{"id":8555,"date":"2024-07-13T09:33:37","date_gmt":"2024-07-13T13:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=8555"},"modified":"2024-07-13T09:42:30","modified_gmt":"2024-07-13T13:42:30","slug":"1996-beltane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=8555","title":{"rendered":"1996: Beltane"},"content":{"rendered":"

From my journal for April 29, 1996. \u00a0The holiday I am talking about is Beltane<\/a>, May 1, also called May Day, one of the cross quarter days of the Old Nature Religion of Western Europe. \u00a0My energy for teaching dance is not good because of my long ongoing struggle with depression, rooted in early trauma which I don’t know about yet.<\/p>\n

Winding the maypole properly involves a lot of colored ribbons \u2014 we had 18 in a variety of colors, fastened at the top of the pole. \u00a0We parceled the ribbons out to the dancers, and then had every other person turn and face the other way. \u00a0We started with the people going clockwise holding the ribbons up, and the ones going the other way ducking under them. \u00a0Then the ones holding the ribbons up lower them and go under the ribbons held up by the ones they are facing. As each person goes up and down, the ribbons get wound into a woven pattern on the pole.<\/p>\n

Spent most of the day getting ready for circle dance.\u00a0 Was feeling anxious and disconnected, and it sounded like that was the basic energy of the day.\u00a0 I had a lot of trouble deciding what dances to do \u2014 beforehand, that is, I didn\u2019t have too much trouble once we were there and dancing.\u00a0 There were three kids who didn\u2019t want to dance every dance and sat out a lot \u2014 sullen kid energy.\u00a0 It was better after they left and five of us \u2014 Sally, Sue, Evvie, Sybil and me danced around the woven maypole.<\/p>\n

The best part of the day was walking out Iron Foundry Road with a friend and talking about the difficulty of trying to celebrate a major holiday without any real support.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s hard to carry the logistics of the whole thing when I\u2019m not feeling the energy of the spirit, and no one who comes really understands the depth of what we are doing.\u00a0 <\/span>I see that what I am really trying to do is keep the form, keep the continuity of a tradition, until such time as there is spirit to fill it again.\u00a0 <\/span>Doing the maypole is important because it has such deep roots in the past.\u00a0 <\/span>I told them that the maypole represents the bare trees of winter, and as we weave the colors we are encouraging the trees to grow again.\u00a0 <\/span>I said \u2014 in that slightly intense, slightly tongue-in-cheek voice that I associate with Eleanor when she\u2019s split \u2014 that if humans did not do these festivals, the seasons would not come round, I said that the sun would not rise if there weren\u2019t certain old men in Tibet and in the land of the Hopi who call it over the Eastern Horizon every day.\u00a0 <\/span>I don\u2019t really believe this, but it was the only way I could express my feeling for the importance of these festivals.\u00a0 <\/span>Something major is lost when human beings fail to acknowledge and celebrate the great cycles of nature.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tried to find a picture of a finished maypole, but then I found this<\/a>, and it’s a great set of pictures and explanation of what we were doing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From my journal for April 29, 1996. \u00a0The holiday I am talking about is Beltane, May 1, also called May Day, one of the cross quarter days of the Old Nature Religion of Western Europe. \u00a0My energy for teaching dance … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-circle-dance","category-depression","category-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8555\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}