Beltane/May Day

THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism

https://atheopaganism.org/2018/04/22/hows-that-maypole-thing-work/

Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at [e-mail].

S4E15 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm one of your host Yucca,

Mark: And I'm the other one, mark.

Yucca: and today we have another holiday episode, so welcome to the next spring holiday for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere.

Mark: Yeah, and of course we're gonna talk about all the different things we might call that holiday. But this, this episode will drop on May day. Which is May 1st and is kind of the traditional day for celebrating this. As always, we view these holidays as more of like, kind of a week window, you know, seven days, give or take.

So if you have to do it on a Sunday or on a Saturday, that's all fine. Don't have to be super, super precise about it.

Yucca: Right. There's no, you know, cosmic being with a clipboard, keeping track of how on time you were. So, yeah. So, yeah, let's talk about names. So Mayday Beltane is another very common name for it.

Mark: Which is a Scottish derivation of what was originally an Irish language word, which is

Yucca: Which is the month of May, I

Mark: Yes. It's the month of May.

Yucca: yeah. So it's the beginning of the celebration of going into, into May what do you call it, mark?

Mark: Well, I call it mayday unless you're talking about in the summer, i in the Southern Hemisphere, in which case calling a day in November, mayday is probably counterintuitive. What I call it then instead is

oh, I think it was summer Tide. I think that was it.

Yucca: Some are tied. Okay, so you live in the Northern Hemisphere, but if you were in the Southern Hemisphere, that's the name that, that sounds like it

Mark: would, that I would use. Yeah. Because obviously it's pretty weird to call something in November, may day.

Yucca: I have.

Mark: And the reason that I do that is that I try to avoid all of the cultural names for. The holidays. And the reason for that is that when crafting atheopagan, I deliberately wanted it not to be rooted in any particular cultural tradition.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: I wanted it to be something that was modern and belongs to everybody who chooses to practice it. And that didn't have any cultural appropriation in it.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: that's,

Yucca: And of

Mark: why I went that way.

Yucca: there are plenty of folks who are atheopagan who do have a really strong tie. To a particular culture and do then apply some of the traditional names from their culture to that. But when you were creating it, you didn't have that tie right. And you wanted to make it so that it was, that it was welcome to everybody, right.

That

Mark: Right, and well, and, and you need to bear in mind that when I was creating it, I was only creating it for myself.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: It, it, the, the whole idea that this was gonna turn into a movement was really a surprise to me. And I don't have a strong feeling of cultural derivation from anywhere. My antecedents came here 400 years ago, and any englishness that they had has long since been lost.

So I just feel like an American settler who doesn't have a claim to being indigenous to this land. But has a primary relationship with this land anyway. So I didn't want to use words like Beltane and SA and those kinds of words because they're derived from other places that I didn't have a, a connection with.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: So I call it mayday. And then there are the, the variations of beta or bina. Are there any other names that you're familiar with?

Yucca: Were you second spring? Yeah, but I haven't, it's not like some of the other holidays that have, you know, 15 different names. Usually I just hear either Mayday or Beltane. Those are the ones that are pretty common. And I'll end up using those. I'm not a particularly verbal person. Right. So I don't really associate the holidays in a strong way with a name.

The, I will use names to communicate with other people, but when I'm thinking about it inside of me, I don't think in words. So it, it isn't, it doesn't have that, which is funny because I talk and I write for a living, but, but inside it's, it, none of it is attached to words. It's attached to feelings and to smells and experiences.

It's a, it's a very different ex interior experience and it's but it's really about, it's, it's spring is what it really is for me. Right. There's different, we split the year up into eight seasons in my family instead of four seasons. It's really more like, well, there's different ways. There's also, we also split it into two seasons, right?

There's summer and winter. There's the, the the hots and the light side of the year, and the cold and the dark side of the year, and then there's the official four seasons of the calendar. But those don't really match with what's happening in our environment. But the eight seem to work a little bit better.

And this is sort of the, the midpoint of the second spring, which really is more like the spring that, that most people would picture for a spring. The spring where you have warm days, but little bits of chili nights and the flowers are coming back and the, there's insects. The hummingbirds have just arrived back.

