It's also Beltane or May Eve (April 30/May 1).
Beltane is a Celtic word which means ‘fires of Bel’ (Bel was a Celtic deity). It's a fire festival that celebrates of the coming of summer and the fertility of the coming year. In springtime, at the beginning of the farming calendar, everybody hoped for a fruitful year for families and fields.
Festivities generally involved fire which was thought to cleanse, purify and increase fertility. Cattle were often passed between two fires and the properties of the flame and the smoke were seen to ensure the fertility of the herd. Fire is still the most important element of most Beltane celebrations and there are many traditions associated with it. It is seen to have purifying qualities which cleanse and revitalise. People, leap over the Beltane fire to bring good fortune, fertility (of mind, body and spirit) and happiness through the coming year. The largest Beltane celebrations in the UK are held in Edinburgh. Fires are lit at night and wild festivities carry on until dawn. But all around the UK fires are lit and private celebrations are held amongst covens and groves (groups of Pagans) to mark the start of the summer.
Beltane rituals would often include courting, for example, young men and women collecting blossoms in the woods and lighting fires in the evening. These rituals would often lead to matches and marriages, either immediately in the coming summer or autumn. Today’s Pagans believe that at Beltane the God Bel achieves the strength and maturity to court and become lover to the Goddess.
Although what happens in the fields has lost its significance for most Pagans today, the creation of fertility is still an important issue. Because of its sexual imagery, the tradition of dancing round the maypole is still very popular with modern Pagans. Others see fertility as referring to the need for active and creative lives. We need fertile minds for our work, our families and our interests.
An excerpt from
Dark Brew
Kylah shut Ted’s den door. She
couldn’t bear to look at the spot where he gasped his last breath. His
presence, an imposing force, lingered. So did his scent, a blend of tobacco,
pine aftershave and manly sweat. Each reminder ripped into her heart like a
knife. Especially now with the funeral looming ahead, the eulogies, the
mournful organ hymns, the tolling bells . . .
These ceremonies should bring
closure, but they’d only prolong the agony of her grief. She wanted to remember
him alive for a while longer, wishing she could delay these morbid customs
until the hurt subsided.
Throughout the house, his essence
echoed his personality: the wine stain on the carpet, the heap of dirty shirts,
shorts and socks piled up in the laundry room, the spattered stove, his
fingerprints on the microwave. But she couldn’t bring herself to clean any of
it up. Painful as these remnants were, they offered a strange comfort. He still
lived here.
“I’ll find that murderer, Teddy,”
she promised him over and over, wandering from room to empty room, traces of
him lurking in every corner. “I’ll do everything in my power to make sure
justice is served. Another past life regression isn’t enough anymore. I know
what I have to do now. And I promise, it will never, ever happen again—in any
future life.”
She inhaled deeply and breathed him
in. “Go take a shower, Teddy.” She chuckled through her tears as the doorbell
rang. She cringed, breaking out in cold sweat when she saw the black sedan at
the curb.
“Not again.” No sense in hiding, so
she let the detectives in.
“Mrs. McKinley, we need your
permission to do a search and take some of your husband’s possessions from the
house,” Nolan said.
“What for?” She met his steely
stare. “I looked everywhere and found nothing.”
“Mrs. McKinley, the cupboard door
was open, four jars of herbs are missing, and the autopsy showed he died of
herb poisoning. Those herbs,” Nolan
added for emphasis, as if it had slipped her feeble mind. “Foxglove, mandrake,
hemlock—and an as-yet unidentified one,” he read from a notebook. “The M.E.
determined it was a lethal dose.”
Sherlock
Holmes got nothin’ on him, she thought.
“Where’s this cupboard, ma’am?”
Egan spoke up.
“Right there.” She pointed, its
door gaping exactly the way she’d found it that night. Nolan went over to it
and peered inside.
“Ma’am, it would be better if you
left the house for a half hour or so. Please leave a number where you can be
reached,” Egan ordered.
Nolan glanced down the hall. “Where
is your bedroom?”
What could they want in the
bedroom? “It’s at the top of the stairs on the right. But we didn’t sleep
together,” she offered, as if that would faze them. It didn’t.
After giving him her cell number,
she got into her car and drove to the beach.
An hour later, she let herself back
in and looked around. They’d taken the computer, her case of CDs, her thumb
drive, her remaining herb jars, Ted’s notebooks, and left her alone with one
horrible fact: This was now a homicide case and she was the prime
suspect.
Purchase DARK BREW
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