One more on Beltane

The Google News round-up.

Happy holiday everyone, and remember to keep those…

Beltane Fire Festival. Picture: Esme Allen.

…Beltane fires burning!

While I’m at it…

If you are looking for a pagan Beltane celebration to attend Witchvox has your hookup.

Merry Beltane

“There’ve been riots all over the city to-night. It’s May Day, you see.”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Today and tomorrow are generally when most modern pagans celebrate Beltane…

Beltaine, properly pronounced “Beh-tan-yew,” or “byel-tin-yuh” but generally pronounced phonetically as “Bell-tane” by almost everyone these days, introduces the second half of the Celtic year – summer…

The “light” season of samos, Beltane is a fire festival second only in importance to Samhain, and indeed they parallel many of the same aspects. Beltane itself is a modern name, and seems to be derived from the Old Celtic Belo-tenia, fire of Belos. “Belos” is a form of Belenos, a solar god associated with cattle. – Red Selchie

Many think of May 1st as the original “Labor Day”, culminating from the historic Chicago labor protests, here is an article about the evolution from fertility festival to labor holiday (their pagan history is a bit spotty, but a decent article nonetheless).

Even though the rest fof the world still celebrates “Labor Day” on “May Day”, the US officially celebrates it in September.

Labor Day has been celebrated on the first Monday in September in the United States and Canada since the 1880s. The September date has remained unchanged even though it was encouraged to adopt May 1 as Labor Day, the date celebrated in the Soviet Union as its labour holiday. Moving the holiday, in addition to violating the U.S. tradition, could have been viewed as aligning U.S. labor movements with internationist sympathies. -Wikipedia

Even more stuff about May Day

Beltane in Edinburgh

Honestly…

Not much time to post anything of merit today, so instead I point you to Chas Clifton’s blog where he gives a run-down on the 50th anniversary of Gerald Gardner’s “Witchcraft Today”.