Right. So it, it feels very spring now for us.

Mark: Great.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah. I, when it comes to, to seasons, I mean there we have something similar here. We have the gold time and the green time from about July through December is the golden time when all of the hills turned gold because all of the grasses have gone to sea, then died off, and then. When the rains come in the winter everything turns emerald green and it stays that way until about June.

Yucca: How beautiful. Mm.

Mark: so there's the golden time and the green time. That's one way of dividing the year. And then there's the dark side, dark half and the light half, which. They're sort of offset from the gold time and the the green time. When it comes to four seasons, I really prefer the way that they count them in Ireland, which is that this holiday is the beginning of summer.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: Rather than being the middle of spring, which is how it's figured in the official calendar of the United States. And the main reason for that is that there's all this wonderful early music about May and, and the beginning of summer because that apparently is how it was calculated back in the 16th century and earlier.

And I just love singing that stuff.

Yucca: And that's what works for that climate too, right? For he here. It really doesn't make sense to say it's the beginning of summer because it's still freezing at night. Right?

Mark: Well, and, and for you, I mean, summer is something that's unimaginable in Ireland. It's, it's so much hotter and so much drier than anyone who's never left Ireland has ever seen.

Yucca: Yes. I mean, we we're not too bad in terms of the heat, but compared to what, what they experience, it's a completely, it might as well be a different planet.

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Yucca: Right. Just in terms of how different climates are

Mark: So all of this goes to one of the principles, well, no, I won't say principles cuz we've got official 13 principles, blah, blah, blah. One of the ideas that, one of the concepts that that we have in atheopagan, which is adapting your own wheel of the year. I mean, you're, you're hearing from just me and Yucca and tho those are two of, you know, millions of possible different ways of parsing the year, depending on where you live and what's happening in the natural world.

So in

Yucca: are important to you? Right. Which of those things do you focus on and which things don't matter as much?

Mark: Exactly, exactly. So and so, really encourage listeners, you know, if you're in the process of organizing your practice and kind of figuring out how you want to do what you're doing you know, be thinking about that for yourself. You, you can decide for yourself when you think spring starts and when you think summer starts.

You can decide what to call the holidays.

Yucca: And you can change.

Mark: yes.

Yucca: if you did something, you came up with, you painted this beautiful wheel and you put these labels on it, and now a few years later you're going, mm, that doesn't really match with what I'm experiencing now or what I'm valuing. You can change,

Mark: Yes, that's, that's what post-its are for.

Yucca: Yeah, exactly.

Mark: So, You know, just to put in, put in a word for people doing their d i y spiritual practice, you know, that is something that's really important in, in Ethiopia, paganism and naturalistic paganism generally, you know, we're not doing this to appease any invisible creatures. Were not doing this to be in conformity with some invisible forces.

We're doing this for our own wellbeing and our own happiness and our own celebration and our own wisdom and learning. Right? So that's a thing you can do and really encourage you to, to take that up. What are some other themes that we might talk about for this time of year?

Yucca: Well, this time of year often has, is a celebration of sexuality,

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Yucca: The young adult, the sexuality that that kind of beautiful fertility all of that stuff is, is often a theme that people look at for this time of year.

Mark: Right, right. There's that old that old poem. Hooray. Hooray. The 1st of May, outdoor Sex Begins Today. Which of course goes back to the old tradition of going a main because it's finally warm enough that you're not going to freeze to death

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: in the forests of Europe. So this was sort of a loophole practice where.

Young couples could go into the woods ostensibly to be collecting flowers, right? But the reality was that they were being unchaperoned, and so it was giving them some private time to themselves. One. Story that I've heard. I don't know how true it is, but there's a story that children that were born of mayday couplings were named Greenwood or Green,

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: Which I don't know whether it's true or not, but my name is green. It's an interesting story, so I like it.

Yucca: Yeah, I've heard that story as well, actually. Yeah. Maybe that's why there's so many greens in the world.

Mark: Could very well be because we're not all related with one another. By any means. There are all these independent, freestanding branches of greens out there.

