The ancient festival of Beltaine coming up soon and yet again several thousands of people will be celebrating it on May 1st...Why?.... They don't celebrate the Winter Solstice on Christmas day or the Spring Equinox on Easter Sunday but continue to go along with these artificial calendrical dates for the cross quarter days, for the most part without an acknowledgement of them being only symbolic dates
Beltaine, Lammas (or Lughnasa), Samain and Imbolc are solar festivals occurring exactly half way between the Solstices and the Equinoxes. Celebrations are often held as much as week away from the actual solar midpoint. The true date of Imbolc is around the 4th-5th February, Beltaine is around the 5th to 7th May, (this year its on the 5th of May), Lammas is around the 5th -7th August and Samain is around the 5th -8th November.(There's a free download of a printable moon/astrocalendar calendar for 2009 at my astro353.com website with the exact dates for this year.)
Even if you take an alternative viewpoint that the quarter days were lunar festivals then the dates celebrated still make no sense. That certain standing stones and stone circles are aligned to the solar midpoints refutes this theory anyway.
Actually that one of the reasons I'm why I'm posting I did have some references from several well respected antiquarians supporting this on computer that has been lost and I would love to start compiling an even more comprehensive list of quarter day stones that people have recorded as 'activating' on the actual solar midpoints. So if you have any information about stones or circles you have visited please contact me at [email protected] or post a comment.
|
