Some art project plans for the upcoming Bealtaine festival.
(Image description: A photo of a flagstone path curving around the side of a hill. A rustic fence is near the path with green and brown grasses on each side of the path. A mountain is seen beyond the hill. Pinkish clouds are in a light purple sky.) Credit: Photo by Michael Cummins on Unsplash
Bealtaine is roughly a couple weeks away, and it’s time to get started on preparing for the festival. While this holiday doesn’t have any traditional connections to Brighid, it’s the festival I yearly rededicate myself to Her. My next flamekeeping shift runs into the start of Bealtaine, during which I keep a voluntary flamekeeping shift as well.
While my focus is to have simple observations for festivals, I feel like my practice has been in a bit of a lull since earlier this year. This post is intended to give myself some direction and to hold myself accountable.
There are a couple things I want to make in the period approaching Bealtaine. One is related to veiling, while the other is a tool I use within my practice.
Back during the last autumn equinox, I found a piece of driftwood I wanted to turn into a bell branch and replace the previous one. I’ve been holding onto it since then and figure this is a good time to redo my bell branch as one of the bells fell off recently. A sturdier base might help with keeping the bells attached, and the driftwood’s triple symbolism has a lot of significance spiritually.
The other item I want to make is a flower crown. Bealtaine is the spiritual start of summer, and a key feature of that is flowers. I prefer a simple layout on my shrine, so the flower crown is a way to incorporate flowers into my celebration while also veiling. It will also use some art supplies I’ve had for a while.
There are other tasks I want to do in preparation for Bealtaine, but these two items are starting points for more tactile forms of art I want to show on the blog. They can be considered as a couple stepping stones to get me motivated for other things, such as the breviary.
Each project will take time to do, so I need to allot time for each one. I figure the bell branch will take longer to create, so that project will most likely be started first. I’ve made flower crowns before, so I feel like this will take less time to do and can be done closer to Bealtaine.
My plan is to do a follow-up post on my progress. I hope that I’m able to get some of the work done on the bell branch. However, depending on various factors, I may be delayed. I don’t want to be hard on myself, but having these objectives to focus on are also important.
Until next time!
Leave a Reply