Yucca: Mm-hmm. I've always liked color names. Find it very fun, but there's some that you don't see. I, I've never seen purple as a last name for instance, but White, brown, green. Yep. Gray

Mark: violet as a, as a

Yucca: first name. Yeah.

Mark: The flower, I think, rather than the color.

Yucca: mm-hmm. I've known some Indigos as first names as well and some indies, but I'm not sure if those are Henry's.

Or if those are, were Indigos, but yeah.

Mark: Never known a yellow. I've never known anybody who was named yellow, either first or last name,

Yucca: I don't think I have either. Yeah. Hmm.

Mark: and of course you have William of Orange, and you know all those folks.

Yucca: Yeah. But I like color names. I love tree names, flower names.

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Yucca: Yeah. Star names as well.

Mark: Yeah. I, I, I like all those natural world names. They, they, they seem, they seem better connected to me somehow. Yeah. So themes, yes. Sexuality is a big one for this time of year. And. It's funny, a member of our community was saying that he was doing Google searches on on Beltane, and he said that all the results that were coming up with were how to celebrate Beltane or mayday without sex.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: this, this sort of overreaction of, you know, and, and I think that some of that is because of the rise of consent culture, that you know, that we want to have comfortable environments where nobody feels pressured to do anything and everything is all, you know, oriented around consent, which of course is what we want.

But that

Yucca: various ages, right?

Mark: right,

Yucca: That might not be something that you'd be comfortable bringing your pre-teen to or your, you know, seven year old or something.

Mark: Right, exactly. You've got families that are, you know, that still wanna celebrate the holiday and, you know, can maybe incorporate other, you know, sort of quasi sexual themes like fertility, right? Like planting vegetables or, you know, whatever it is.

Yucca: Or flowers, right?

Mark: planting flowers,

Yucca: Flowers are the reproductive organs for these other beings. Yeah.

Mark: explaining how flowers work, why, why flowers exist. Because in the natural world right now, at least in the Northern hemisphere, in most places, it's an orgy going on out there. You've got, you know, all of these, these plants waving their sexy parts at one another and bees busily stir, you know, running around all the pollinators, running around.

Yucca: And there's just clouds of pollen. I dunno if this happens where you are, but we'll just see these golden clouds going by of just, and I don't have any allergies, so it doesn't bother me, but I know it makes some people miserable to.

Mark: I'm, I'm in. I'm the same way. I don't have allergies either, but particularly when the Acacia here in February and then when the oak trees start to bloom in May, there are people here who are just miserable.

Yucca: Yeah. For us it's the Junipers. And then Chaisa, which I think in other areas is called Rabbit Bush. It's this beautiful bush that we have with the golden flowers. Those are the ones that are the worst. And there's isn't really any time of year that in the spring, summer or fall in which there isn't some sort of.

Pollen. So it can be kind of a miserable experience for folks who have strong allergies. A lot of people will just be allergic to one particular thing, and then the other ones don't bug them,

Mark: Right. So if you are going out to have outdoor sex, first of all, make sure you have privacy. Secondly, take your antihistamine.

Yucca: And maybe something a like a picnic blanket or something like that.

Mark: Yeah, because there's all kinds of stickers and bugs and All kinds of stuff. Yeah. So, that's one of the major themes of this time of year. And as you mentioned as I reckon the Wheel of the year, one of the aspects is the, the developing arc of a human life. And so this station on the wheel of the year is that of young adulthood.

You know, the, the late teens, early twenties all that sort of passion and juice and fearlessness and cluelessness and and horniness, right? All of those are, you know, things that are right in there with that population of people. And so all of those kind of passionate, creative, colorful, excited kinds of qualities become things that we can fold into our rituals and our celebrations.

Yucca: Yeah, it's a fun time of year.

Mark: It is. Yeah, it is. It's a great time of year. What else, what are some other themes? I know that you have different sort of families of creatures that you recognize. What is the one for this time of year?

Yucca: This is actually the annual plants and the early succession beings. So this really is the, you know, the. Flowers and the grasses and the, you know, things that we think of as weedy species that are coming in when there's been some sort of disturbance that are coming to cover up that bare ground and grow as quick as it can.

