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Beltane E4: At the Threshold of Desire · Wild Kin: A Celtic Podcast

0:07
SPEAKER_00: Hi, friend.
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Welcome to Wild Kin,
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where we reconnect to Celtic myths one story at a time.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm your host,
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SPEAKER_00: Jess,
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and I'd love for you to pull up a chair by my fire as we dive
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into the somewhat
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SPEAKER_00: promiscuous history of Beltane.
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SPEAKER_00: It's certainly a fiery time of year.
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SPEAKER_00: From ancient bonfires to the more recent fertility rites,
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we're going to entangle where this festival actually comes from
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and what might be
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SPEAKER_00: worth reclaiming.
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So let's step back in time to a young woman standing in a crowd
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at a sacred site,
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SPEAKER_00: waiting for her king to appear.
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SPEAKER_00: She had never seen so many people in one place.
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Her mother's hand reassuringly rested on her shoulder as they
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navigated their way
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SPEAKER_00: through the press of bodies.
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SPEAKER_00: The hill rose before them, crowned with smoke.
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SPEAKER_00: She'd heard about Ishnach her whole life.
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SPEAKER_00: It was the center of their world, the place where the provinces meet.
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But she didn't realize until now how this place could pulse
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like a heartbeat,
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too.
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SPEAKER_00: She and her mother had walked three days to be here,
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SPEAKER_00: while her father and older brother stayed behind with the cattle.
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SPEAKER_00: When the time came, they'd be driven through the Beltane fires at home.
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SPEAKER_00: But those home fires, as her mother had told her,
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SPEAKER_00: were only as strong as the one that burned on this hill, on this night.
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SPEAKER_00: The king will approach the goddess,
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and what passes between them will ripple outward as the sacred
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flames are taken
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SPEAKER_00: back to every village.
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SPEAKER_00: Her mother has the honor to carry their flame home,
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SPEAKER_00: and someday the girl will take the mantle too.
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That is why she is here,
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as she is now old enough to see how it all begins.
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The smell of fresh-cut wood fills the air from the two great
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piles stacked before them.
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Oak and ash and white thorn gathered in the days before to
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prepare the great
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SPEAKER_00: structures for this night.
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SPEAKER_00: Further up the slope stands their sacred stone,
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a great limestone rock where their mother goddess is said to be
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buried beneath.
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The stone is a door,
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a gateway for her to enter their mortal world on this
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auspicious night.
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now her mother's hand squeezes harder as wind moves through the
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barley in a wave
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from the top of the hill flowing down toward the crowd she sees
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torches appear
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lifted above people's heads as their druids lead a procession
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of fire and at the
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end appears their king he looks smaller than she expected she
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had imagined a king
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SPEAKER_00: would be like a mountain
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SPEAKER_00: But here he is,
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SPEAKER_00: just a man wrapped in a heavy cloak at his shoulders,
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SPEAKER_00: his face now lit by the torch as he climbs the hill.
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SPEAKER_00: She watches him carefully,
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SPEAKER_00: for if he has ruled justly,
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SPEAKER_00: if he has kept his word and protected their land and people well,
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SPEAKER_00: the fire will catch and burn brightly.
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A sign for a prosperous year with children growing strong
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alongside their crops.
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SPEAKER_00: But if their king has not ruled justly,
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SPEAKER_00: If their goddess is displeased with him, the fire will struggle to burn.
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The crowd falls into utter silence as they wait to hear from
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their goddess.
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The girl realizes she's holding her breath as she imagines a
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beautiful woman
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SPEAKER_00: stirring somewhere beneath the stone,
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SPEAKER_00: her power growing as she senses the flames above her.
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SPEAKER_00: The king lowers the torch to the fresh wood piles,
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SPEAKER_00: Smoke rises before the first flicker of light.
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SPEAKER_00: And then,
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SPEAKER_00: with a great exhale,
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SPEAKER_00: a wave of cheers fills the air as the flames grow into a blaze,
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SPEAKER_00: sparks spinning like a dance into the sky.
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SPEAKER_00: It's believed there's a goddess buried in the heart of Ireland.
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SPEAKER_00: Her name is Eiru,
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SPEAKER_00: and according to the Book of the Taking of Ireland,
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SPEAKER_00: she is connected to the hill of Ishnach.
