Discordians Do It Randomly And With Joy, Except Me: It's Almost Beltane!

I am of a split mind about God's nature, if not God's existence, most of the time, but the ability of the human mind to hold contradictory ideas simultaneously is pro-evolution, so I go with that. (Plus, Discordian. Duh, Kind of.) So I basically celebrate the holidays I want, and I like to mark the solstices and equinoxes, certain Saint's days, certain days of the week...it depends on what aspect of God I am walking with as to what I end up doing, but the awareness of the moon never seems to leave me, whereas I've missed Lent for two years. I don't give me any points for giving up sex during Lent this year, because that's double-dipping. And bad karma.

Beltane is almost here.

Now, Beltane is probably the pagan holiday of choice. It's about getting fucked up and fucking, on one level. It's also one of the most joyous holidays of the year, the one that we celebrate with the most joy. (Won't say the fucking and the getting fucked up don't have something to do with that.)

Nonetheless, much of the joy is that IT'S SPRING IT'S SPRING IT'S SPRING. Most people with any kind of depression are season-sensitive. Even if you're not severe enough to really have seasonal affective disorder, depression and winter love each other. And I look forward to Samhain, Yule and Imbolc in their turns to get me through each time. Beltane, however, is the sap rising in the earth, the young feeling, the feeling that made you so damn impatient for school to be over when you were a kid, the feeling that makes you look at the flowers and start thinking thoughts about propagating the species.

But I love Beltane. And for Beltane last year I was in a horrible place, but it's the one bright spot I remember in a spring that mostly sucked donkey, a spring so ridiculous and full of pathos and coincidence that if I wrote it as a spec and sent it to Query Letters, I'd get roasted like an Episkopos' bratwurst on a Friday. (That link is not dirty.) This year, the one element that made my Beltane last year hell on earth (well, there was more than one, but they were sort of symbiotic) is missing. I am not sharing water, even indirectly, in falsehood. And even though I get sharing-water without growing-closer this year, I want it to get here so bad.

I still love it this year, when I'm not doing any fornicating to honor the Goddess. I'm so looking forward to it and hoping that something doesn't happen like last year that forces us all INSIDE on a night when we are supposed to be skyclad and as far from civilization as possible (and no, that's not true of everyone, but the people that are going? We are skyclad in the woods nature children. Even those of us who hate hippies understand the fun of being in the woods with a sarong and not much else.) We did have a good time last year though....torrential downpour precluded a fire, so we made one with herbs in my burning bowl and jumped it like it was a bonfire, drummed for two and a half hours, ululated like Yoko. We ruled. This year it's going to be even better.

I'm going to get naked. I'm going to dance. I am going to the woods to look for Goddess, and when I find her she and I are going to throw down in good fun, and wrestle, and have a good time. Because it's Beltane.

I love Beltane. I love it.

***

For some people, Beltane's all about sex, just as Christmas is purely secular to some people. Even if you try hard to remain spiritual, it's such a sexually charged holiday that It turns into sort of this Valentine's Day displacement experience when you're single, like Bridget Jones' Book of Shadows. This year I'm free of all that, and I wonder if the Spring makes even God horny (our legends would say yes.) Cernunnos will run the woods on Beltane as Cernunnos does, sometimes named Pan, sometimes other things -- but always running through the woods, sometimes for love, sometimes for trickery. Of course, God is in the woods at Beltane, and every other day of the year. But on Beltane in the light of the moon with the earth and moon balanced at a particular point, it's like the light of God hits one particular spot on a prism and all of a sudden -- BAM -- you look into the trees, and see God, and feel God, and it's so much easier, and you wonder why you ever were depressed, how you could ever lack serotonin when God is in and around you. Or Goddess, for that matter...but the Goddess is so much easier to see when you see Her as Chaos.

I don't know why the conjunction makes it easier to see than the Artist charming deer to let him walk within fifteen feet of pregnant does...in broad daylight. One would think I get enough proof, just hanging around. But keeping faith isn't virtuous because it's easy, I don't guess.

***

Happy Shabbos, by the way. I've become oddly aware of the Jewish calendar and weekly observances recently, thanks in no small part to the writings of The RenReb and our own Irina, not to mention the Voices frum ladies, one of whom helped pull a frum version of a scene from Inga Muscio that is so awesome that you must go and read what they did for Leah Klein right now. I realize that, at least in the first case and almost certainly in the third, that I shouldn't check for posts in this dead Friday night time while I'm waiting for it to be TV Time, my own personal Friday night ritual.
Because of these awesome ladies, I know when it's Shabbos. So, Shomer Shabbos, ladies. I'm avodah zorah, but I live in awe of you nonetheless.