Why I Don’t Celebrate Beltane on May 1st
The nuances of cycles don't always align with the Gregorian calendar
This year, Friday May 1st was the date of both the Scorpio Full Moon AND the celebration of Beltane, according to most of the world. But as someone who looks into the deeply specific energies of each lunation, this didn’t feel true to me. And I’ll tell you why.
The Scorpio moon showed up true to form with full underworldly intensity, evidenced by the wild events of almost everyone I talked to in that window. I went to a kid’s birthday party and the host’s father was in the hospital, calling her to say that he thought the staff there was AI. Another friend showed up whose dog had been attacked by a coyote. Meanwhile, I was having psychological ptsd from a respiratory bug that reminded me of my big-T trauma housefire near-death-experience 15 years ago. The weather was balmy, but where was the flowery ointment of Beltane to soothe all that ailed?
The Scorpio moon was doing the thing it’s supposed to do- excavate the depths, helping us purge the remains of the stuff that we truly don’t need as we enter late spring and prepare for summer. Sometimes, at the end of an illness, you cough and cough with no results except for irritation. So sometimes (like my doctor told me after the smoke inhalation from the housefire) you have to sprint until you throw up. That’s the only way to get residual smoke or any kind of clinging-on gunk out of your lungs. No gentle breathing, no taking it slow…. you have to run til you puke and get it all out with force. That is the only remedy. And in my sphere, that was the Scorpio full moon’s MO felt like over the past week.
On May 1, the moon was in the gate of Alertness- the splenic energy of fear and uncertainty and distrust. Across the sky, the sun was in the Gate of Rationalization - 3rd eye energy of thinking about something and trying to figure it out so hard that you end up giving yourself a migraine. Those are the shadow frequency of those gates, but that’s felt like the overall vibe in my world over the past few days. Sure, on May 1st there were lots of reels of flowers blooming and Maypole dances and bonfires circulating on social media, and lots of press about Beltane and the full moon being on the same day. But the energy felt heavy, far from the resplendent and magnetic blossoming and receiving that Beltane is supposed to brign in. I spent May 1st and the psychic hangover that followed feeling like something in me was still turning over, still processing, and definitely not ready to bloom. The calendar said celebrate and my body was like… not yet.
After years of intentionally walking the wheel and living the spiral of time, I’ve learned to trust that.
On May 1st the Sun still hadn’t reached 15 degrees Taurus, which is the true midway point between Equinox and Solstice. The sun was still in Gate 24, the final hexagram with the lower trigram of Thunder before the shift happens to lower trigram Earth in true Beltane’s gate 2: The Receptive. Thunder season has been running since the Spring Equinox, and Thunder is upward movement, sprouting energy, the first push through the hard soil. It’s not soft, open, or magnetic. It’s not receptive. Thunder is effortful and directional and electric. And on May 1st, the collective was still inside it, completing something important, even as the calendar flipped to May.
The full moon in Scorpio was a final excavation, not a celebration opening a new season. Sometimes you truly do have to finish something before a new something can arrive.
But then yesterday, the day when the sun actually reached 15 degrees Taurus, on the true cross- quarter day of Beltane, the energy palpably shifted.
The Sun had moved into Gate 2: Receptivity, and the lower trigram of Earth opened and revealed itself. And (despite still having an inclination to provide some disclaimer here about confirmation bias or something) I truly felt the shift, deep in my body. Yesterday, after a week of excavating the depths in my body and trying to figure it all out in my mind, I no longer felt stuck in the loop of needing to figure out what Gate 24 was trying to show me. I felt something inside me open, like a timelapse flower unfurling it’s petals with a hypnotic pulsing sensuality. It’s wasn’t the feeling of a full dramatic door swinging open, but a contraction and expansion that makes true receptivity feel safe, protected, and nourished.
I felt it in my heart and in my gut- May 5 was Beltane. Not May 1st. The turn of the earth and the living, breathing energies that it percolated into my perception said so.
This is one of the reasons I’ve come to love tracking time through astrology and Human Design alongside the wheel of the year. The Celtic holy days were never meant to be fixed calendar dates. They were tracked by thresholds, by what the land and light were actually doing. Beltane traditionally falls when the Sun reaches 15° Taurus, an astronomical alignment in the dance of mother earth and father sun. Not the first of May on a Gregorian calendar that was designed around commerce and administration.
