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haptalaonWhen you try and fix problems like Beltane being the festival of ambient sex pressure, and decide that its actually Mabon which is the explosion of sexual freedom and delight, in contrast to Beltane which has - among its correspondences of spring maids and young lads - the association with thst sexual pressure; Beltane's story of innocence and girls in white dresses in the grass only really makes sense, makes full sense, if the reality of this experience ia acknowledged; and we can't fetishise innocence within a ritual context without acknowledging that this fetishisation has a viewpoint, and it's the viewpoint of a man who is *looking at waifish white girls*.
No, Mabon is the date. Mabon's the festival for old, fat women who've figured out what they like and what they don't like, and have ownership over their desires; Mabon, long linked to Persephone, is the festival of survival, and part of that is reclaiming what you are and what you want. Mabon is our happy Pagan sexfest - or the most asexual day of the year - because it's freed from the Beltane baggage, and is about freeing yourself from that baggage too.
I excitedly texted to my husband, "what if Mabon was gay Beltane?" To which he replied "what if Beltane was gay Beltane?". I mean, the point is that it isn't. It could be, but it's not. It could be reclaimed that way, but I can't quite split off the traditional Beltane correspondences and ignore them. That imagery of maidens and a maypole is really strong.
A possibly controversial bit of Fencraft is how it deliberately encodes the shitty bits of life, so we can use these correspondences with care. For example, (broadly) seeing heterosexuality as Solar - normal, state sanctioned, orthodox, what everybody else does - and homosexuality as Lunar - against the grain, unorthodox, criminal, hidden, unspeakable. I guess I want my correspondence system to reflect my experience; and though there are more and more gay people who can claim a Solar part of the world, with their marriages and families and rights, I still feel like...that division is there. And so, I want to consciously notice it. Like, I don't feel Solar - do you? I feel Lunar. I feel like a societal outsider whose desires are lumped in with everything on a spectrum from "bit unusual" to "criminal perversion"
And so with the Beltane, there are like two approaches. The one I tried for years was like Beltane is for everyone, reclaim Beltane, and reclaim it metaphorically too for people who don't like sex but do like making things. This didn't work for me and wasn't satisfying. This is evidently what does work for my husband; but somehow he's survived with a lot less tangible shame issues than me.
But my Beltane/Mabon cycle - associated with Snow White, Labyrinth, the Company of Wolves, Sleeping Beauty, Blodeuwedd and Persephone - kinda...puts the complexity of sex front and center. And the complexity of women's sexuality and women's spirituality-of-sex, which has in many ways been defined by men (I guess this is no exception to that rule)
It feels intuitively correct to me to celebrate Beltane as it is, but acknowledge that this framework of desire is one which makes some people uncomfortable; and follow that up with a myth and a cycle and a festival which is in some ways the anti-Beltane, and in other ways it's strange mirror.
In part, I think as well, because I do like and enjoy what Beltane represents. I just don't feel included in it.I do kinda like the heritage of innocence/experience, may queens, phallic maypole and other virginally pervy Beltane lore. There's nothing wrong with the spirituality of male-female sex, nor even is it wrong to celebrate it if that's not a thing you personally enjoy or do. But for that to work, you kinda need an alternative.
And while I'm not planning to shut other forms of sexuality out of my Beltane, I guess I do want a...
...If Beltane is a festival about sex being nice and ok, then Mabon is in some sense about sex not being nice or ok, and surviving that, and thriving, and carving something of your own. Which may be different sex, lots of sex, or nothing at all, art or healing work, or just being a badass. I get that this is Beltane's energy for most people, but that doesn't work. The heavy heritage of Beltane and it's cumulatively generic nature makes that difficult for me. If Beltane is the festival of being looked at by men, then Mabon is the festival of ignoring them or staring straight back. If Beltane is innocence, then Mabon is experience - be that one we need to retreat and heal from, or an orgy of our own designing.
This, at least, feels sensible to me.
