Beltane: Tending our Fire

Beltane arrives with fire.

The kind of fire that lives in the body, that rises when something is wrong, when danger is near or when our boundaries are disregarded.  It is a fire that refuses to look away.

Right now, that fire is being stoked by what we are witnessing in the world. The exposure of online spaces where men gather to share strategies for harming women, often referred to as “rape academies,” is not shocking in its existence. It is devastating in its scale, in its normalization, and in how openly this hatred is taught, shared, and consumed.

And still, women are asked to stay calm, measured and to not overreact.

However, Goddess says otherwise.

Beltane reminds us that fire is sacred, it is wisdom and it is essential to our survival. Our rage is not a flaw; it is a signal. A deeply intelligent, ancestral response to violation, danger, and centuries of harm. This rage did not begin with us. It lives in the bones of our grandmothers, and their grandmothers, women who knew what it was to live with fear, in worlds that did not protect them.

This fire is holy; here to protect us, to burn away confusion and to illuminate truth.

When we feel anger rise in response to misogyny, to violence, to systems that continue to harm women, children and gender diverse people, we are not broken. We are responding to the truth of the world under patriarchy. 

The problem is not women’s rage.  The problem is a world that continues to give us reasons to feel it.

It is men that engage in violent behaviour, meant to make us afraid.  It is men that continue to fund, uphold and benefit from the brutality of the patriarchy.  It is men who refuse to speak out, to call out their brothers, friends and fathers, to hold a higher standard, to be protectors and truth-tellers.

And the Goddess has always known this.  She is not only soft earth and open arms. She is also flame, boundary, and consequence.

She teaches that rage is a sacred threshold. A place we are brought to when something in us will no longer consent to harm.

She teaches that anger is not the opposite of love. It is love in its most protective form.

She teaches that what we refuse to feel will turn inward, dimming our life force, silencing our instincts, disconnecting us from our knowing.

She teaches that when we allow rage to move, with breath, with voice, with truth, it becomes clarity. It becomes action. It becomes change.

She teaches that destruction has its place. That some systems, some beliefs, some patterns must be burned away so that life can return.

And she teaches discernment. Not every flame needs to be unleashed outward. Some are meant to warm, to illuminate, to guide us back to ourselves. Some are meant to draw lines we will no longer let be crossed.

Beltane is an invitation to come into relationship with this fire.

Not to bypass it, shame it, or turn it inward. But to listen.

• What is your rage telling you?

• Where are your boundaries asking to be drawn?

• What truth has been waiting beneath your attempts to stay small, kind, palatable?

What Was Given © Robin Lea Quinlivan 2009

And if you are unsure how to meet this fire, begin here:

1.     Go outside if you can. Stand on the earth. Feel your feet pressing down, solid, supported. Let your body know it is safe enough to feel.

2.     Place a hand on your chest, or on your belly. Notice where the heat lives in you. Is it sharp, tight, buzzing, heavy? Do not try to change it. Just witness.

3.     Breathe into it. Give it space. Rage often constricts. Your breath creates room for it to move.

4.     Let sound come. A sigh, a hum, a growl, a word. You do not need to be composed here. Your voice is part of how this fire releases.

5.     Move your body. Stamp your feet. Shake your hands. Let your spine curve and twist. Rage is not meant to sit still inside you.

6.     If there are words in your rage, let them be spoken or written. Let them be unfiltered, unpolished. Remember:  Truth before kindness. Truth before performance.

And then listen. Listen to what sits beneath the noise of the world, the noise of your inner landscape. The boundary, the knowing. The clarity about what you will no longer accept, and what you are ready to protect, about what you love.

Fire can burn indiscriminately, or it can be tended, honoured, directed.

And this is the work.

• To sit with the heat in your body and not abandon yourself.

• To let it move your voice, your choices, your refusals.

• To allow it to sharpen your knowing without closing your heart.

There is a version of womanhood that patriarchy is comfortable with. Soft, accommodating, forgiving to the point of self-erasure.

Beltane belongs to the woman who feels the flames in her chest and does not turn away. The woman who knows that her anger is not separate from her love, but born from it. Love for herself, for other women and for a world that could be different.

Your rage is not the enemy.  Patriarchy is.  Your rage is not ugly.  The consequences of patriarchy are.  Your rage is not dangerous.  Patriarchy is the true killer of humankind. 

And it is quite possible your rage can save us.

Tend it well.

Beltane Ritual: The Fire That Reveals What You Love

You may do this at dusk, by candlelight, or beside a small fire if you have one.  Have two small pieces of paper handy.

Begin by calling in the Grandmothers.

• Close your eyes. Feel your feet on the earth, or your body supported beneath you. Imagine a circle of women behind you, your ancestral grandmothers, known and unknown. Women who lived in harsher times, who knew danger, who knew how to endure, resist, protect, and survive.

Sense them standing with you now. Sense them close, witnessing and holding you steady.

You might whisper or speak aloud:

• Grandmothers, I call you close. Stand with me as I meet this fire. Help me remember what you knew. Help me hold what rises.

Take a breath and feel their presence at your back.

On the first, write what you are angry about.

• Let it be raw.

• Name the harm, the fear, the exhaustion, the injustice.

• Do not soften it.

Hold this paper in your hands. Feel the heat in your body as you read it silently or aloud.

Acknowledge that this rage lives in your for a reason, it is wise and necessary.

Breathe and let yourself touch into the fire within you.  Imagine it dancing within.  Move with it, let it burn free.

Then, when ready, pause.

Imagine the fire burning down…perhaps to a low simmer, and in the coals left behind it the heart of what you love, love so much that you are enraged when it is threatened.

On the second piece of paper, write what this love is.  It might be your body, your safety, other women, children. It might be truth, freedom, dignity, the earth, your own life.

Notice how your rage and your love are bound together.

Bring both papers to your fire or candle.

First, burn the page of rage, to release its grip on your body. Watch the smoke knowing this energy can move, it does not have to stay stuck inside you.

Then hold the page of love to your heart.  This is what your rage has been protecting.

You might say something like:

• I honour the fire that showed me this.I choose to live in devotion to what I love.

If it feels right, keep this second paper somewhere sacred. Let it guide your choices, your boundaries, your voice.

 Grandmother Wisdom:

Oh my wild daughter!  What do you conceive of when you think of the sacred title “Witch”?  Do you know you come from a long line of women who were accused of weaving magic into the world of men?  Who, in fact, did weave the magic and paid a terrible price?  You are but one single breath in the blustery, tempestuous winds of your ancient grandmothers who stoke the fire within you.  Small though you may be, you are extraordinary, and powerful enough to tend to the flames of this scarred planet, to step into the fire that rages within women, within you.  The flames of the rage and sorrow of your grandmothers burn bright within you.  What did they speak into the fire that you can now claim and commit to clear?  Can you join the fire-keepers of your kin and sing into being the healing for those who stand behind you and those yet to come?