Shimmering inside the Budding Bloom
Story. Write. Transform. 4/25/25 Zoom with Stasha
“This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,
Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between
Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.
I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration
Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze
Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,
Faces of people streaming across my gaze.
And I, what fountain of fire am I among
This leaping combustion of spring?
My spirit is tossed
About like a shadow buffeted in the throng
Of flames, a shadow that's gone astray, and is lost.
—D.H. Lawrence, The Enkindled Spring
Art: Sarah Jarrett
Let us story into the weave of May. To thread new stories. To braid new songs.
May. The merry month. The Fairy month. The month of May-ing.
Beltaine: Where Fire Walks the Blossoming Earth
Before names were written down, before gods were divided into pantheons and prayers, there was fire.
It was not fire of industry, destruction or war. It was the flame that leapt between lovers, the heat that rose in the sap of trees, the hearth that called and enkindled the soul back into body after the long forgetting of winter.
Beltaine—Bright Fire. Threshold festival. Gate. Sacred marriage between Earth and Sky, flesh and spirit, wildness and form.
Photo: Edinburgh Beltane festival
The Bones Beneath the Festival
Long before the Celts, there were those who honored the turning of the seasons not as calendar events, but as sacred conversations between what is dying and what is being born. The Earth gave secrets in bare branches and resplendent blooms. We listened. We tended. We read and trusted the Book of Nature. There was no fake news.
At Beltane, the Earth is abloom. The trees are crowned in green. The animals are in heat. Life rushes —a tide too big to contain. Across what is now Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and beyond—people lit twin fires.
They drove their cattle between them, not only for protection from disease, but to remind themselves that all things pass through fire to be made holy. The body. The story. The seed.
It was the time of ceremony and sensuality. Of greenwood weddings, of ribbons braided, of dew gathered before dawn and rubbed on skin to restore beauty and youth.
Sarah Jarrett
But underneath the flowering is deeper magic:
Beltaine is a rite of renewal through risk. Anais Nin said:
It is time to take risks. To lean into the bloom, the opening. With a full body, full hearted, full being YES.
The Lovers of the Land
In the mythic imagination of the Gaels, Beltane was the meeting point of sovereignty and desire. It was said the Goddess of the Land would only yield her fertility to the true king—not a monarch, but a soul-tested being who had walked the crooked path, faced the Otherworld, and returned with wisdom.
This was no possession tale—it was a union of equals. The goddess did not submit. She chose. And her choosing shaped the land.
Art: unknown
The Thin Time
Beltane, like Samhain, is a liminal festival, a thin time. The veil between worlds is lifted—not only between living and dead, but between what you are and what you are becoming. Between soul and skin. Between human and other than human kin.
It is the season of shape-shifting, of animal masks and faery crossings. The puckwudgzinees as I refer to them, the little people, the fae —they are accessible to us. It is a good time to leave out an offering to them. To make a clay elemental statue -to feed them with your offering. They will move through your being, in elemental ways, to help ensoul you with more fire, more creativity, more bloom, more play.
To dance with the Beltane fire —on all levels, is to risk transformation.
You might emerge in a different form —on the inside, causing ripples of change to occur on the outside.
You might emerge with a new name. Or perhaps no name at all. Only a flame.
I recently went on a quest to the GoodWill to find my Beltane art. I set the intention -for an image of a Flame Goddess -a Goddess or archetypal image that would inspire the Flame in me. This is what I found:
On the back of the art, the words:
Goddess of Fire
Halfway between spring equinox and summer solstice, we move more consciously towards the flame within and without. It’s risky to unfurl. It’s risky to emerge. Oh, but it’s a good kind of risk.
A Rewilded Remembering
In the rewilded soul calendar, Beltane is not just a celebration. It is an invitation to bloom dangerously. To let longing lead. To risk being seen, touched, chosen—not by another, but by your own erotic knowing.
To reclaim Beltane is to remember:
The body is holy.
Pleasure is medicine.
Union is initiation.
Love—when it burns through illusion—is a teacher of the highest order.
And somewhere, always, there is a girl-woman walking barefoot into the garden,
or into the woods
a lark singing from her ribs,
called by moss, called by the audacity of rewilded blooming
perhaps a beast or a green man waiting in the rose-dark. sniffing out her wonder. sniffing towards her opening. inviting her to reclaim her summer radiance and lustre. inviting her into sacred marriage, sacred union with land, with elements, with the holy rose, the sacred well, the hidden secrets.
Let’s honor the rose and the thorn. The briar patch of mystery. The flame the leap. The inner and outer union of this sacred doorway.
The Ancient Festivals, the calendar of the soul doorways, are moments out of ordinary time. Shining Days. Let’s shine inside of them, as they shine inside of us.
Season your Soul with a Story of Sacred Union.
Sarah Jarrett
I’ll be storying on Friday.
4/25/25
10:30 am mtn. Zoom.
I’m contemplating two different tales. I wish we had the time for me to spin both. I feel they are twins, courting one another in the light and the dark of the flower budding and becoming. I’ll story one Friday -and her sacred twin will be spun at Full Radiance of Summer.
Both are shimmering tales. Hidden inside the briar patch of wonder story. Stories of love. Rewilded. Animal. Woman. Elemental. Bloom. Bird. Feathers. Beast. Maiden. Enchantment. Release. Return. Union. Singing springing larks. Lost Girls. Found. Inside the heart hearth of Story. Let’s journey.
Let’s invoke the dew laden and nectar filled taste of May. To prepare the ground for fertile wonder. Let’s wander into magic. With Intention. Let’s write and rite and right ourselves into the wild bud soul of the Wild remembering.
Activate the Mythic Imagination.
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