Beltane: Remembering How to Bloom

Get your spring fling going. Click to read the full Beltane issue of our In Cycle magazine!

Can you feel it?

That gentle stirring beneath your feet, that low golden hum in the late afternoon light, the scent of blossoms on the wind as if the Earth herself just took a deep, joy-filled breath. There’s something shifting in the soil, in the sky, maybe even in you.

This is Beltane energy. Ancient, wild, utterly alive. And it's arriving, right on time.

Beltane is celebrated around May 1st, a festival rooted in the Celtic lands of Ireland and Scotland, known as Bealtaine or Bealtainn, meaning “bright fire.” It marks the halfway point between the spring equinox and the summer solstice, the great turning from planting to blooming, from preparation to celebration.

In those old villages, fires were lit not just for warmth, but for blessing.

People and animals would walk between twin flames for protection, for health, for luck. The community would gather, flowers in their hair, bread in their hands, music in the air. They danced around maypoles, sang into the dusk, and felt the rising pulse of the land mirrored in their own bodies. Life was waking up, and they let it wake them too.

These folk rituals were never just performance.

They were intimate conversations with the land, passed down through hands that knew the feel of soil, the rhythm of the stars, the language of fire. It was a time to say yes to the growing, the blooming, the wildness in all of us that wants to stretch toward the sun.

And though these names, Bealtaine, Bealtainn, Calan Mai, are specific, the feeling of Beltane is one that people all over the world have known for centuries.

It lives wherever humans have honoured the return of warmth, the spark of life, the joy of being alive in a world that is once again waking. Whether it was marked with song, dance, planting, feasting, or simply pausing in wonder at the greening trees, this season has always asked us to remember something deep and true: that extraordinary magic lives in the ordinary if we know how to see it.

In our own way, we’re still part of that lineage.

Whether we’re crafting with our hands, growing food, gathering in circle, or simply tending a small altar of flowers and flame, we’re keeping that conversation alive. Beltane reminds us that it’s not just about marking time but about feeling it, about living it. About celebrating life as it is, messy, blooming, beautiful.

So here’s an invitation for you, wherever you are as the wheel turns again:

Let this season stir you.

Let it soften you. Light a candle. Open a window. Walk barefoot through your garden or your neighbourhood. Notice the way the trees are leaning toward the light. Wear something that makes you feel a little freer. Make something with your hands. Make love. Make laughter. Make space.

Beltane isn’t just an old festival. It’s a way of being open-hearted, earth-rooted, joy-fed. It’s a reminder that you, too, are part of the great blooming.

So breathe it in. Let it move you.

Bealtaine sona daoibh

Happy Beltane!