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SPEAKER_00: The story says she's buried beneath the Stone of the Divisions,
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SPEAKER_00: which is a real stone that still stands on the hill,
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SPEAKER_00: nearly 20 feet tall and weighing over 30 tons.
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SPEAKER_00: This was the place where the borders of all five provinces met.
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SPEAKER_00: The hill of Ishnach.
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SPEAKER_00: has been a gathering place for over 5,000 years,
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SPEAKER_00: long before the Celts took control of the island.
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Yet it seems to have carried through so many different cultures
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as a ceremonial
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SPEAKER_00: site,
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SPEAKER_00: one that is still used for the festival of Beltane today.
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SPEAKER_00: In early Irish law, there is a concept called the ruler's truth.
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SPEAKER_00: The king's justness was believed to directly affect the land's fertility.
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SPEAKER_00: A just king meant abundant harvests and healthy cattle.
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SPEAKER_00: An unjust king meant plague and crop failure.
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SPEAKER_00: The land was believed to be feminine, represented as a goddess.
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And kingship was granted by this goddess to the one with the
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most legitimate claim to rule.
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SPEAKER_00: This wasn't a metaphor.
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It was literally how the early Irish understood the actual
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relationship between
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SPEAKER_00: human governance and the natural world.
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The clearest example of this ritual is a text called The
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Phantom's Frenzy,
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SPEAKER_00: a text compiled in the 11th century.
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The king finds himself drawn through the mist into an
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otherworldly chamber.
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SPEAKER_00: Beside the god Lu sits a beautiful young woman on a crystal chair.
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She holds a golden goblet filled with red ale and asks to whom
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the cup should be given.
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SPEAKER_00: When the king is named, she offers him the drink, and by accepting the
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SPEAKER_00: he is symbolically granted kingship.
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SPEAKER_00: This same pattern appears across many early Irish texts,
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but it's possible this imagery was used to boost legitimacy in
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the midst of chaotic
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SPEAKER_00: medieval politics.
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SPEAKER_00: Still,
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the underlying framework is that the goddess of the land
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legitimized rulers through
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SPEAKER_00: a sacred bond.
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So where would the king go but to the place where the goddess
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of the land resides?
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SPEAKER_00: The archaeological evidence at Ishnach backs this up.
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excavations at the main earthwork on the hill revealed evidence
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of ritual fires
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SPEAKER_00: kindled over and over across thousands of years.
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SPEAKER_00: We can't know if it's burned at Beltane specifically,
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but we can confirm this was a site that people gathered at for
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millennia to enact
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SPEAKER_00: something they considered sacred.
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To be clear,
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early medieval texts do not tell us that Eru presided over
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Beltane,
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SPEAKER_00: The earliest textual evidence we have comes from Cormac's Glossary,
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a 10th century Irish text that describes Druids lighting two
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fires with great
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SPEAKER_00: incantations and driving cattle between them to protect against disease.
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We can only infer from the logic that Beltane marked the
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beginning of summer.
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SPEAKER_00: Everything else is folklore that has traveled through time.
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But when the people of modern Ireland re-kindled the Beltane
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fires at Ishnach in
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SPEAKER_00: 2009,
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SPEAKER_00: they chose her hill.
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SPEAKER_00: as the place revived the festival,
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and it's hard not to see how the threads of her story are
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interwoven into the
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SPEAKER_00: beliefs and rituals of this sacred place.
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SPEAKER_00: By the medieval period,
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SPEAKER_00: continental Europe brought its own May Day customs with maypoles,
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SPEAKER_00: dancing,
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SPEAKER_00: and courtship.
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SPEAKER_00: which gradually mixed with the Irish and Scottish traditions,
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SPEAKER_00: perhaps with a loosening of morals.
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SPEAKER_00: Philip Stubbs,
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SPEAKER_00: an English Puritan writer whose 1583 anatomy of abuses,
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complains about young men and women going into the woods on May
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Day and returning
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SPEAKER_00: considerably less pure than when they left.
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There is no evidence that the ancient Beltane Festival was
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specifically connected
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SPEAKER_00: to promiscuity,
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but the contrast with this later moralizing of couples and
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unions is striking.
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It is worth noting that the early Irish had a different
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framework for understanding
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SPEAKER_00: sexuality and partnership,
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SPEAKER_00: which would be sure to make a Puritan blush.
