Celebrating Sabbats: Beltane
So until recently I knew nothing about Beltane except that it is May Day. I recall being taken to a village fete as a child by my Nana, and looking forward to seeing the older girls dancing with their ribbons around a May pole. I recall the traffic being terrible, with it being a bank holiday. I recall once winning a bottle of whiskey in a raffle, which my dad wouldn’t let me keep (and neither did he save it for my 18th birthday… a fact which I still resent a little, since he laughed a sneery laugh when I begged him to do just that).
I know that people referred to it as spring Festival, but could never really understand why. You see, I knew that midsummer was falling in the middle of June, and that mid-spring in my mind was the equinox. So therefore, surely May Day was the marking point of the beginning of the Summer? As far as I was concerned, all the seasonal posters we had on school walls were wrong. They seemed to think that August was summer. Even I could see that the leaves were turning gold and falling already, before the summer holidays were even halfway through. I knew without a doubt that nature started growing in February…that no way could February be classified winter. I felt as though a massive mistake had been made in the Gregorian Calendar.
So when I came across the Pagan Calendar decades later, it was like a massive victory for my ego. I had been right all along, and here was proof! And now, as I wrangle for the TABI Blog, and celebrate by creating a new spread for each Sabbat, I receive the opportunity to look a little deeper into each of these celebrations. But Beltane isn’t yielding as much new information as the others I have done to date…. it all seems to be about Fire and Sex. Now, I’m fine with both, but how to make a spread from it?
Some of the basics I have come across so far are: procreation (I understand that it’s the done thing to stay out all night with a partner, married or not, and make love); watch virgins dancing around a phallic pole; light a fire, to represent burning passion; bake a cake to honour the Fertility Gods. Do you see where this seems to be going?
So, since we seem to be talking about passion and lust, it seems as good a time as any to go and get that Thoth Tarot deck out of my cupboard (my mentor suggested a good place would be at the back, out of sight… but I just can’t get it out of my mind) again. If there’s ever a deck that represents LUST and PASSION, that is it.
Thoth Tarot
So I laid this spread to see how I could best work through Beltane:
9. Union: How can we pull together?
8. The God: What is manifesting?
7. The Goddess: What is within?
6. Honour: How can we honour the Gods?
5. New growth: What should we nurture?
4. Fertility: What is abundant right now?
3. Fire: What do we need to transform?
2. The Faery: Which mischief do we need to get past?
1. The Virgin: What is offering a fresh start?
I did of course try to read these cards for myself, and simply found it draining. The cards didn’t seem to make any sense for me in the positions I had created. So I’m not sure… is this because the spread simply doesn’t work? I don’t like to think that, because I have this solid belief that the Tarot will tell you what you need to know, and there is no right or wrong way to ask it.
So perhaps it is the cards themselves? Maybe the deck isn’t actually suited for a spread that should be full of joy and positive growth? Or maybe it’s just a personal thing… maybe the cards are too honest for me to be able to interpret them from an unbiased point of view? I just don’t know.
So… I’m keeping what I wrote to myself for now, in the hope that you might chime in (use the comments) to tell me what YOU think it all means. Please ?
Editor’s note: Thank you to our readers for responding to this post with your take on the readings. Unfortunately, it seems the posts were too long to upload as comments, so we have decided to publish these responses as individual blog posts. Please do wander over and take a look; and of course we’d appreciate your thoughts on these posts too!
Celebrating Beltane: Reading the Spread by Emma Sunerton-Burl
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