Beltane

Beltane, Bealtaine or Beltain (Gaul: Ambivolcaia, Kymric: Calan Mai), is one of the four Celtic festivals, recognized in the Spring Festival celebrations, but that originally marked the summer, is also the name of the month of May in Gaelic, in which month the festival happens. Beltane is strongly focused on soil fertility and consequently on human sensuality. The Beltane is the happiest of Celtic Festivals, where people dancing, and rejoice in the campfire.

Opposite of Samhain, Beltane is a festival of fertility, symbolizing the union between the male and female, the fertlity of Earth and the fires of the Celtic god Bellenos, God of Sun, and all his energy and light.
In ancient times during the festival, bonfires were lit on the tops of the mountains and places considered sacred and is an important ritual in the Celtic lands. And as tradition, people burnt offerings, for example, totems so that the power of fire was passed to the flock, and jumped to the fires that fill the same powerful energies.
Represents the beginning of summer and marks the death of winter, being celebrated with dances and banquets.

It occurs on May 1 in the northern hemisphere and November 1 in the Southern Hemisphere.

The Fertility contained in this celebration as the blossoming of spring, with the opening of the flowers, seeds, and the life of offspring considered in the Animal Kingdom. A party that must be watered with joy, with dancing, wreaths and a feast of food that values ​​time and especially the fire, or something representing the fire. So we can let this element in disease-free and to restart life in primordial form, pure and simple.

Nobody celebrates today with the intention of increasing the population of your city or your village, but seen as a metaphor, the full and harmonious sexual union between the King and Queen is the clearest statement of what paganism is on the way to happiness. represents the reconciliation of all opposites in love, and fruit that is born there. Fertility can also be seen as a metaphor for any number of things. Not necessarily referring to plantations or babies. But we must not forget the hungry in our modern world, and many endangered species.

The spirituality of pleasure, a strange concept in our present culture is the theme of the Rite of Beltane: the innocent pleasure of sensuality and creativity that results from the union of opposites.

According to Nora Chadwick, in Celtic Ireland "Beltine (or Beltaine) was celebrated on 1 May, a spring-time festival of optimism. Fertility ritual again was important, in part perhaps connecting with the waxing power of the sun, symbolized by the lighting of fires through which livestock were driven, and around which the people danced in a sunwise direction".

In Irish mythology, the beginning of the summer season for the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Milesians started at Bealtaine. Great bonfires would mark a time of purification and transition, heralding in the season in the hope of a good harvest later in the year, and were accompanied with ritual acts to protect the people from any harm by Otherworldly spirits, such as the Aos Sí. Like the festival of Samhain, opposite Beltane on 31 October Beltane was also a time when the Otherworld was seen as particularly close at hand. 

Moderns pagans celebrate Beltane today as one of the eight sabaths of the wiccan Wheel of the Year.

Nowadays there is a very famous cultural festival that takes place in Edinburgh, Scotland, celebrating this festival, Beltane Fire Festival.

Website of the organization: http://beltane.org/about/beltane/