This is a piece published years and years ago in a little Pagan magazine that has since gone out of business. \u00a0It is about the Sabbat called Bealteinee (May Day, or May 1st), traditionally a fertility holiday intended to bless crops and livestock. \u00a0This year’s Bealteinne falls auspiciously ![\"maypole\"](\"https:\/\/betzking.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/maypole-300x225.jpg\")
close to a rather prominent astrological Grand Cross, as well as a Solar Eclipse. \u00a0Setting clear intentions for the seeds that are being planted is strongly recommended. \u00a0And if you can find a May Pole, or jump over a fire, that would be great too.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Lord and Lady never ask my approval.\u00a0 I serve them as Priestess, I do what they ask.\u00a0 I would not have chosen my co-worker Yitzhak, Izzy, as my mate for the Bealteinne fires.\u00a0 But the choice was made above and beyond me.\u00a0 To my credit \u2013 I surrendered.<\/p>\n
What is a Jew?\u00a0 I asked myself that often.\u00a0 Yes, I\u2019d read the textbooks.\u00a0 I knew the dates, the places, the prayers.\u00a0 But what did it mean to me?\u00a0 Where was my place? A\u00a0 fire was smoldering, but wouldn\u2019t catch.\u00a0 It was the struggle of a fire going out.\u00a0 So when she introduced the idea of the Bealteinne fires, I was all ears.\u00a0 Where did this fire burn?\u00a0 Show me, Charlie.<\/i><\/p>\n
The first Bealteinne we worked together we were very enthusiastic in teaching each other about our very different Traditions.\u00a0 We would walk on our lunch hour, and that first spring I got a very general education about Passover and Izzy got a very watered down description of Bealteinne \u2013 minus the fires altogether.\u00a0 A season later we were walking on very different ground during lunch.\u00a0\u00a0 I knew enough to say \u201cShabbat Shalom\u201d on Fridays, and when to bring unleavened bread to share at lunch, and Iz had learned enough to comment on the moon phases and at least wish me happy solstices and equinoxes.<\/p>\n
And then she appeared, looking like an orphan with a backpack and a rumpled windbreaker on some early spring morning.\u00a0 \u201cI like you\u201d she said, with gigantic green eyes and red elfin hair.\u00a0 No words needed.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Just those wonderful green eyes and lashes that summoned forth the shadows of some forbidden forest.\u00a0 Something sleeping awakened in me.\u00a0 Jung would\u2019ve said it was my anima, my inner female.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cI like you\u201d, I returned with my broad shoulders, my long legs, and the stubble that darkened my chin.\u00a0 She was so alive, so passionate in her beliefs, her Pagan path\u2026 so reverent\u00a0 in her respect for all of life, from her clients to the bugs and butterflies of our never ending walks.\u00a0 Show me Charlie\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n
I tried not to complicate my workplace. I tried not to admit a physical attraction to a man who called my tattoo a \u201cpen-tangle\u201d<\/i> and thought the four elements were \u201canimal, vegetable mineral and synthetic\u201d.\u00a0 Iz did everything he could to deny that he was being haunted by some past life version of himself, Priest at Avalon maybe, or Bard at the King\u2019s court\u2026 noticing the tides of his blood ebbing and flowing with no Yiddish expressions to capture or explain it.\u00a0 What a rationalist.\u00a0 What a thinker.\u00a0 We walked day after day for over a year, celebrating every season.\u00a0 \u201cWho can figure?\u201d I said to myself, in my best Yiddish impersonation.\u00a0 I know now, after that night of the Bealteinne Fires, that we had been puppets all along, Lord and Lady pulling our strings for over a year before They, and we, joined together in the fields.<\/p>\n
She thought I was brilliant.\u00a0 Quite an aphrodisiac for an insecure solitary soul.\u00a0 I always hampered my every move with a crass and scolding \u201cYou can do better Izzy, you can do better\u201d. My father perhaps, talking.\u00a0 Or maybe my whole culture, chanting in unison: \u201cDo better, do better , do better\u2026we are the Chosen People and we must do better!\u201d.\u00a0 Ah yes, the guilt at not having done good enough, my Alma Mater.\u00a0 A graduate from the University of Not Having Done Enough.<\/em><\/p>\n Macrocosmically, we were the chosen of the Lord and Lady.\u00a0 Microcosmically, our attraction to each other was harder to explain.\u00a0 Walk after walk, talk after talk, I felt a magnetic attraction to a process larger than our incompatibilities.