Beltane: Fire at the Threshold

Not the sanitized May Day of modern imagination — the older, stranger, more demanding festival that Celtic mythology and Irish folklore actually describe.

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Description

Beltane is the largest festival in the Irish Pagan year. Not the sanitized May Day of modern imagination. The older, stranger, more demanding festival that Celtic mythology and Irish folklore actually describe: the night when the whole community gathered on the hilltops, sent fire across the land, and stepped through the threshold between this world and the otherworld.

Beltane: Fire at the Threshold is a comprehensive guide to the May Day sabbat for the serious Irish Pagan practitioner. This 46,000-word volume covers Celtic mythology in full (the Dagda and the Mórrígan at the ford, Cú Chulainn’s Beltane encounters, Étaín and the otherworld summons); sacred landscape (Uisneach, Tara, Knocknarea); Irish folklore in depth (the need-fire, regional variations, May dew, butter customs, the Beltane cakes, and the night on the hill); full chapters on the hawthorn and the Irish sacred feminine; complete pagan rituals for solitaries and groups; inner work on desire, embodiment, and sovereignty; and eight seasonal recipes.

Written by a priest of Irish Paganism with over thirty years of practice. Part of the Expanded Companions to Living the Irish Wheel of the Year series from Forgotten Rites Publishing.