The dandelions, all of those sorts of things. And that a lot has to do with what's happening in the environment around me. This is when the annuals are That this is when they're starting to grow. This is also when planting is beginning. Right. So for annual gardens it's still, we really shouldn't be putting our annuals out for another week or two cuz we'll still get a frost or so.

But you know, this is when the leafy greens can be out. This is when you've got the stuff indoors that, you know, should be our tomatoes are, you know, two feet tall waiting to go out, you know, that kind of thing. So that's, that's the, the big theme for us. And then of course, it's also. There's just, you can finally be all the way out, In the, in the earlier spring you could start getting out, but there'd be days where you couldn't work outside. Now, The wind has died down. We can eat lunch at, we can eat our meals outside every day. It's the back, it's the back outside. It's the, so I guess that is kind of the summer's beginning part for us, even though it's not really summer, but it's the, that part of the year that's the outside part of the year has really begun.

Mark: Yeah, and I think that in the historical stuff, that's a lot of what it is. It's like, okay, it's finally okay to go outside again. The weather has eased enough and I mean, you know, you look at Northern Europe and they're definitely still getting freezes at this time of year, but the problem wasn't so much the freezing as it was the snowing or

Yucca: The wetness, you know.

Mark: Yeah.

All that kind of stuff. So, Yeah, I, I think that that whole idea of returning to the outdoors is really kind of bound up in this holiday. We,

Yucca: Oh, and all the baby animals are here.

Mark: right, right.

Yucca: you know, the, the baby animals in terms of the wild ones, but also, you know, the, the calves have been born, the lambs have been born, the little chicks are here. You know, all of that. They're, they're all here.

Mark: piglets and all of them. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's definitely, you know, a time of year when, you know, this whole reproductive thing is really kind of up. So. So that whole creativity, fertility thing becomes something that you can really fold into your practices and rituals. Because the, I mean, there's lots of ways to do that, right?

It doesn't have to only be like physical reproduction. It can be all kinds of creative endeavors that, that bear some kind of fruit, whether it's throwing a pot or painting a canvas, or writing a book, or, you know, Planting a garden, whatever that is. It's still something that feels like a fertile expression.

Yucca: Yeah. I, I really appreciate you bringing that up because, Fertility doesn't just have to be a physical, literally reproducing thing that it's a idea that is, is much broader than that. Now, that's a component of it, although funnily enough, this is not human reproductive or this is not our season, right?

Humans can be born any time of year, but humans tend to be born in the late summer, early fall for whatever climate they're in that just

Mark: sense cuz that's when all the food is available.

Yucca: Right. Well, and backtrack to what was happening during what time of year was it when the baby was conceived, you didn't have much else to be doing at the time.

Mark: That's right.

Yucca: Right. So it makes sense biologically, but it, that's not, it's just very interesting that it, our reproductive cycle isn't matching up with what we see with so much of the rest of nature.

Mark: Right, right. Well, and I mean, that gets you into the whole, you know, the mystery of menstruation versus a heat cycle and. You know, those are so different and why are they different? And you know, there's a lot of unanswered questions evolutionarily about why humans are the particular way they are. But we don't have answers to them.

So we have conjectures, but that's about it.

Yucca: Just pretty interesting ones. Right? And that a lot of that probably has to do with there being so little dimorphism between the sexes

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Yucca: compared to other other apes and other primates in general.

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Yucca: So it's a fascinating field.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. That was your tension for today. We hope you enjoyed it.

Yucca: Yes. But why don't we talk about some of the. Rituals and practices that we have or ones that we've heard that are quite common, kind of give some inspiration for the folks listening.

Mark: Sure. Well, first and foremost, the most famous one, of course is the maple. And the May pole is a big phallic pole stuck in the ground with ribbons, depending down from the top of it. Usually there's some kind of a crown full of flowers that's put over the top that has the ribbons flowing down. And then there's a dance that you do around the may pole, which weaves the ribbons around on the pole, and it's, it's really fun to do.

It's a very joyous activity and it results in this very beautiful creation. On the, on the pole. I've danced a lot. I made poles in my time and it doesn't get old. It really, it's just, it's, it's like a spiral dance at, at Hallows. It's just one of those things that's really a beautiful old European tradition that is just, it's a Kuiper.