\u00a0 I was newly sworn as Priestess, but unable to share that reality in my professional work as psychologist.\u00a0 Iz was the least likely to understand me. But it was his very unfamiliarity with my Tradition that allowed him to see me as Priestess.\u00a0 This, in turn, allowed me to see myself as Priestess.\u00a0 And as Priestess, I saw in him both Priest and man \u2013 maybe more man than Priest, to be honest: the pull of his deep brown eyes, the suggestion of muscles under his dress shirts, the knot of his tie against his Adam\u2019s apple, and his swarthy 5:00 shadow at nine a.m.\u00a0 Around his masculinity, my femininity resonated like a tuning fork.<\/p>\n Every six weeks or so I explained the current Sabbat to him, and if there was also a Jewish holiday he would teach me.\u00a0 We combined them into lunchtime walk celebrations.\u00a0 We called our blended tradition \u201cHebragan\u201d, and Iz pronounced it with such a perfect Irish accent that I laughed with delight every time.\u00a0 But he was sad\u2026 empty somehow.\u00a0 Iz went through the motions, but without any inner spark.\u00a0 When I tried to talk with him about it he was evasive, and would always turn the talk elsewhere.\u00a0 I let him be.<\/p>\n My car seemed to drive itself to the Temple of my youth.\u00a0 I used to talk to God here.\u00a0 It was dark, and I was reluctant to enter and visit the ghosts inside.\u00a0 I walked instead around the back, to the fields behind.\u00a0 I was lost, yes.\u00a0 Spiritually, soulfully lost – walking in the field behind the Temple of my youth.\u00a0 Without goals, without faith.<\/em><\/p>\n It was the field behind Temple Emmanuel where my spiritual crisis culminated.\u00a0 I was thinking of Charlie of course, of her crazy faith, her beliefs as alien to me as my own Judaism.\u00a0 Only difference was she chose hers \u2013 something I don\u2019t do.\u00a0 I don\u2019t choose.\u00a0 I default.\u00a0 Into being a Jew and back out again.\u00a0 Empty and aware of empty.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0I do not recall a time when I felt so alone as I did that evening.\u00a0 It was as if a night of endless proportion, of infinity, was descending upon the fields.\u00a0 And the silence was so overwhelming, so daunting.\u00a0 Was I losing my mind?<\/em><\/p>\n Recently I\u2019d joined a Druidic grove, to compliment my Kabalistic studies.\u00a0 We were seeking a place to celebrate Bealteinne and initiate new members.\u00a0 I made a few calls, and secured us permission to use the big field and small forest behind the Temple Emmanuel, and our celebration was consequently held there, on Jewish ground.\u00a0 \u201cAll Gods are one God, and all Goddesses one Goddess\u201d, it didn\u2019t matter to us.\u00a0 We were grateful for the little piece of wilderness within the metropolitan city.<\/p>\n After initiations of the new members, and the traditional Bealteinne rituals of the Maypole, and jumping the fires, there was much merry making in the warm spring night.\u00a0 Mead flowed like nectar from the Gods as people broke into smaller groups and lit smaller fires to talk and sing and dance around.\u00a0 I sat for awhile with some pipers, lending my feeble skills on my wooden recorder, then wandered, blessedly barefoot, to the guitars and dulcimers, strumming and singing their Gaelic tunes.\u00a0\u00a0 The drumming circle eventually captivated me and pulled me to the edge of the woods, by the abandoned Maypole.\u00a0 Congas, bongos, djembes and medicine drums pounded into the night, the rhythm so hypnotic, the night air so crisp and filled with the smell of mud and smoke and new grass.\u00a0 It seemed to me the most joyful celebration of life possible \u2013 a newly sworn Bard, a Priestess in grateful celebration of Bel, the bright one, Lord of the Fires.\u00a0\u00a0 The music took me like one of Pan\u2019s nymphs.\u00a0 I found myself jumping the various fires, past pipers and drummers, to the edge of the woods where our Maypole still stood, like a giant phallus, guarding the deep dark forest behind.<\/p>\n Weary, and burdened by the weight of my own thoughts, I walked blindly into the great field behind the temple. With each step I heard my heartbeat, throbbing.\u00a0\u00a0 But then the internal became external as I recognized the sounds to be rhythmic, ebbing and flowing, fading in and out, distant but then closer.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Drumming?\u00a0 Yes, it was the sound of drumming.\u00a0 How peculiar.\u00a0 My curiosity piqued, I walked faster into the field. \u00a0<\/i>Aglow in the field,\u00a0 the brilliant orbs of small fires burned.\u00a0 Smoke curled upward..\u00a0 Sweet sounds trickled through the night air.