Love is in the air, blooming, intoxicating, seducing, beckoning us to surrender our concerns, set seriousness aside, and dance the erotic dance of life.

Today we cross the threshold with the turning of the wheel and the burst of summer into the holy-day of Beltane and the start of fire season. Here we transition from the maiden of spring into the mother - lover - queen, the Goddess in her most sensuous delicious vibrant fragrant form, reminding us to celebrate the wild vitality that is our fertile birthright. In summer’s full bloom, she invites us to claim our deepest heartfelt YES to life itself, to the sweetness and abundance of the nectar of love that revitalizes and blossoms all things into fruition.

The festival of Beltane originates from the Celtic Medicine Wheel, following the cycles and rhythms of the North Western Hemisphere in the region of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales (the land of my ancestors). Beltane marks the midpoint between the Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice, as the beginning of summer and a time honoring the heat of the sun. Emerging from the death of winter into the time of seed planting in spring, Beltane celebrates the promise of fertility, fruition, and the abundance of a hearty crop resulting from the deep trust and intentions planted during the darker months. Connected with the fertility goddesses Isis, Ishtar, Inanna, Aphrodite, Ixchel, and far too many to name, Beltane is a wonderful time for deepening into the sacredness of your sexuality, the beauty of your being just as you are, and summoning the beloved within you to attract more true love into your life now.

At Samhain, on the opposite side of the wheel falling around Halloween, the veils grow thin between the underworld and middleworld, connecting us with the spirits of the dead to receive the wisdom of the ancestors as we go into our own descent. At Beltane, the veils are also thin, but this time between middleworld and upperworld, connecting us with the spirits that wish to be birthed through us, physically incarnated here on Earth. Beltane is a most perfect time to offer your attention and awareness to the prosperity that is all around you already, and to the whispers of the faeries, the flowers, and the spirits enticing you with fresh ideas and manifestations to birth into your life.

At Beltane we are called to consider…

Who is the divine mother, the bearer and nurturer of life, the one who brings beauty to all she meets? Who is the sensual lover, the passionate juicy radiant seductress that reminds all things of their true nature, love? Who is the magnetic queen, the bestower of fortune and receiver of grace who lives in prosperity generously sharing and treasuring her gold?

No matter what may be occurring on the world’s stage or within the dramas of our lives, Beltane can offer us a breath of fresh air, a moment to pause, to celebrate the miracle that is life blooming up from the rich dark fertility of our Earth. When we align with nature and Her rhythms, we can discover magic, bliss, and prosperity even in the most unlikely of places, the most unlikely of times. Today I’m sharing with us all these Beltane rituals, to get “in the mood” for love, summon the inner fire of passion, and birth more beauty in our lives and in our world.

1 Make Love to Mother Earth

Few rituals are as healing, sensual, and wonderful as making love to our Mother Earth. If it’s warm enough where you are, enjoy the bliss of laying naked on Her ground. Feel deep into the roots of your pelvis and sexual organs and the womb pulse of Mother as your own womb. Lay your bare chest onto the Earth and feel the beat of your own heart synchronize in rhythm with Hers. Whisper words of love to Her and receive Her wisdom, guidance, and love in return. Bathe in the full moon light and allow your own moonlips to be blessed with her soma, the healing milk that pours out of the sky. Kiss flowers as you would kiss your lover, feel kissed in return.

2 Bathe Yourself in Flowers

In classical Beltane tradition, maidens would walk out into the gardens on the first morning of May, the day when the flowers were meant to carry their freshest, most potent medicinal dew. It was believed that this dew would bring beauty and vitality to all those who bathed in it, and so they would caress their faces with these flowers, some stripping naked and rolling in beds of wildflowers. On May 1st, or any day that suits you, give yourself a flower bath, wandering into nature or your own garden and sipping and licking the morning dew. You may wish to caress your entire body with these flowers, or perhaps collect and gather fallen flowers and bring them into a delicious warm bath inside of your home.

3 Deepen Your Self Pleasure Practice

Beltane reminds us that all life comes from sex, and that pleasure and desire are not only natural but divine blessings. If it feels safe, yummy, and exciting, create a pleasure promise with yourself, to explore your sexuality with yourself, to make love with yourself, each day for an entire moon cycle, 28 days. (If you wish to join us, come into our temple Awakening Aphrodite where we do exactly this and so much more!) Offer yourself words of admiration, kindness, and tenderness, as you explore your most sensitive and sensual spaces with presence, devotion, and love.

4 Make Love With Your Beloved

If you are currently in a safe, loving romantic relationship with another, consider exploring this moon cycle together as a practice in birthing magic, beauty, and healing into your lives through making love. Each day you can create a ritual together, perhaps beginning with a shower or bath and massage, and opening and exploring with one another in intimacy. Making love can be so much more than sex, you might wish to explore co-listening, each sharing from the heart without interruptions, advice, or projections, just receiving one another in vulnerability. You may also wish to bless one another as gods and goddesses, with this Sacred Body Blessing. You may wish to explore Divine Marriage through sexual connection, offering one another pleasure with the intention of giving and receiving love.

