Beltane is one of those holidays that my friends and I make a huge deal out of. I swear we add new traditions and activities each year!
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We do some cooking:
Everyone brought something they want to put in a soup (or whatever they have in their kitchen). Then when we get together we put it in a huge pot of water with seasonings and let it heat up on the oven for an hour or two while we do other stuff (like the May Pole)
Fruity chocolate oatmeal cakes (Refer to the first part of this post to find out some traditional customs.)
Here is a recipe I followed:
3 parts boiling water, 2 parts dry oatmeal, 1 part butter
~place all together and let cool while mixing the remaining ingredients into separate bowl:
1 part sugar, 1 and 1/2 part brown sugar, 2 parts flour, teaspoon baking soda, teaspoon cinnamon, pinch nutmeg,
2 eggs (for a square cake pan size), teaspoon vanilla, desired fruit and chocolate
~mix together, add with boiled stuff, pour in buttered pan and bake at 350 for 40 min.
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May Pole fun:
We made ours out of a 9ft pvc pipe. Every year we just add on top to the last year’s ribbons and strings.
I wrote a song to sing while we weaved and danced:
Here we go around the pole again
Here we go a world without end
Here we go a fire we will spin
Here we go where lovers do begin
~Cicada (will add notes sometime later)
Beltane Wreath Craft
Then we ate and made a Beltane wreath that we can put up on our houses every year:
Tulie brought the materials: ribbon, dowel rods, crystals, fabric flowers, wreaths and hot glue gun.
Magic
As Beltane is a holiday of sacred conception, we conceived of something in our own personal lives to manifest for this year during ritual… We took salt dough and molded an effigy of our particular need and, as we all are women, we used each other’s wombs as the altar. I won’t get into too much more detail here, but I will show a picture of our dough baking in the Beltane fire in a cast iron skillet!
The energy was getting a bit high and I was beginning to get into a heavy trance so the rest is kind of remembered in that dreamlike fondness.
Fire Offering: tobacco, mullen, juniper and nose of dog 🙂
We really focused on healing the earth, weather communication and blessings for the crops… which I may or may not have done cartwheels in the middle of the ritual in. 🙂
A curious neighbor then came up to us and we all squeeled in delight when we got him to jump the fire. We needed that masculine energy so this was a very good thing. And it was also a very good thing when it started to rain.. because it made him depart to leave us witches to do some spirit work.
Blessings Everyone!!!!!