Beltane: Befriend Your Body
May 1 is the beginning of Beltane according to the Celtic calendar.
Beltane is the season of summer: the time of lush growth, fruit and flower, pleasure and sensuality. It is the season for celebrating the joys of being embodied.
Conscious embodiment, the intentional and full engagement of our bodies, is critical to Conscious Manifestation. That’s why “Befriend Your Body” is the 3rd step of my Cornucopia Method of Manifestation.
Your body, after all, is your first manifestation project. It is also a vibrational receiver and transmitter, giving you clues about what energies you are emitting into the Multi-Verse. In fact, your body is your Manifestation Matrix–your vehicle for co-creating your life. Understanding its messages and learning to move energy consciously through your physical being allows you to shape your reality.
So to celebrate Beltane, here are a couple of suggestions for being more embodied:
§ Celebrate the changing seasons. Ancient societies were in tune with the natural cycles of greening, growing, harvest and waiting. In the current age most of us are disconnected from the way food arrives at our table and we spend most of our time indoors. Learning about ancient festivals celebrated by indigenous cultures can be a way of reawakening our physical consciousness. Celtic and Native American traditions are popular in North America now because so many of the people who live here have ancestors in those cultures. Do you have any interest in exploring your own cultural history? Who were your ancestors and how did they celebrate the changing seasons?
§ Sacralize your sexuality. Can you envision sex as an act of faith and blessing? Many ancient cultures believed that conscious sex had healing and creative as well as generative power. The ancient Celts, for instance, encouraged sexual activity especially during their festival of Beltane (summer’s beginning). Lovers participated in and celebrated the Divine union by coming together in field and wood, blessing the crops, herds and homes as they gave expression to the life-force pulsing through their bodies. Dancing, singing, feasting and lovemaking not only gave pleasure to the participants, it demonstrated the community’s intention to enter into the natural energies of the season in hopes that the joys of Beltane would result in healthy babies and bountiful harvests.
Many years ago I was driving to my job at the federal courthouse on Beltane morning, listening to Celtic music on my CD player (Loreena McKennit’s Mystic’s Dream, to be specific). I felt the music awaken something ancient and primal in me, and I sensed the power of Beltane, still pulsing and alive beneath our paved roads and our buttoned up lives.
Beltane Longing
The music surrounds me
in my modern mini-van
and not the ancient stone circle
of my imagination.
But as the highway rolls by
beneath my tires
the bodhran and harp
the flute and the fiddle
throb in my feet
and pulse in my belly
until the asphalt breaks open
and I am dancing away
from my silver van
to a ring of power
on a misty green hill
where the old ones live
and anything is possible.
This must be why the Baptists
don’t want us to dance:
they know that the drums might
awaken the bean sidhe
inside of us all
and if she emerged,
hair flying
arms flailing
feet pounding
mouth screaming,
she would herald the death
of our civilized personas.
We would throw away
our crippling shoes
and rip off
our strangling neckties
and dance barefooted
and bare-chested
until the sun tides
ran in our blood
and we came together
under a full moon to remember
a hundred ways
that lips and hands
can praise creation
in the oldest
dance of all.
©2001, Kimberly Schneider
This Beltane I invite you to give thanks for the glorious and magical body, through which your soul expresses itself. Honor it as the Temple it is.
And if you want to continue to celebrate the season of Beltane with me this summer in Ireland, there are a few spaces left in our Dancing on the Edge: A Celtic Soul Experience in Western Ireland workshop! www.KimberlySchneider.com/trips
Beltane Blessings,
kimberly schneider
facebook.com/kimberlyvschneider
*Adapted from Everything You Need Is Right Here: Five Steps to Manifesting Magic and Miracles– Avalon Emerging Press, 2012; available digitally from www.KimberlySchneider.com or in paperback from Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/EYNbook
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