Our ancestors’ bodies were in conversation with the changing light. They could feel the difference between the upward thunder-push of early spring and the open, blossoming, pollinating energy of late spring. And although the light and warmth and plant activity varies depending on where exactly you live, I believe that the geometry of the solstices, equinoxes, and cross quarter days deliver something energetically distinct, regardless of your location. Thunder season and Earth season are two distinct energies, with two distinct invitations.
When we attune to the actual pulse of the seasons rather than the date on our phones, something in us relaxes. We stop fighting our own timing, and we stop wondering why we don’t feel festive when we’re supposed to, or why grief arrives in the middle of what the calendar says should be a time of abundance. The earth has her own schedule. And our bodies, given the chance, will sync with it.
The G Center in Human Design - the center of identity and direction- is the heart-energy center that holds all eight gates that the sun passes through during the Sabbats of the Wheel of the Year. Every solstice, equinox, and cross-quarter day activates one of the G center gates. When I learned this about the bodygraph, it hit me in a deeper place than my mind. It made so much sense to me in my heart, in my sternum- a deep realization that the wheel isn’t just a seasonal calendar of my ancestors. It’s a map of the heart, moving through eight faces of love and direction across the solar year. Each holy day is a moment to tune in with the pulse of our hearts at the same time as the collective is tuning in with celebrations of the pulse of the earth
Gate 2 is the Beltane gate. Known as Receptivity, or Direction of the Self. In the Gene Keys, its gift is orientation, trusting our hearts about which way to face as we move into the light half of the year. Its shadow is dislocation- a feeling of being unmoored, out of place, out of season.
On May 1st, I was dislocated, and all the Beltane content made me feel even more that way. But it’s because we were in the wrong gate, trying to fit a thunder shaped block into a flower shaped hole.
By the time the sun actually crossed into Gate 2, I knew exactly where I was headed, with less urgency and more heart-open awareness of the moment.
I held my Beltane Ritual for paid subscribers last night, on May 5th, but I’ll be honest: I had been feeling like I should have done it on May 1st. Everyone knows May 1st is Mayday, it’s on the calendars, and it felt like the obvious choice. But something in me said wait when I planned the date, and I’m so glad I did. On May 1st, the energy hadn’t shifted yet.
Last night, in the ritual, I felt the difference, and it reminded me of the palpable relief my ancestors must have felt when the day came to celebrate the season of light after months of darkness. The holiday can’t come a moment too soon, but you can’t rush a new season, either. Last night the small group of us landed somewhere together, and I don’t think that would have happened four days ago.
This is a great example of what seasonal attunement actually feels like. It’s subtle, and it can take years of practicing living the spiral to notice, but it’s a lived, felt difference in the body and in the larger field.
It goes without saying that most of us were never taught to track time this way. We inherited a calendar built for industry, not for the body. And so we spend a lot of our lives slightly out of phase, pushing when it’s time to receive or resting when something in us is ready to move. So many moments go by with a disorienting wonderment about why we just feel off when we’re doing everything right.
Taken together, the Wheel of the Year and the Human Design G Center gates offer something profoundly different, profoundly simple, and, in my humble opinion, so worth tapping into as the overculture’s alien-ballroom-world gets more and more unhinged.
Each of the eight thresholds of the year corresponds to one of the eight gates in the heart center, and somatically feeling into this is not a luxury- it feels pragmatic in these times. The pulse of each of our hearts connects with the pulse of the earth. It’s that simple. And when you learn to attune to those thresholds in your own body, and see it reflected back to you in the seasonal celebrations of people from across the globe, you stop fighting your own timing and relax into the aliveness of the moment. You stop shoulding yourself and start to recognize where you are in the cycle, knowing what quality of energy is at your disposal and what the season has available for your growth & happiness.
If this feels resonant, I’d love to have you in Your Heart Is a Compass - a five-week live journey through all eight thresholds of the Wheel and the Heart, beginning May 19th, Tuesdays at 6pm MST. We’ll learn the systems and the words, but more importantly we’ll discover that feeling of connection in our bodies.
Early bird pricing closes this Friday, so don’t wait too long.
All my love as the Earthy season unfurls <3