Beltane

Old Irish Beltaine; Irish Bealtaine

See it on the Wheel of the Sky

When it comes round

North of the equator: traditionally Sat, 05/01/2027. The Sun reaches 15° Taurus, the astronomical Beltane, on .

South of the equator, where the seasons are reversed, the Wheel of the Sky keeps Beltane in the same season, half a year later or earlier: traditionally Sun, 11/01/2026, and astronomically when the Sun reaches 15° Scorpio, on .

The fire festivals sit halfway between a solstice and an equinox: 15° of a fixed sign. The traditional day comes first; the Sun reaches the halfway point a few days later. Worked out with the same Sun calculation as the calendar and the Wheel of the Sky.

The festival on May 1 that began summer in the Gaelic year, when cattle were driven between two fires before going out to summer pasture.

In history

Beltane is first mentioned in a glossary attributed to Cormac, bishop of Cashel and king of Munster, who was killed in 908. Cormac describes cattle being driven between two bonfires on Beltane to protect them from disease before they went out to summer pasture, and he derives the name from a god Bel, or Bil, and Old Irish tene, “fire”; despite linguistic difficulties, a number of 20th-century scholars kept versions of this, linking the first part with the Gaulish god Belenos (Britannica). The Wooing of Emer glosses it as “a favouring fire,” for “the druids used to make two fires with great incantations, and to drive the cattle between them against the plagues, every year.”

The Irish divided the year into two main seasons, winter from Samain on November 1 and summer from Beltaine on May 1, and both were thought to be times when the bounds between the human and supernatural worlds were erased: on May Eve witches and fairies roamed freely, and people took measures against their enchantments. Many important events in early Irish lore take place on Beltane, and it long remained a focus of folk tradition and tales in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man; other festivities included Maypole dances and cutting green boughs and flowers (Britannica).

In modern practice

In the modern Wheel of the Year, Beltane is the sabbat of April 30 or May 1 (Britannica, “Wicca”). The eight-festival Wheel of the Year itself is modern: Wicca, which emerged in England in the 1950s, typically keeps eight seasonal festivals, called sabbats, based on traditional celebrations drawn from different periods of British and Irish history, and many Wiccans in the Southern Hemisphere move them to fit their own seasons (Britannica, “Wicca”).

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