In the Celtic calendar, the first of May marked the beginning of the summer half-year, which was celebrated with the festival Beltene ( Bel - radiant, shining, brilliant, and TENE - fire). The date lies exactly between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. It was the festival of the marriage between heaven and earth, the joy of life, the lightness of summer, the time of growing and becoming.
It is the counter festival to Samuin, which marks the beginning of the winter half-year. May festivals are still held today in many parts of Europe with a wide variety of customs. The maypole is a symbol of fertility, an oversized phallus is rammed into the ground to symbolize the marriage of the gods. It was also used as a lightning rod in the past. Young men in love place small maypoles on their girls' roofs and guard them so that no rival can steal this symbol of worship. It is a wedding. Weddings are celebrated.
In Christian times, the last night before the first of May is called Walpurgis. Walpurga the white woman (goddess) is depicted with fiery shoes (warm time), a golden crown (sun), a mirror (soul) and a spider (spinning fate).
Walpurgis Night is one of the holiest nights of the year, when all good things from the other world come forth. On Walpurgis Night, the election of husbands took place. Young couples would disappear into the forest and return home the next day wreathed in birch branches. A mating took place which, by analogy, was supposed to bring about the fertilization of the fields.
In the priesthood of the Germanic peoples, this night became the main mating date, the Irminonen. Certain Thruden are said to have united with selected priestesses in order to father the offspring of the Irminonen. In order not to be recognized and to show their initiation status, the priests wore a mask and deer antlers. The Thruden of a region gathered on a cult hill to consecrate their new female colleagues. A ritual fence made of willow rods was erected for this purpose.
These rods were carried as a bundle on a staff - from a distance, it looked like the infamous witches' broom. The participants danced themselves into a trance and ecstasy, full of joie de vivre, and sang winilioders, love songs that were later performed with rhythm, ever louder and more vehemently. For uninformed observers, this was sometimes a frightening sight and was also seen as a witches' sabbath, an aspect of the devil.
( In the footsteps of the Druids - Inge Resch Rauter)
