and these naturally align with the four Great Sabbats of Witchcraft. Christians have adopted the same iconography to represent the four gospel-writers.

But for most, it is May 1st that is the great holiday of flowers, Maypoles, and greenwood frivolity. It is no wonder that, as recently as 1977, Ian Anderson could pen the following lyrics for the band Jethro Tull:

For the May Day is the great day,
Sung along the old straight track.
And those who ancient lines did ley
Will heed this song that calls them back.

Ideas and Activities

These are also great to do with children.


Walk the perimeter of your property to check that everything is in good order. Bring trash bags and do a general clean up of anything that is not where it should be.


Make a miniature maypole for your altar if you can not make a full size version


Get a new mirror, or use one you have already, and decorate it with ribbons and flowers for your bedroom.


Fill a cauldron or a large bowl with fresh flowers (wildflowers are best)


Braid bracelets out of white ribbons and give them as gifts to friends or family


Make a dish of fruits, berries, nuts and leave in the wood for the animals and fae folk to enjoy


Cut branches of fresh green from budding trees, or make garlands of flowers to decorate the home for this celebration. Hang them on the doors and windows early, so the may sunrise finds them there!


Create a special wreath for the top of the May Pole


Make "May Day" baskets of flowers and leave on friends and family's doorsteps as a surprise gift. Maybe they'll think a Faerie did it!


Create hair pieces and garlands for decorating your head or around your neck from flowers that are in bloom


Tie ribbons to trees to celebrate the coming of spring. Make a wish each time you tie a ribbon as it's good luck to wish for things on this day!


Bathe your face in the morning dew to retain youth.

The fair maid who, the first of May
Goes to the fields at break of day
And washes in dew from the hawthorn tree
Will ever after handsome be.


Other sources suggest using the dew found under oaks or on ivy leaves. Make a special wish as you wash your face in it or as you drink from a well before sunrise.


Dance the May Pole

During the Maypole dance, think about what you wish to weave into, or out of, your spirit. The Maypole is an ancient symbol of the male aspect of the Divine, while the ribbons are strands of life. Have small baskets of goodies around the room to symbolize the coming abundance and to enjoy after the Circle. Magic is hungry work. (from Trish Telesco's Victorian Grimoire)


Do a Beltane Day Spell for Health and Happiness


Plant your frost sensitive bulbs now. Use the wonderful Bulb Planting Chant below.

Silver Fox

"It is all true, it is not true. The more I tell you, the more I shall lie. What is story but jesting Pilate's cry. I am not paid to tell you the truth."
Jane Yolen; The Storyteller

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