It's, it's one I really like.

Yucca: Yeah. We were laughing before, right before hitting play. Cause it's saying that we haven't done one of those in my family and I was imagining what would happen where I think my oldest would be able to do it, but my youngest would think it would be so funny to run the other way and just tie everybody to the pole.

The way dogs tie, you know, like will run around a pole on the leash and, you know, tie their human up. I'm. Positive that that's what would happen just almost instantly. So we don't do a pole, but we do take colorful ribbons and tie them into a tree that we have, and we see those ribbons blowing in the wind and fluttering around and it's.

It's really very beautiful and it's exciting too to go and tie them and probably some of them are getting snatched by the birds too, to incorporate into their nests, so,

Mark: Yeah. That is very consistent with an old Irish tradition, which is the may bush,

Yucca: mm-hmm.

Mark: In which ribbons are tied into a bush. And there are, there's, there's a wish or something that goes with it. I, I, I don't remember the specific details, but It's a lot of the, the lore there is fairy lore, so it may have something to do with appeasing fairies or something like that, but it's, it's an old tradition that I know some people are still practicing. I. We, my partner Neman, I have done hanging of ribbons in trees before when we haven't had a maple celebration or even when we do, cuz we have these ribbon things that we can hang in trees. Last year, the Northern California Affinity Group for Ethiopia Paganism which calls itself the live oak circle.

We had a, a maple without the pole.

Yucca: Okay.

Mark: we had a, a ring of metal, which was actually from a mason jar. And then we tied our ribbons onto that with a wish for the year. And then holding our ribbons. We danced around in a circle, so it was like, You

Yucca: Oh, cool.

Mark: spokes on a wheel. Yeah, yeah, it was fun.

It was really a fun thing. And I still have the thing with the ribbons on it. It's on my focus right now. And we are meeting tomorrow actually to do a, a real may poll. The couple of members of the, the group got aole and stand for it and all the ribbons and everything. So we'll be doing an actual may pole tomorrow, and I'm excited about that.

Yucca: Now I'm remembering some. Did you have a story about a PVC pipe? As a

Mark: Oh, yes, that was a problem.

Yucca: is that what didn't work out so

Mark: No it, it was the, the maple was constructed of one of those heavy cast iron Umbrella stands, outdoor umbrella stands. So that was the stand for it. And then the pole itself was PVC pipe with a, with a wire assembly crown at the top, which had the, the ribbons coming from it.

And the problem was that, The tension as people were dancing around and weaving it around, the tension was stronger on one side of the pole than on the other. And so the whole pole began to band over and I ended up having to kind of stand there and hold the thing upright. While people were continuing to dance around it in order for it to work properly.

But the next year, the, the same person that had brought that napole had gotten rebar to put inside the pvc. So it didn't do that anymore.

Yucca: Alright.

Mark: But you know, one of the things that's challenging a about a maple is not everybody has a place to store an eight foot or

Yucca: Or, or greater, yeah.

Mark: you know, telephone, pole sized pole.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: And so these, you know, using these heavy bases so that the thing doesn't topple over. And then some kind of a rigid e either wood, if you can get a big enough dowel, like a four inch diameter dowel or five inch diameter dow or even P V C will work, but you've gotta put something really solid inside it so it doesn't bend around.

Yucca: Yeah,

Mark: And it's still fun to dance around.

Yucca: I wonder if, you know those basketball hoops that you fill the base up with water?

Mark: Yeah. That's a great idea.

Yucca: right? You just take the, the hoop off. That might be something. I mean, that's still kind of big to, to store, but it's easier to store that, that you can just leave outside under a tarp or

Mark: Well, yeah. Or you put the basketball hoop back on it and shoot basketball.

Yucca: That too, right?

Mark: yeah, so it, you know, it could be a multi-use kind of thing. Little outdoor exercise and, and then your maple in the spring. That's a great idea.

Yucca: Yeah, because there, I mean, it's gonna depend on where you are, but you know. Yeah.