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SPEAKER_00: Brahan Law,
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SPEAKER_00: the ancient Irish legal code still used in the Middle Ages,
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was remarkably specific about the rights of women when it came
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to sex and marriage.
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Stories like Queen Maeve's suggest that taking lovers outside
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of marriage was not
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SPEAKER_00: necessarily scandalous.
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Maeve states plainly that she has never been without one lover
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quickly succeeding
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SPEAKER_00: another,
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SPEAKER_00: and her husband appears entirely unbothered.
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Regardless,
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these sexual implications with the festival persist for
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centuries.
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SPEAKER_00: In the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
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scholars of the time became obsessed with what they called
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primitive fertility
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SPEAKER_00: rites.
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These were almost always men writing from within the British
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Empire as they
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projected their own preoccupations with folk traditions during
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this time of revival
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SPEAKER_00: for the ancient Celtic myths.
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SPEAKER_00: The central figure from this period is Sir James Fraser,
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SPEAKER_00: whose book The Golden Bough appeared in 1890.
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SPEAKER_00: He assembled a sweeping theory of dying and rising gods,
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SPEAKER_00: sacred kingship,
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and seasonal fertility rites by stitching together disconnected
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fragments of
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SPEAKER_00: evidence,
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SPEAKER_00: often from wildly different cultures without much regard for context.
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SPEAKER_00: Most of his specific theories are now discredited,
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but his influence imagining Western pre-Christian religion has
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been hard for the
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SPEAKER_00: collective consciousness to shake.
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SPEAKER_00: Margaret Murray built on this in the 1920s,
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SPEAKER_00: arguing that the European witchcraft trials were evidence of surviving
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SPEAKER_00: pre-Christian fertility religions.
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SPEAKER_00: Modern historians have largely rejected her work,
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but it became foundational to what we know as the modern
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witchcraft movement.
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SPEAKER_00: Witch came through with Gerald Gardner,
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who drew on both Fraser and Murray when he constructed modern
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Wicca in the 40s and
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SPEAKER_00: 50s.
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SPEAKER_00: He took their theories as historical fact and built rituals around them.
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SPEAKER_00: rituals such as the Great Rite,
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SPEAKER_00: where a priest and priestess enact a sacred sexual union,
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SPEAKER_00: often conducted at Beltane.
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SPEAKER_00: There's also a popular association between Beltane and hand fasting,
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which historically was actually closer to matchmaking done at a
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separate Celtic
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SPEAKER_00: festival called Lunasa.
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So most of the popular Beltane lore of today gives the sense
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that this was an
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SPEAKER_00: ancient festival of sexual freedom.
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SPEAKER_00: And as scintillating as that is to imagine,
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It's largely a 20th century reconstruction built on 19th
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century misreadings,
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SPEAKER_00: which is then built on fragments of evidence.
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But what we do know is there is a goddess of the land that
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resides in the heart of
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SPEAKER_00: Ireland,
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SPEAKER_00: and she decides whether or not to give a king her blessing.
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She was not a symbol of fertility to be overtly sexualized or
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even a prize to be won.
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SPEAKER_00: She was the most powerful autonomous figure in the country.
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SPEAKER_00: She tested,
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SPEAKER_00: chose,
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and decided whether the man standing before her had the right
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to rule based on his
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SPEAKER_00: honor.
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SPEAKER_00: When he drank from her cup,
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he entered into a covenant with a goddess who could remove her
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consent as quickly
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SPEAKER_00: as she granted it.
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SPEAKER_00: So as Beltane approaches,
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it's worth asking what the goddess of the land might make of
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our treatment of her
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SPEAKER_00: today.
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If Eru appeared with the cup of red ale,
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would she grant our leaders the right to rule
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If we gathered together to light bonfires in the hope of her
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granting legitimacy,
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SPEAKER_00: would they burn brightly?
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SPEAKER_00: Or perhaps, at least in some cases, would they smolder before going out?
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SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.
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SPEAKER_00: If you'd like more Celtic-inspired stories and resources,
12:41
SPEAKER_00: subscribe to Wild Kin Studio on Substack.
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SPEAKER_00: Link is in the show notes.
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SPEAKER_00: So glad you could join me by the fire, and we'll meet again soon.