What a beautiful May morning...clouding over now.
The celebration of May Day has its roots in astronomy, celebrating the half-way point between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. It is worth noting that this half way point occurs at 15 degrees of Taurus exactly half way between 0 degrees of Aries (Ostara) and 0 degrees of Cancer (Litha).
The astrological half-way point actually happens 4/5 May, and has never fallen on the date allocated to it in the church calendar, 1 May. We can blame the early Popes for this liturgical falsification.
The month of May got its name from Maia, also called Flora, the Greek goddess of spring. Maia was the oldest of the seven sisters known as the Pleiades, and she was the mother of Hermes (Mercury.) Gemini, the last zodiac sign of Spring, is ruled by airy Mercury, as the air fills with butterflies and pollen.
Flora, or Maia by Botticelli
The modern name ‘May’ has been used in English since about 1430. Before this time the name of this month was spelled Maius or Mai. The Anglo- Saxons called it Tri-Milchus because all that lush new grass meant cows could now be milked three times a day.
Superstitions
Like Halloween, May Eve and May Day is a magical time of year, liminal, when the veil between different worlds and realities is experienced as thinner than at other times of year.
Beltane or Walpurgisnacht is the mirror image, the spring season’s equivalent of Halloween when witches are said to dance at the Devil’s Sabbath. This is a time for ghosts, but this is also the time of year when folklore suggests you are most likely to meet a supernatural being from the realm of ‘faery.’
The Fae are an ancient race, and they do not like humans whom they view as destructive, and who is to say they do not have a fair point there. The Fae are afraid of iron…their nemesis as the harbinger of industrialization. To keep them at bay, so the old saying goes-
Touch wood no good
Touch iron, this you can rely on...
In this sense the Fae could be said to represent the spirit of humanity in the Bronze Age, pre-technology, before the Iron Age. They are not the cute creatures of fairy tale. Encounters are dangerous. Do not, whatever you do, go to sleep on a fairy hill at any time, but especially not on May Eve or May Day. Especially beware of going to sleep under flowering hawthorn bushes -or near bluebells. This is my local wood…leading to the cemetery.
See that bluebell patch? Dicey. Very-y-y dicey.
