umm...rabbitrabbit!

and happy may day, i suppose...tho' i have no clue what may day's actually celebratin...

[color=brown:2e75d941c6:418ac2bec3] Happy May Day

[color=brown:d8ef693644:6fb05efc01]......do over...

"Rabbit, rabbit"...lol

Happy May Day!

Hi, Azure

BelleBeyond said:

rabbit rabbit

OK, I said it (and out loud too ) but what's the significance?

CarrieMpls said:

We're reminding ourselves to never put a cat with a rabbit...

We have a Beltane celebration here every year. I always want to go but I always miss it.

Beltane in Modern Wicca

The center of most Wiccan celebrations is the dance around the Maypole, with accompanying enactments of the courtship chase of Maiden and Bright Lord, and perhaps a ritual jumping of a small Bel-fire for luck and fulfillment. Fires for this purpose might be made by burning kindling within an iron cauldron. Couples often jump the fire together.

The Maypole dance is not only fun, but is also a weaving of magick for the fertility and fulfillment of hopes, wishes and personal intents for the season ahead. Each year in San Diego, the Calafia Council of Covenant of the Goddess holds its open Beltane-in-the-Park. It's an event that always draws hundreds to picnic and to enjoy a ritual that includes a colorful Maypole Dance accompanied by a large contingent of great drummers. In order to allow many more to dance than the pole could possibly have ribbons, the drums will stop periodically, signaling the dancers to pause and hand over their ribbons to a new group of dancers. Then the drumming begins again and the dance goes on.



[This message was edited Thu May 1 6:56:00 PDT 2003 by VinaBlue]

http://www.starcraftsob.com/brewin/beltanelore.shtml

Beltane (May Day) Lore
by Maria Kay Simms

Beltane, with its colorful Maypole Dance, is a favorite Pagan celebration, perhaps the most popular along with Samhain, its opposite point on the eight-spoked Wheel of the Year. As Samhain announces the onset of winter, Beltane heralds the onset of summer. Though Samhain, through its secular celebration of Halloween, seems to gain in mass-market popularity with each year that goes by, Beltane ("May Day") seems to have lost a bit of ground with the general public. That is sad, for it is a day of joy that should be shared. Earth has come to life again, with buds that we saw just appearing on trees and shrubs at Spring Equinox have turned to leaves and flowers. Even in places like Southern California where seasons are not so clearly evident as further north, Nature seems renewed and refreshed. Summer is just ahead-we can feel it, and are energized.

I remember May Day well from the small Midwestern town where I grew up. We always made May Baskets, often as an art project in grade school. A favorite way was by weaving colored paper strips through another sheet of paper with slits cut in it. Then it would be folded, the ends sealed and a handle added. We'd tuck a few May flowers in our finished baskets, and perhaps a few candies, then deliver them to our special people, like Grandma, of course and … yes, there would also be that special friend of our own age and opposite sex. The custom held that you put your basket right at the front door of your target's house, ring the door bell and than run quickly. The recipient was to chase, catch and kiss! May Day was always fun for the whole neighborhood, children and adults.

Though I don't remember Maypole dances in my hometown, I know that they were often part of folk customs in other towns. Just last year a feature in my local New Hampshire paper pictured a large Maypole that had just been rediscovered in an old public building. The custom came to the USA with early settlers from the British Isles and Europe, but has been discouraged in many places due to Puritanical objections to the obvious sexual symbolism of its Pagan origins. The Catholics managed to co-opt May Day, as has been the case with so many other festivals, and render it chaste in the bargain, by declaring it sacred to the Virgin Mary. Each year young Catholic girls hoped they might be the special one chosen to crown the local church's statue of the Virgin with a floral wreath as Mary the Queen of May.

May Queens were often chosen in Pagan celebrations, as well, along with a May King. The Queen, dressed in white, represented the Goddess as Maiden, and the King was the young Bright Lord who would chase and catch her, then to celebrate the sacred marriage that was a magical rite to encourage the fertility of Earth in the season of growth. In older times, "bringing in the May," was a time when young men and maidens, after following May Eve festivities by spending all night together in the forest, would bring back spring flowers to decorate their villages. They might also find a young tree to cut and bring to the village center where it would be festooned with ribbons for the Maypole Dance. The dance is a fertility rite, in itself, for as the dancers weave around the phallic pole, they weave their magick for fertility and abundance.

Ancient celebrations of May Day have been portrayed in stories from Arthurian legend, and in fact are part of the Lerner and Loewe musical Camelot, when Queen Gwenevere with her Ladies and Knights, leads the singing of "Tra-la, it's May, the lusty month of May, that lovely month when everyone goes blissfully astray…"

Another charming folk tradition is the magick of the May Dew. There's a Mother Goose rhyme that celebrates it:

The fair maid who, the first of May
Goes to the fields at break of day
And washes in dew from the Hawthorne tree
Will ever after handsome be.


The name Beltane, which means fire, likely derives from the Celtic god of light Bel (or Beli, Belenus-the name varies with traditions). The Celts' celebration included the May Eve lighting of Bel-fires on the hilltops. The fires were considered to be healing, protective and to contribute toward fertility. It's said that the people jumped them -quickly and skyclad, so as not to catch their clothes afire. Cattle were ritually driven between the fires on their way to summer pastures.

Copyright © 2003 Maria Kay Simms

VinaBlue, are you Wiccan or neo-pagan? If so, blessed be and Beltane shona!