Mark: And I wrote a blog post a long time ago called What's Up With That May Poll Thing, or something like that. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. It explains everything you need to know about how to do a May poll ceremony and how the dance works and all that kind of stuff. And trust me as someone who is. For whatever reason, whether it's actually a brain development thing or whether it's a psychological thing incapable of learning dance steps, you can still do this one. All you have to do is just walk and raise the ribbon and then lower the ribbon and raise the ribbon and lower the ribbon. It's, it's really easy to do.

Yucca: That's good to hear cuz I am terrible at beats and remembering dance moves and all of that. Okay, well and what about some non maple. Traditions. I know there's giving flowers, baskets of gifts and flowers.

Mark: Even just little posey, little bouquets, leaving them on the doorstep of your neighbors is a thing that that is an, an old tradition gathering dew on May morning and washing

Yucca: rumor of such a thing.

Mark: have you.

Yucca: Yes. Do I hear it's moisture or something in the

Mark: Oh yes. Well, yeah, you, you, you don't have dew where you are. What you have is very thirsty soil that will suck up any molecule moisture.

Yucca: I'm sorry. Continue. Yes.

Mark: but anyway, you know, if you're in a place that does have Morning Dew, then you can gather that and wash your face with it. And it's supposed to re pre preserve beauty and. you from aging or something like that? I'm not sure, but it's supposed to be a nice thing to do.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: And it's traditional for Morris dancers in England to dance the sun up on May morning.

Yucca: Hmm.

Mark: I, on Monday, I'm actually going at five 30 in the morning for our local Morris team to watch them dance up the sun.

Yucca: Nice.

Mark: Which is,

Yucca: that may be when many of you are listening right now, mark is maybe dancing up the sun right now.

Mark: that could be, no, I'm not dancing. I'm observing.

Yucca: oh, excuse me.

Mark: I, I, I tried learning how to Morris dance and I was as bad at that as I was at waltzing, so just didn't work. So, Those are all, and, and actually that's a really wonderful thing cuz you've got, you know, people with the horns and they're clacking them together or sticks or swords or whatever it is.

And it all seems very old. Like an old, old tradition. What else?

Yucca: Paper flowers, that's one that we do, right? And we put things in our windows because we have a lot of birds around here. And so we put like kind of sticker things. And so in the winter we have paper snowflakes that the kids make and we will be trading those out for paper flowers. And that's just so that the birds don't.

Fly in because they have a, a, I'm sure this happens everywhere, but they have a really hard time seeing the windows. So we put little things into the windows so that they know, hey, this is not an open door. You can't fly through it and, you know, smack yourself. So, but paper flowers are just a lot of fun.

For that. And all around the house. And that's another great thing to give to neighbors too, is make some cute little paper flowers. And some people do really elaborate, you know, make roses and things like that. We just cut out petals and blue, stick 'em together and, you know, make our pretty, you know, rainbow flower.

And this is our all pink flower and our all blue flower. And how does that flower have polka dots? But it does. So.

Mark: Yeah, so generally speaking, flowers, ribbons, and expressions of love.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: You just, you, you can't go wrong this time of year with those three things, you know,

Yucca: And seeds.

Mark: seeds. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true.

Yucca: So it was just a fun, fun time of year.

Mark: It is. Yeah. Yeah. I really enjoy it. Yeah, so I'm excited actually to have a couple of things to do this year. Last year there really wasn't much to do. The community that I used to do a Beltane ceremony with, well, a whole weekend celebration It's kind of having some problems right now, so I'm, I'm staying away.

What else were we, I think that may be about it.

Yucca: Yeah, I'm sure we'll think of some things as soon as we hit stop,

Mark: Right, of course,

Yucca: yeah.

Mark: as always. But yeah really encourage you to get out of the house and away from the screens at this time of year. You know, go see some nature, go, you know, smell some flowers. There's a lot going on that's really lovely right now. And you know, I, and I hope that you'll have a ample chance to enjoy it because, Like everything, it goes away and then a new cycle has come and there's new stuff to enjoy, but it's not the same.

Yucca: Yeah. Well, thank you everyone for joining us. We hope you have a wonderful mayday Beltane second spring summer tide, whatever you call it, and we'll see you next week.

Mark: Yeah. Thanks so much everybody, and thank you Yucca.