Saturday 27 October 2012

Another Beltaine...

Another Beltaine is approaching... My house is decorated for Halloween, as my children can not accept my reasons that in the Southern Hemisphere, Halloween is actually in April, in autumn, not in October, in spring. Even though I lived here, in the South of this wonderful planet for ten years now, even though my body sings of the approaching summer, my brain still argues that October is autumn...

Ignoring the names of the months, I look out of my window at the riot of blooming flowers, at the jacarandas in purple mist, and I know without doubt that is spring. Even blind, even without being able to feel the warming sun on my skin, just from the quickening of my blood, and I would still know that Beltaine is only few days away...

I had made the choice of being single, and staying single, a choice I am happy with, for a countless reasons, including to be able to focus more deeply on me, my children and my craft. And yet, regardless of my mind being at peace and my heart being content,  the instincts that come from an immemorial time, are searching for that elusive something that is passion and love, that is the connection between the divine feminine and the divine masculine. And interestingly enough, it is not the call of a relationship I hear, thank Goddess or I would really freak out, but the abandon of rules, the crazy thirst for life and being alive...

Normally I love Beltaine. As much, and yet differently from my love for Samhain (Halloween), when my soul craves the solitude and peace that allows me to transcend the worlds in the search for my dear loved ones that I lost or never met. At the opposite side of the Wheel, sits Beltaine with the craving for crowds and thirst for life, with the need to start anew and forget the wisdom of winter. Beltaine, when my soul wants to forget the teachings of the Crone and just enjoy the innocence of the youth, when years drop by and for a short while I can be again the girl I once was, full of dreams and illusions, acting on powerful instincts, rather then the wary wisdom I had learned.

Last year, Beltaine was meant to be a party with friends that I cared for and it become a night with a lover. The year before, Beltaine was an amazing ritual in a group of strangers, with a man that by then was not my lover anymore. The year before that, Beltaine was celebrated with a friend I loved dearly, and I still miss so much, and the Gods found their place in the deep connection of friendship. This year is different. This year it seems I need to learn how to spend Beltaine on my own, with no friends I love, no lovers for a night or years, no big ritual where I can lose the edges of myself, no party where I can abandon convention. The part of me that learned to read the signs, knows without doubt that the reason for it is because while I had learned so many lessons over the years, the one I skirted about is how to really connect with myself, outside the meditation moments. The witch in me, the one that is old beyond time, and young the same, knows that the only love I have to share this year is with myself. Maybe the hardest type of love, especially for one such as me, that finds it easier to love and accept others, but not myself. But the woman in me, the one used to having a friend or a lover near, the one that is human and is tired of learning, would have preferred a different, more joyous Beltaine. 

Two years ago, on Beltaine, as I knotted a wish on a red string, I wished with all my soul for freedom. The remembrance and the repercussions of that wish, reminds me of something my mother used to say when I was a tiny child still, wishing aloud: "Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it". The wish made on Beltaine two years ago, came true, as wishes made in sacred moments tend to do. For the last two years I had never regretted that wish, one that my soul needed to mend and to live. But now, I understand the danger of an incomplete wish. Wishing for freedom more then anything, I forgot to ask for the wisdom of learning how to use it.

And yet, beyond wisdom, my soul still stirs wildly in my blood, asking for something elusive...

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