Happy Beltane! It's May Day! The Celtic Pagans celebrated the arrival of the summer months which represent the gift of increased confidence and vitality, and increased social times as the weather grows nicer. It is the time for celebrating our essential eros, our blood surging in our veins, and the joys of youthfulness. In the human growth cycle it represents adolescence and young adulthood when the blood is hot and thinking is impestuous. When we learn the most by being bold and making lots of mistakes.
I have a Celtic Devotional by Caitlin Matthews in which she has song for Beltane:
"I am the calm, I am the quickening
I am the intoxication and the force,
I am the silence, I am the singer,
I am the stallion galloping to its source.
I am the bright pavilion and the feasting,
I am the wedding couple and the bed,
I am the morning chorus and the heartbeat,
I am the goal to which all paths are lead."
Feel the sun on your face today. Even if its shining through the clouds - know that summer is on its way and be glad! Do something joyful and impestuous for your self or someone else. Let your heart dance. Let your body dance! Know that the seasons return to us every year to remind us that we are constantly renewed, that we can grow older without growing old, that it is never too late to feel young.
On another warm, red note - I re-read the Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler the other day. This was the V-Day edition with a forward by Gloria Steinham. I learned something from the forward that I then googled and learned a little more about. The Great Mother Goddess of India - Kali, who represents both birth and mother love as well as destruction and mother rage has a secondary title, Cunti, which represents her creative force, her source of power, her Self-ness, the very essence of who she is. This was the name and form she was worshiped as in Tantrism, whose central tenet is that man reaches spiritual fulfillment through sexual and emotional union with woman's superior energy. Can you guess which horrific, filthy, degrading word come from this name for God to describe a woman's genitals, and by default any woman who was not acting in a way in which men thought was appropriate?
This makes me laugh because no matter how hard patriarchy tries, it absolutely cannot kill the goddess within. It makes me sad because it succeeded for centuries to degrade and humiliate women with the very word that should have told them how beautiful and powerful they are. So, on this first day of the Celtic summer season, I'm going to celebrate my inner Indian goddess by being a total cunt. Not a mean-spirited, bitchy, selfish woman but one who knows she is beautiful and powerful. Today I exercise my mother love and creativity for my self, my family and the whole world.
Have the Reddest Day Ever,
In Grace,
Kell
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