Date/Time
Date(s) - November 9, 2024 - November 10, 2024
8:00 am - 2:00 pm
Location
Rocky Creek Campsite
Categories
Come and celebrate all that is Beltane at our Witche Market.
The Beltane fire festival welcomes the abundance of the fertile earth and is celebrated with bonfires, Maypoles, burning of the Wickerman, dancing, and a feast, with its roots in European traditions, Beltane is observed by many of today’s Pagans and others as a time for performing rituals
The Celts divided the year into two main seasons. Winter, the beginning of the year fell on November 1 (Irish: Samain) and midyear and summer on May 1 (Irish: Beltaine), opposite for us here in the Southern Hemisphere.
These two junctures were thought to be critical periods when the bonds between the human and supernatural worlds were temporarily erased; on May Eve (southern hemisphere) witches and fairies roamed freely.
Beltane celebrates the coming new life and growth. Observed on October 31−November 10 in the Southern Hemisphere.
May 1 is Beltane in the Northern Hemisphere, November 1 in the Southern Hemisphere, and on that day we honour nature’s oldest love story. Beltane means bright fire, and in earth-based traditions, it represents the symbolic marriage of the God and Goddess and their eternal embrace.
According to ancient lore, the two have been separated all winter long, and their glorious reunion on Beltane is celebrated with food, drink, and multi-coloured maypoles to symbolize female energies wrapping themselves around the male form. The entire world comes alive with new life and bright colours to celebrate this union of the Divine Feminine with the Divine Masculine.
This holiday is a celebration that honours the divine balance in the union of masculine and feminine. Having reached maturity after their long, wintry separation, Lord and Lady can now come together as one and give birth to new life, ideas, passions, projects, and wonderful expressions of unbridled sensuality.
Fires are the traditional staple and symbol of Beltane. Traditionally, pastoral herds were driven through two fire posts for blessing and purification. The young, unmarried men would then leap over the bonfire and wish for a wife, while young women would leap to ensure their fertility.
Beltane is a day to embrace the divinity of our sexual nature. Like Samhain, the opposite holiday on the Wheel of the Year, this is also a time when the veil between the realms is thin, and it is an ideal time to communicate with the spirit world, especially nature spirits.