Lord of Summer Fires
A blog on Bealtaine / May Day to fire your faith Seems a strange season to be starting fires. The beginning of May, or Bealtaine in Irish, is greeted with the ancient Celtic festival of the same name. The rites and rituals to greet the start of summer include burning fires, symbolic of the return of the sun in the brighter half of the year. People joined their cattle in walking through such fires to protect them from evils and bad luck for the season ahead. Ashes from the fire were sprinkled on the crops to keep them from harm. To me this feels somewhat strange on a number of levels. Yes to the burning of fires in the darker end of the year, to brighten the darkening sense of doom and to protect from the evils and ills that would greet the winter ahead. What need of these in summer’s brightness? More fitting the flowery displays that were crafted, with fiery yellow colours of primrose and gorse thought to be especially powerful, in protecting against any fairies with ill inten