\u00a0 A dulcimer?\u00a0 A mandolin?\u00a0 Was some sort of gypsy caravan performing behind my Temple?<\/i><\/p>\n <\/i>I strolled closer, trying to look nonchalant among the people dressed in all manners of ways.\u00a0 My instinct was to hide, and observe, but out of nowhere a girl in a peasant dress grabbed my hand and pulled me towards a small fire crying \u201cCome jump with me!\u201d and she began to run, pulling me.\u00a0 I jumped over the small fire with her and she kissed my cheek and was gone.\u00a0 What strange sect was this?\u00a0 Who were these people?!\u00a0 I found a hiding spot behind a large Oak tree, where I could watch this surrealistic scene.\u00a0 I was both captivated and apprehensive.\u00a0 Suddenly,\u00a0 I recognized the sound of feet, quick stepping over last year\u2019s leaves, and a voice, humming, singing, chirping and giggling. I peered around the trunk and through the smoke and night I barely made out the image, silhouetted before the burning fires.<\/i><\/p>\n <\/i>Was it\u2026?\u00a0 Could it be\u2026?\u00a0 It couldn\u2019t be\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n <\/i>Charlie.\u00a0 Swirling round and round a great pole hung with streamers.\u00a0 Eyes closed, a blissful smile on her face.\u00a0 Her tattoo, the one I\u2019d only heard of, the one that would forever prohibit her burial in Jewish ground, was glistening and glorious.\u00a0 Her torso was wet with sweat. I inched closer to convince myself that I was not dreaming.\u00a0 Yes, it was Charlie, dancing round and round in time to the music.\u00a0 Some kind of pagan hoe-down?\u00a0 She told me she worshipped outside.\u00a0 She didn’t mention it was behind my Temple.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n <\/i>\u201cShekhinah\u201d, I whispered without thought, the divine feminine in my tradition, why remember that now, after so many years of forgetting?\u00a0\u00a0 She was almost too beautiful to look at, and my heart swelled at her brightness. \u201cWhy, she is Shekhinah, and she is fire\u2026 she is all that I am not, all that I am missing\u2026.\u201d\u00a0 I began unbuttoning my shirt, smiling.<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/i>\u201cA Maypole dance \u2013 too perfect!\u201d I exclaimed.\u00a0 I hummed and giggled, eyes mostly closed as I focused on the mud between my toes and the cool breeze on my skin, dancing towards the Maypole.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I grabbed a ribbon and began to twirl around the pole, ducking, turning in and out, very pagan, very ancient and very child like. Stumbling for a moment, I opened my eyes to catch my balance and realized someone was watching me.\u00a0 It took two seconds for my rational mind to blow a fuse and shut down, because it took two seconds to recognize the watcher as Izzy. His eyes were sparkling.\u00a0 The firelight illuminated him from behind, and he said simply \u201cShekhinah\u201d.<\/p>\n Somewhere along my approach to her, as the tongue of flame licked us both, from our toes to the roots of our hair, language became non-functional, and thus void. The fire, the pounding of the conga, the dappling of the guitar notes, my own heartbeat, these became our language, hers and mine.<\/i><\/p>\n <\/i>Show me the Light Charlie.<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/i>As she turned fully to me, her eyes melted.<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/i>Is this happening?\u00a0 Am I dreaming?\u00a0 Show me\u2026 show me!<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/i>Then she brought her gaze full up my body, so slowly, then up the slope of my neck, around my ears, over my chin and to my fully parted lips.\u00a0 I saw her eyes glaze over then, as if she was venturing to some far off place.<\/i><\/p>\n <\/i>She held her ribbon out to me.<\/i><\/p>\n He approached me then, and took up the ribbon.\u00a0 If ever I doubted the existence of magic, or of the Lord and Lady , the doubt was extinguished in the dance that followed.\u00a0 Round and round the maypole, over and under the ribbons, braided together as we twirled somehow in perfect grace\u2026.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/i>******************************************************************<\/i><\/p>\n After the fire\u2026 I started so many sentences in my mind that way, so many emails and letters to Izzy, all unsent\u2026 after the fire.\u00a0 The seasons have turned.\u00a0 Yitzhak took a new job months ago, and it\u2019s been longer since we last talked.\u00a0 I spend my days at a much lonelier workplace now.<\/p>\n After the fire, I came back to myself, as if I had been in a drug induced black out, with only fragments of images to fill in the missing hours.