Edinburgh’s Premiere Celtic Festival in Full Swing – Beltane Fire Society

The Beltane Fire Festival to be held at Edinburgh’s Calton Hill on April 30 – May 1, 2016 is the premier event celebrating the Celtic Festival of Beltane. The international prestige of Beltane Fire festival grows stronger every year.  The Beltane Fire festival was first held in 1988 and has developed its own traditions built on the legacy of 2,500 years of Beltane observances. The Beltane Fire Society is a Community Arts Performance Charity that hosts the Beltane Fire Festival as well as Halloween's Samhuinn (Samhain) Fire Festival.  The Beltane Fire Society Festival also celebrates the Celtic Cross-Quarter days of Imbolc and Lughnasadh as well as Solstices and Equinoxes.

Beltane Fire Society is a not-for-profit registered charity in Scotland.

Charity Number SC040137. Company Number SC341753

OUR STORY – From The Beltane Fire Society Website: Beltane.org

At its core, the narrative sees the May Queen rise from the Earth and reveal herself in her maiden aspect. She is accompanied by her former consort, the Winter King (or Horned God), who has become old and decrepit. The May Queen must take a journey through the Fire Arch, the door between the worlds, and catalyse the turn of the wheel; a process which necessitates the sacrifice of the old God, in order for him to be reborn anew.

Along the way the May Queen passes through the four elemental points, awakening each one as she goes and gathering their energies. The Queen is accompanied on this journey by her hand maidens, the White Women, who represent an extension of her maidenhood and an outward expression of Her new fertility and strong maternal nature.

The procession encounters many characters which have been seen in different manifestations over the years. One core group has been the Red Men who are extensions of the Green Man and symbolise the Divine Masculine offering a polar opposite to the White Woman.

During this elemental journey, the Red Men are birthed and, as they explore their new bodies and the world they find themselves in, their energy grows in strength. Upon the awakening of the Fire element, the passion and vigour within the Red Men overcomes them; attracted to the Divine light of the May Queen and the beauty of her handmaidens, they launch themselves at the procession. The chaotic flow of their charge threatens the momentum of the processional ritual and so their advance is fought back and they are repelled, running off into the night to regather their energies. The Reds make one more stunning display to entrance the witnesses and pique the interest of the White Women. But still, they are repelled and they recoil once more into the night.

Thus, the procession moves into the centrepiece of our ritual: the sacrifice and rebirth of the Nature Godhead, the masculine aspect of the Divine, our Green Man. The May Queen, having gathered the many elemental forces around the hill, spins them into a vortex, making right the conditions for the Green Man’s return. Witnessed by both our own community and the wider community of witnesses, this powerful death and rebirth sequence binds us together in our hope and desire for renewal. He presents himself to his Queen – if He is worthy, She will accept Him as Her new consort.

The first responsibility for the newly joined God and Goddess is to complete the journey of the Neid Fire and light the hearth of the Hill, our bonfire. This has been seen to symbolise the marrying of the community. They then lead their court to the Bower as the Reds continue their revelry around the fire. At the Bower the ritual comes to a close, but not before the Red Men and White Women have concluded their seduction, both accepting one another as their King and Queen have done. The only thing left to do from here is to dance and revel in the joy of the newborn Summer as we invite our witnesses to dance with us.