Beltane 2026: What Is Grown Begins With What Is Planted

By Steve

Six weeks ago, we honored the passing of the winter, and joined in happy celebration of surviving another season of darkness, enduring to begin a new year together. And, what only the very youngest and most innocent did not know was that soon enough, the time of pure celebration would pass as well, and the turning of the Wheel would bring us once again to the threshold of duty.

For how is it that we endured this year, if not the success of the harvest of last year? And when does the work of the harvest begin, if not with the work of planting? The longer we wait, the harder the winter to come will be. In the balance with the hope of another new Spring to come is the fear - and to some, the certainty - that each year, there are those who will depart and not return.

It falls to us, then, those with the hands to dig and carry, to seed the fields well enough that the harvest awaiting on the Wheel's far side is abundant and true. How, then, do we approach this task?

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"Pray as if everything depends on the gods - work as if everything depends on you." A Pagan-friendly version of a popular saying misattributed to any number of sources and figures. This philosophy is well-suited for magickal practice based on the belief that our intent does not simply POOF! into being just because we cast a circle and spoke some rhymes - but rather that the end of the circle is the beginning of our focused work to manifest our Will.

For ancient Pagans whose lives depended on right relationship with the elements and mysteries of being, I can think of no greater expression of magick than that of ecstatic lovemaking upon the fields, in full view of the sun and sky, to draw the blessing of the Gods into the soil and the seed. Male and female*, depending on one another to create a child. Generative and receptive, the soil worked and the hands that plant, to grow food from dirt. Human and divine, whose dance together brings the sacred into reality. A mighty and most ancient ritual - that which invokes life itself.

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It is a special year for Serenity's Pride. Colleen and I will be married near the very height of the Beltane season, in sight of family and dear friends, beneath the full moon and the sun. It is the fulfillment of an old and cherished dream - and the beginning of the rest of our lives.

The rewards of relationship are like those of the abundant harvest: Wonderful, sustaining, miraculous - and requiring our greatest dedication and hardest work. Even we, as in love as we are and have always been, have days when that work is hard, or unwanted, or both. Tending to relationship is like tending to land - some days are hard, some are sweet, many are routine. And, added all together, they create the abundant harvest of our love and growth.

So, we begin as our ancestors did - with ecstatic celebration. We invite all the work, all the sharing, all the struggle, all the joy, knowing that what we set out to create is not unblemished paradise, but rather something much richer and greater - a life spent together in love.

My blessing for you this season is that whatever you yearn to create, you may channel all your love and being into your Will, and step bravely and proudly onto the path toward it.

Walk in golden light to your destiny.

* Please note that it is not my belief that heteronormativity is the only or even preferred form of romantic love or parenthood. "Male and female" here refer only to gametes and their role in reproduction, not to identity or classification.