5 Summon Your Inner Beloved

Whether we are alone or partnered, romantic bliss is our birthright, and we always have the power to summon this energy from within ourselves. To attract more love into your life now, from within yourself, explore the romantic partner of your dreams as an aspect of your own consciousness. Touch yourself the way that you wish your beloved would touch you. Sit with yourself in the mirror and speak the words to yourself the most healing, soothing words to your inner child, your gorgeous goddess, your yearning lover, your magnificent queen. Write yourself a love letter, from your own inner beloved to yourself, from your current self to your past self, to any part of yourself that may be desiring more love now.

6 Dance Your Heart Out

Love and ecstasy are vibrations, frequencies that we can connect with through the felt sense of the body. Celebrate your inner fire and the wild spark of life through ecstatic dance. Listen to love songs, melt your heart with romantic ballads, and activate your heart chakra with songs that have a heavy beat that taps into the rhythm of the heart. Dance love with this playlist filled with songs that activate the heartbeat: Heart Heart Beat. Feel the beat in the song as the beat of your own heart in your chest. Let this heartbeat guide your movements. Play with sensing your heartbeat in different parts of your body. Feel your heartbeat in your hands, in your feet, in your womb, all of the cells of your body. Dance your body as one pulsing beating heart.

7 Make a Flower Crown and Claim Your Queendom

In honor of Beltane’s power to bring Heaven down to Earth through the abundance and fertility of life, create a crown of flowers and infuse it with the intentions of what you’d like to manifest for the summer season. Gather and collect flowers that grow in your garden or in the wild, greenery, and ribbons or twine. If you live in the tropics, you can cut strips of banana leaves to make the base, then wrap with twine or very thin strips of leaves. Otherwise, you can use floral wire and tape. For a tropical flower crown, watch this video, for one with the floral tape and wire, watch here.

8 Create a Beltane Love Altar

Bring the fire of love into your daily rituals and awareness by setting up a Beltane altar in your home, bedroom, or temple space. Infuse this altar with the essence of summer, full bloom, the fire of passion within you, and anything that represents the love you wish to bring more fully into your life. I can suggest rose quartz crystals, sacred pleasure crystals like yoni eggs and yoni wants, fertility symbols of the female and male form, images of the fertility Goddesses like Aphrodite, beautiful pink and red flowers, images of loved ones, chocolate, symbols of prosperity and abundance like pyrite and gold, and of course fire through a candle. You can take a small bowl and fill it with spring water, ocean water, river water, or purified water with a pinch of salt, and infuse it with intentions and blessings, place it on your altar, and anoint yourself with the water each day. You may wish to write your intentions, love notes, or names of the ones you love on your altar.

9 Manifest Your Desires in a Love Spell Bath

Draw yourself a warm or hot bath, light candles, and scatter flower petals into the water. You may wish to place crystals like rose quartz and amethyst into the water, as well as essential oils like rose and lavendar. You could also add dried lavender and rose petals and epsom or magnesium salts to relax your muscles. Play romantic or relaxing music and call your intentions into your heart. What blessings, love, and beauty, do you wish to blossom into your life? What words of love do you wish to know deep in your bones? Infuse the water with these intentions. As you enter the water, ask the molecules to penetrate deep into your being and become one with you, body and soul. Relax completely. Gently stroke your skin and offer yourself pleasure in whatever way you desire.

10 Make Sex Magic

This sex magic ritual comes from tantric practices that harness orgasmic energy to bring spiritual desire into physical form. If you have a yoni egg, you may wish to use it with this practice to add extra power and potency. You may do this alone or with a trusted beloved. Visualize your intention and what you wish to manifest, in the highest service of love. With your lips pursed, sip in a breath and visualize your energy descending down the front of your body to your pelvic floor. When you exhale, lift your pelvic floor and as if bouncing on a trampoline, feel your energy rise up the back of your spine through your chakras up to your crown. At your crown, visualize your highest love intention of manifestation, then inhale offer it back down to your pelvic floor. As you breathe, feel your sexual energy and sensations building, taking it at your own pace, feeling alive and turned on by love. You can practice drawing up the breath to each chakra and visualizing your intention from the root to the sacral to the solar plexus to the heart to the throat to the third eye to the crown and back down again. When you feel complete ground your energy back into the Earth, and surrender your desire into a power beyond yourself, in service of love.

What within you is ready to more fully open its petals, to allow another to drink from its sweetness, and to unite in love through the dance of your own sacred sexual life?

Beltane blessings to you.