Mayday The Floralia and Beltane

By Pat Regan

This lovely month gains its name from the Roman/Greek fertility goddess ‘MAIA’, mother of the god Mercury. She was equated with FAUNA, CYBELE and OPS; goddesses who were greatly loved and respected by the masses.

Fauna’s feast day was held on the first night of May. It was a sacred occasion exclusive to women, as the men honoured Fauna’s masculine consort FAUNUS instead. During Fauna’s celebration wine and music blended with magickal ritual. This formed a strange yet joyous medley of reverberation and adoration for the deity.

From the 28^thApril to the 3rd of May a festival called the Floralia occurred in honour of the Sabine FLORA, patron goddess of flowering gardens.

Virgil claimed that young folk would venture out at Floralia to pick summer flowers from field, wood and meadow. Much singing and dancing took place and this natural Pagan love of life has come down to us today in the form of contemporary Maypole/day celebrations. May Queen and King Parades can easily be traced back to ancient Rome and beyond.

Roman children happily adorned diminutive clay statues of the goddess with beautiful wild blossoms as a token of love and respect. The early Church, ever eager to crush Pagan religion, cunningly usurped Flora and swapped her image for one of the Virgin Mary thereby gaining spiritual monopoly over the unsuspecting, censored population.

Flora was frequently depicted as a young maiden dressed in a floral crown. She held two major temples at Rome so it is clear that her devotion from the Pagan masses was regarded as a threat to the intolerant Church Fathers, hence their scheming attention, ultimately resulting in Christian subversion of Flora’s sacred feast day. Flora’s worship is however not to be crushed so easily, as her beauty will forever remain in the hearts of lovers whilst there are still wild May flowers in the field.

The Celtic Mayday is known as Beltane/Beltaine (meaning fire of Bel/Bile). Bel has associations with the Roman PLUTO and DIS-PATER, Lord of the Underworld/Death.

Numerous legends claim he arrived from ‘Spain’ (which is actually a misleading euphemism for the Celtic Hades.) This is plain evidence of early missionary interference with Pagan myth, deviously inserted to deprive Bile of his traditionally divine nature.

On May eve all household fires would be extinguished then later rekindled from a great druidic hilltop blaze outdoors. The Druids, being the Pagan priests of the Celts, believed that it was sacrilegious to worship the gods in dwellings made by mortal man.

Beltane marked the commencement of the Celtic summer and the blaze spiritually connected with the increasing solar power needed to sustain life. It was brought joyously to each homestead as a vital magickal token of new life, which every grateful occupant accepted with a glad heart. The mysterious green life energy was flowing in nature and it couldn’t be ignored.

BLIND FAITH THAT KILLS THE SPIRIT

How to think for yourself rather than selling your soul to the nearest clergyman!

Today, the very same power of summer’s growing light that our ancestors celebrated so well is upon us again this Beltane.

Cobwebbed artificial religions of blind servitude, like Christianity, Judaism, and Mohammedanism etc, have largely failed to meet our deeper human needs for greater awareness and enlightenment, yet spring still slowly turns into summer just as it always has. The ivy still clings to the oak and the summer rain storm still fills the trickling mountain brook.

Our wise forbears didn’t need to have so-called ‘Faith’ in anything but the natural divinity residing deep behind Mother Nature’s countless moods, which they connected with every single day of their lives.

Faith itself has become exactly what it said it was originally dead set against. The cold ministrations of numerous self-satisfied Bishops, Ayatollahs,Rabbis etc have in fact crippled true human spirituality. So-called messages of love, understanding and tolerance have instead hidden deeper agendas of distrust, prejudice and abhorrence for anyone who fails to share the same limited religious ethos.

The enormous ongoing ecclesiastical confidence trick of man-made religious credo has left the globe’s frustrated populations craving for genuine spirituality; a spirituality that resides just under the green mantle in every quiet forest glade.

OUR HERITAGE OR OUR PSYCHIC SELF-IMPRISONMENT

We should have no need for sanctimonious priests or holy men in dark towers of decayed faith to tell us what to believe, how to live, and what to think.

They speak in twisted yet ultimately persuasive tongues about our so-called ‘Heritage’; a heritage that THEY have subverted and transformed into something that it never was.

All heritages of all nations are initially based on wholesome Pagan concepts, not synthetic religious agendas that so many of the indoctrinated masses have fallen for. How many good souls have been lost in world wars blindly defending the Mega- Lie of so-called ‘Heritage’ that has been carefully promoted by clever politicians and priesthoods?

Our organic, Pagan Birthright is real and it is right here to be seized in every moment of every day. This is our genuine heritage; not some lofty national ideal shrewdly fashioned to carry forth the dubious agendas of royals, politicians and the supremacist elite within the Church. Yet to this day, the blind masses wave their little flags, like so many trained chimps, and support the restrictive systems that have kept their ancestors in a state of unquestioning servitude for centuries.

Via the essential lessons of nature we become our OWN priests or priestesses. We discover our OWN truths and learn from our own mistakes and successes. We need NO pious blessing from supercilious clergy to connect to the great World Spirit the created us. We have no need for their persuasive offers of eternal salvation and redemption for Mother Nature will show us the way far, better than they ever could hope to.

This Mayday we too must re-connect with the healing power stemming from nature, linking us intimately with the magickal cosmic cycles of earth and the vast uncharted universe beyond.

Founder of North West UFO Research and Author of:

UFO: The Search for Truth