May Eve

 

Beltane Reunion by Emily Balivet

Walpurgis Night, the time is right,

The ancient powers awake.

So dance and sing, around the ring,

And Beltane magic make.

Walpurgis Night, Walpurgis Night,

Upon the eve of May,

We’ll merry meet, and summer greet,

For ever and a day.

New life we see, in flower and tree,

And summer comes again.

Be free and fair, like earth and air,

The sunshine and the rain.

Walpurgis Night, Walpurgis Night,

Upon the eve of May,

We’ll merry meet, and summer greet,

For ever and a day.

As magic fire be our desire

To tread the pagan way,

And our true will find and fulfil,

As dawns a brighter day.

Walpurgis Night, Walpurgis Night,

Upon the eve of May,

We’ll merry meet, and summer greet,

For ever and a day.

The pagan powers this night be ours,

Let all the world be free,

And sorrows cast into the past,

And future blessed be!

Walpurgis Night, Walpurgis Night,

Upon the eve of May,

We’ll merry meet, and summer greet,

For ever and a day.

© Copyright The Doreen Valiente Foundation

Samhain

 

Poetry: John Greenleaf Whittier

An excerpt from Snowbound, which struck me, and which may be in some way relevant to our interests:

 We tread the paths their feet have worn,
   We sit beneath their orchard trees,
   We hear, like them, the hum of bees
And rustle of the bladed corn;
We turn the pages that they read,
   Their written words we linger o'er,
But in the sun they cast no shade,
No voice is heard, no sign is made,
   No step is on the conscious floor!
Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust,
(Since He who knows our need is just,)
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must.
Alas for him who never sees
The stars shine through his cypress-trees!
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
Nor looks to see the breaking day
Across the mournful marbles play!
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,
   The truth to flesh and sense unknown,
That Life is ever lord of Death,
   And Love can never lose its own!

Invocation of the Horned One

Another of my favorite chants, and one that is particularly appropriate this time of year, also comes from Doreen Valiente. I reproduce it here, with no further comment needed:

By the flame that burneth bright 

O Horned One!

We call thy name into the night 

O Ancient One! 

Thee we invoke by the moon-led sea

By the standing stone and the twisted tree

Thee we invoke where gather thine own

By the nameless shrine forgotten and lone

 

Come where the round of the dance is trod

Horn and hoof of the goat-foot God

By moonlit meadow on dusky hill

When the haunted wood is hushed and still

 

Come to the charm of the chanted prayer

As the moon bewitches the midnight air

Evoke thy powers, that potent bide

In shining stream and secret tide

 

In fiery flame by starlight pale

In shadowy host that ride the gale

And by the fern-brakes fairy-haunted

Of forests wild and wood enchanted

 

Come! O Come!

To the heartbeat's drum!

 

 Come to us who gather below

When the broad white moon is climbing slow

Through the stars to the heavens' height

We hear thy hoofs on the wind of night

As black tree branches shake and sigh

By joy and terror we know thee nigh

 

We speak the spell thy power unlocks

At Solstice, Sabbat, and Equinox

Word of virtue the veil to rend

From primal dawn to the wide world's end

Since time began---

The blessing of Pan!

Blessed be all in hearth and hold

Blessed in all worth more than gold

Blessed be in strength and love

Blessed be where e'er we rove

Vision fade not from our eyes

Of the pagan paradise

Past the gates of death and birth

Our inheritance of the earth

From our soul the song of spring

Fade not in our wandering

Our life with all life is one,

By blackest night or noonday sun

Eldest of gods, on thee we call:

Blessing be on thy creatures all.

Poetry: J.L. Stanley

When they ask to see your gods

your book of prayers

show them lines

drawn delicately with veins

on the underside of a bird's wing

tell them you believe
in giant sycamores mottled
and stark against a winter sky
and in nights so frozen
stars crack open
spilling streams of molten ice to earth
and tell them how you drank
the holy wine of honeysuckle
on a warm spring day
and of the softness
of your mother
who never taught you
death was life’s reward
but who believed in
the earth and the sun
and a million, million light years of being

Poetry: Edgar Allan Poe

This poem has always, for me, seemed to hold the essence of being a witch; it captures that ineffable sense of otherness that is at the core of it.

Alone

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were---I have not seen
As others saw---I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I lov'd, I loved alone.
Then---in my childhood---in the dawn
Of a most stormy life---was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold---
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by---
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

Thoughts? Discuss.