No, Mabon is the date. Mabon's the festival for old, fat women who've figured out what they like and what they don't like, and have ownership over their desires; Mabon, long linked to Persephone, is the festival of survival, and part of that is reclaiming what you are and what you want. Mabon is our happy Pagan sexfest - or the most asexual day of the year - because it's freed from the Beltane baggage, and is about freeing yourself from that baggage too.
I excitedly texted to my husband, "what if Mabon was gay Beltane?" To which he replied "what if Beltane was gay Beltane?". I mean, the point is that it isn't. It could be, but it's not. It could be reclaimed that way, but I can't quite split off the traditional Beltane correspondences and ignore them. That imagery of maidens and a maypole is really strong.
A possibly controversial bit of Fencraft is how it deliberately encodes the shitty bits of life, so we can use these correspondences with care. For example, (broadly) seeing heterosexuality as Solar - normal, state sanctioned, orthodox, what everybody else does - and homosexuality as Lunar - against the grain, unorthodox, criminal, hidden, unspeakable. I guess I want my correspondence system to reflect my experience; and though there are more and more gay people who can claim a Solar part of the world, with their marriages and families and rights, I still feel like...that division is there. And so, I want to consciously notice it. Like, I don't feel Solar - do you? I feel Lunar. I feel like a societal outsider whose desires are lumped in with everything on a spectrum from "bit unusual" to "criminal perversion"
And so with the Beltane, there are like two approaches. The one I tried for years was like Beltane is for everyone, reclaim Beltane, and reclaim it metaphorically too for people who don't like sex but do like making things. This didn't work for me and wasn't satisfying. This is evidently what does work for my husband; but somehow he's survived with a lot less tangible shame issues than me.
But my Beltane/Mabon cycle - associated with Snow White, Labyrinth, the Company of Wolves, Sleeping Beauty, Blodeuwedd and Persephone - kinda...puts the complexity of sex front and center. And the complexity of women's sexuality and women's spirituality-of-sex, which has in many ways been defined by men (I guess this is no exception to that rule)
It feels intuitively correct to me to celebrate Beltane as it is, but acknowledge that this framework of desire is one which makes some people uncomfortable; and follow that up with a myth and a cycle and a festival which is in some ways the anti-Beltane, and in other ways it's strange mirror.
In part, I think as well, because I do like and enjoy what Beltane represents. I just don't feel included in it.I do kinda like the heritage of innocence/experience, may queens, phallic maypole and other virginally pervy Beltane lore. There's nothing wrong with the spirituality of male-female sex, nor even is it wrong to celebrate it if that's not a thing you personally enjoy or do. But for that to work, you kinda need an alternative.
And while I'm not planning to shut other forms of sexuality out of my Beltane, I guess I do want a...
...If Beltane is a festival about sex being nice and ok, then Mabon is in some sense about sex not being nice or ok, and surviving that, and thriving, and carving something of your own. Which may be different sex, lots of sex, or nothing at all, art or healing work, or just being a badass. I get that this is Beltane's energy for most people, but that doesn't work. The heavy heritage of Beltane and it's cumulatively generic nature makes that difficult for me. If Beltane is the festival of being looked at by men, then Mabon is the festival of ignoring them or staring straight back. If Beltane is innocence, then Mabon is experience - be that one we need to retreat and heal from, or an orgy of our own designing.
This, at least, feels sensible to me.
no subject
Date: 2 September 2019 06:56 (UTC)I don't really know how to live with Beltane's heterosexual imagery but I think I would approach it as, at core, human and animal fertility, so for me with my wife and our baby in our very normative domestic and comfortable life as married queers, it could be giving thanks for our kid and spending time with family, I guess? When you think about Beltane as a festival of sex for fertility--well that's not a giant concern for most people, is it? Most people are not actively trying to get pregnant every single spring. So unless you raise farm animals, you HAVE to conceptualize it differently, if you mean to celebrate it at all.
I've been going over my head how, if you equate the wheel with human pregnancy cycle, conception actually occurs at Imbolc, if the God is to be born on Yule. So Beltane should really be the celebration of entering the second trimester, when the embryo is more likely to survive.
*throws hands up* Idk man.