\u00a0 In the shower that night, my muscles were sore, my body covered with mud and scratches, I had flashbacks, singular images and scenes\u2026 Izzy over me, me looking down upon him, the smell of smoke\u2026\u00a0 Washing my face, I felt the sting of the soap where his stubble had rubbed me raw.\u00a0 I remember mud painted war stripes on his cheeks and chest, that bare chest revealed after so many months of wondering\u2026shoulders so broad, hair so think and curly\u2026 I moaned and rested my cheek against the cool shower tile.\u00a0 \u201cOh Iz, what have we done?\u201d<\/p>\n Clean then in my bathrobe, still stinging and sore, I sat before my altar.\u00a0 I lit a stick of Nag Champa and recited the Charge of the Goddess to sooth myself, much as I used to recite \u201cNow I lay me down to sleep\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cI who am the beauty of the green earth and the white moon among the stars and the mysteries of the waters, I call upon your soul to arise and come unto Me\u2026\u201d.\u00a0 I murmured the words, thought of my Grandmamma with her rosary\u2026 all Goddesses are one Goddess\u2026 \u201c For behold I have been with you from the beginning, and I am that which is attained at the end of desire.\u201d<\/p>\n I lay my damp and throbbing head against the silk covered table and breathed deeply.\u00a0 What am I feeling?\u00a0 What am I feeling?\u00a0 I scanned my energy field and was immediately struck by an awareness of my own polarities, anima and amimus, combined into a third thing, pulsating and vibrant in my bloodstream.\u00a0 I shifted to my inner vision and saw that my aura was golden and radiant and huge, and that each chakra was wide open, a rainbow of frequencies harmoniously dancing.\u00a0 \u201cOh!\u00a0 This is a math thingy!\u00a0 The sum being bigger than it\u2019s parts! Sin… Sinner… Synergistic!\u201d I exclaimed to the empty room.\u00a0 Then I meditated in the warm glow of wholeness, late into the morning hours.<\/p>\n Faithful reader, whomever you may be and whatever drew you to this particular essay, I say: \u201c Believe in the Bealteinne Fires\u201d!\u00a0 Again I repeat: \u201c Believe in the Bealteinne Fires!\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/i>I could not then, nor can I now explain rationally the change that overtook me the night of the Bealteinne Fires.\u00a0 As Charlie told you, I was a thinker, a logician of sorts, rigid and well defended, forever stepping carefully and never on cracks.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/i>I\u2019d often wondered what attracted Charlie and I to each other.\u00a0 On paper, we were mismatched.\u00a0 But when you come within close contact to someone who is on fire, burning, you tend to follow, because slowly you remember that you are on fire as well.\u00a0 You smell the smoke and sometimes you see the glowing embers, and sometimes you hear the crackle.\u00a0 You learn that fire follows fire, and there isn\u2019t a damn thing you can do about it.\u00a0 Charlie, the Elf, with the Green Eyes and red hair, was on fire, and I was too.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/i>On the night of\u00a0 Bealteinne, we finally allowed our flames to touch.\u00a0 We saw the grandeur of our fires together,\u00a0 the Flame of Passion.\u00a0 We allowed its presence, and savored\u00a0 its glow.\u00a0 And in the divine moment of our flames blending, I realized Charlie was my teacher.<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/i>In the synagogue, the Torah is housed in the Ark.\u00a0 And hanging over the Ark, the Eternal Flame burns through the days and nights, always flickering, casting a pool of light.\u00a0 What does the eternal flame represent?\u00a0 In perhaps a personal interpretation, it is thus: God\u2019s love is always present, and can never be extinguished. Throughout the ages, great Kingdoms of Evil have attempted to exterminate the Love, but repeatedly they have failed.\u00a0\u00a0 But the other interpretation, gleaned from a night of reckless, wild, and wonderful union with flesh, soil, grass, and an enchanted field full of joyful Pagans, is that the fire burns within us.\u00a0 And we are free to burn alone, or with others.\u00a0 But the trick, dear reader, is to Burn.\u00a0 Remember:\u00a0 Burn!\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/i>We are alive.<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is a piece published years and years ago in a little Pagan magazine that has since gone out of business. \u00a0It is about the Sabbat called Bealteinee (May Day, or May 1st), traditionally a fertility holiday intended to bless … Continue reading