Beltaine!!! Happy May Day!!!

Yesterday was my 21st Wedding Anniversary...can't believe it's been that long and I'm not in jail or insane. LOL

And YES, we did be married on a Witches' Holiday...I always knew that I wanted to be married on one of our special days and there was no way that my Grandmother would let me get hitched on Halloween...that woulda been WAAAYYYY to weird.

We have a mixed marriage: I'm an Eclectic Pagan and he's Greek Orthodox...he had learned not to ask if I'm standing outside with candles burning...even though he DID ask about the walking stick in the snow at Imbolc...

I was looking on line for nice and easy solitary rituals...I can't exactly stand out in my suburban neighbourhood skyclad and howl at the moon...no matter HOW MUCH I would love to...
DH wouldn't respond well to the neighbours with their pitchforks and flaming torches...

I found this one first(http://www.globalgoddess.org/oracle/beltane2008/ritual)and decided that the ingredients would be good for my Beltaine altar...My garden is lousy this year. I have all of TWO tulips and maybe a dozen daffodils...my crocuses have come and gone and the neighbours cut the lilac tree to a stick...grrr...


So after I work I went to make the craft store rounds...to get fake flowers. I have the proverbial Black Thumb...I've even killed air plants...

The second link was good too:They have for all the big holidays.
http://www.celestialtides.com/Coven/bos/invocations.html
Invocation to the God Pan for Beltane
The Bale fires burn ever so high on this Eve
The ruddy glow of flesh
Flashing in and out of the Darkness
A night blessed by the rod and cup
A glimpse of tanned skin
Sweat matted hair
A curve
A horn

Hail Pan, Dance amongst us
Our souls are moved by Your pipes
Our bodies ache for Your touch
Warm, Healing, Invigorating

Burn us with Your lusty touch
That our concentration will shine as embers

Consume us with Your eternal music
Moving us freely to explore the world around us

Cleanse us of our inhibitions with Your wildness
So we can more fully celebrate our existence

Inspire us with Your passion
To engulf ourselves in this work

Be pleased to be with us in our circle
For Your very being is our being
Feeding each other throughout time and space
Blessing All who seek Your Caress

Blessed Be


Thanking the God Pan at Beltane
Hail Pan

We thank You for Being here this Eve
And we are truly thankful and blessed
By burning us with Your lusty touch
By consuming us with Your eternal music
By cleansing us with Your wildness
By inspiring us with Your passion
We are reminded daily of our connection to You
Be blessed and honored as we bid farewell

Blessed Be

So when I finally(sigh) do the ritual, sometime this weekend, I'll use my vase of fake tulips, my honey/oat candle, my mini cauldron with birdseed, my Psyduck glass or my chalice with grape juice, and Hershey's Dark Chocolate Truffle Kisses.

I'll put on one of my flute music CD's and see what happens...

I've always been sympathetic to Pan...he's got a major bum deal...

Pan (Greek Πάν, genitive Πανός), in Greek religion and mythology, is the companion of the nymphs,[1] god of shepherds and flocks, of mountain wilds, hunting and rustic music. His name originates within the Greek language, from the word paein, meaning "to pasture".[2] He has the hindquarters, legs, and horns of a goat, in the same manner as a faun or satyr. With his homeland in rustic Arcadia, he is recognized as the god of fields, groves, and wooded glens; because of this, Pan is connected to fertility and the season of spring.

In Roman mythology, Pan's counterpart was Faunus, a nature spirit who was the father of Bona Dea (Fauna). In the 18th and 19th centuries, Pan became a significant figure in the romanticist movement of western Europe, and also in the 20th century Neopagan movement.[3]

Wiki has such great links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_(mythology)

This is what drives me over the edge: Pan is the Devil...gimme a break!
"It was Margaret Murray who said that the gods of the old religion become the devils of the new. Jesus ended his life on earth in the southern part of Judea in Jerusalem. The death of Christ heralded the birth of a new religion which would bear his name. As this new religion grew and spread, all, or almost all, it came into contact with became its enemy. The common people, content in their style of worship were suddenly heathens, sinners and enemies of the one true God. The pair of opposites was now Paganism and Christianity. As Christ represents Christianity, Pan represents Paganism. Pan was soon to become the Christian Devil, Satan incarnate. But before this Christian conception took hold, Pan was a god.

What was there about this frolicking god of the glen that made him so odious to the new Christians? Wherein was he Satanic? Perhaps in his sexual exploits. He is known to have seduced several nymphs. He also boasted that he had coupled with all Dionysus' drunken maenads.The episode related above wherein Pan seduces the Moon points to the Christian belief that Satan is able to disguise himself and seduce chaste women. The similarity between the Church Father Origen's description of Satan and the features of Pan is very obvious.

Pan represented freedom of spirit, natural instincts, sinless love. In some parts of the world, prior to the advent of Christianity, women were free, untrammeled by rigid rules of moral conduct, and therefore, when the new religion made its debut, women were called sinful.

Now we draw closer to the reason Pan might have been viewed as Satan, why the figure of Satan as handed down to us consists of goat's feet, horns and black hair. (The statue of the god Min, the Egyptian Pan, was daubed black.) Pan came to represent the freedom of spirit and love of Nature which could be viewed only as works of the Devil. Pan and women were allies, friends, lovers. All were guiltless, without shame. As some scholars have it, guilt is the cornerstone of the early Christian faith. Woman was guilty by virtue of being woman. Saint Clement announced that "Every woman should be overwhelmed with shame at the very thought that she is woman." Here we have it in a nutshell: pagans had no guilt, no shame, no sense of sin. Thus Pan became the paragon of guilt, the embodiment of sin, and the patron of that horrendous human weakness - sex. Obviously, like gods and goddesses, and rites and ceremonies before him, Pan had to be either syncretized, suppressed or subordinated. True to form, the Christian Fathers incorporated Pan into their pantheon - as Satan. Pan could not be annihilated for too many people loved, adored and worshipped him. He could not be extirpated from the hearts and minds of men and women. So he was simply 'evilized'. This Christian act was felt everywhere; the repercussions were wide ranging. The Christian God was said to have killed Pan."

Buncha Horse Pucky if ya ask me!
The Great God Pan still lives in all of us. When we see the deer run by, listen to the babbling brook, hear the wind in the trees and feel the wildness in our souls, you have to KNOW that he is still around...