Sensual Beltane Rituals to Get Back In Touch With Your Feminine Energy

What is Beltane?

Beltane is a fire festival in the traditional Pagan Wheel of the Year, and marks the midway point between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice. Many modern witches celebrate these festivals to connect to the changing of the seasons, because of the themes of growth, flourish, letting go and death are also relevant to our lives. These Beltane rituals are perfect for connecting to your inner fire, the one that drives you to create, seek pleasure and celebrate joy.

Beltane falls around November 1 in the Southern Hemisphere, and May 1 in the Northern Hemisphere, which is how it got its alternative name as May Day.

Beltane might be my favourite Sabbat of the year: celebrate by taking pleasure in life and having lots of amazing sex.

Traditional Celtic celebrations of Beltane involved building lots of bonfires and jumping over the flames. Young, unmarried people would leap the fire and wish for a husband or wife. Young women would leap to ensure their fertility, and couples would leap together to solidify their bonds. I definitely won’t be doing that, it sounds terrifying.

What does Beltane represent?

Beltane is a time when we are summoning new life. It represents the transition between spring and summer, when flowers are in full bloom and the days are longer than the night. Beltane rituals are used to celebrate our fire within: desire, joy, sensuality and creativity.

As a fertility festival, Beltane encourages us to embrace our sensuality and self love.

Traditionally, Beltane represented the union of the God and Goddess (by union, I mean consummation…) and it also signifies the union between masculine and feminine energies: both literally, in the form of lovemaking, and also within ourselves. It’s a beautiful time for getting in touch with your feminine essence, through self-care, self-love and sensuality rituals.

The veil is also thin on Beltane! This Sabbat is directly across the Wheel of the Year from Samhain, which is known as the night for communicating with energies across the veil. But while Samhain is about connecting with our ancestors, Beltane is about connecting to the Fae and Faerie folk. Many witches leave offerings to Fae to show their appreciation for the abundance of the land and forest which they protect. Samhain is also about death and letting go, whereas Beltane is all about embracing life and growth.

---

Beltane Rituals

1. Create a Beltane altar

Designing a seasonal altar for Beltane plugs you into the natural energies of the season and will infuse your rituals (or just daily life) with its delicious, sensual vibes.

Create a space on a shelf, table or cabinet for your altar.

Decorate with:

• Herbs and plants (lavender, rose, mint, thyme, lilac, marigold)
• Representations of fertility gods and goddesses (Aphrodite, Demeter, Freyja)
• Crystals (amber, bloodstone, rose quartz, carnelian, emerald)
• Objects of bees or rabbits (symbols of fertility)
• Green, red and pink candles

---

2. Mini Maypole Craft

One of the most iconic Beltane rituals is dancing around the Maypole to celebrate the first day of summer. As a fertility festival, Beltane is ripe with phallic symbols (pole, hellooo…) The pole represents the masculine, and the ribbons represent the feminine.

Here’s how you can make your own mini maypole for your altar or centre of your kitchen table. This can be used in your rituals to call in whatever type of ‘fertility’ you’d like: love, career growth, literal pregnancy, health.

TOOLS Kitchen paper towel roll or branch (arm’s length) + flat piece of wood | Hot glue gun, superglue or drill | Coloured ribbons (see below for colour correspondences) | 3 tea light candles | Lighter or matches

Ribbon colours for calling in:

• White: healing
• Black: protection
• Red: passion, power, sex
• Orange: creativity, success, positivity
• Yellow: happiness, clarity
• Green: fertility, growth, abundance
• Blue: peace, wisdom, calm
• Purple: intuition, spirituality
• Pink: love, self-love, beauty

1. If you are using a branch as your pole and flat piece of wood as your base, use a hot glue gun or drill to connect the two together. If you are using a paper towel roll, skip this step.
2. Tie or glue your ribbons to the top of the pole and plait them around the pole, or leave them lose.
3. Light the tea light candles around the maypole to represent the fire.
4. Use this in rituals or in a feast.

---

3. Beltane Feast

This Beltane ritual celebrates the abundance of life in nature around us, as well as coming together in joy (or maybe sensuality if you turn this into a date night) with our loved ones. A feast is also a perfect way to celebrate if you’re still in the broom closet and don’t want to do something too witchy that will make your friends will think “what have I just walked into…?”

Decorate your table with flowers and colourful ribbons.

Your Menu:

• Big vegetable salad adorned with mint served with herby bread
• Fresh berries and nuts for dessert
• Wine served with fresh berries, mint and honey over ice

4. Sensual Self-Love Ritual

The festival of fertility and sex is also all about self-love, so a delicious, sensual night alone is the perfect way to celebrate Beltane. In this ritual, you’ll be celebrating your own fertility, lushness and beauty and thanking your body for all it gives you. It’s for honouring the goddess within you and returning to your divine feminine essence (which tends to get out of balance in our busy culture). You could also turn this into a romantic night with your partner if you feel called.

1. Come to your Beltane altar or a space where you can be alone, with your journal. Cleanse the space with incense or sage.
2. Close your eyes and take some slow, grounding breaths. Place your hands over your body to centre yourself and feel pleasure, maybe running your fingers up your forearms or massaging your shoulders.
3. When you feel grounded in your body, open your journal and title a new page as your Beltane entry, so you can refer back to it later.
4. Make a list of everything you are grateful for in your life, all the fertility around you: your beautiful body, your health, the days warming up, how much love your heart is capable of, your friendships, your family or children (which you may have literally grown in your body, wow!), the passion you feel for your partner, the creative drive you have in your career…
5. Once you are complete, put on a delicious sensual playlist and have a bath or shower with candlelight. You may like to take some berries, chocolate or honey wine in with you. Before you get in, sprinkle into your bath rose petals or lavender, Epsom salts or lavender or rose essential oil. Or, you can place a few drops of essential oil on the floor of your shower so that the steam will have a delicious smell.
6. Take your time soaking to enjoy the pleasure of being in your body. Make every movement of washing your body as an act of devotion, like you were caressing a lover. You can move into a self-pleasure practice or simply run your hands over your body.
7. When you emerge from your goddess bath, lovingly apply lotion or oil onto your skin in long, slow strokes, lingering in any areas that feel good to massage (not like the slapdash way you usually throw it on after a shower).
8. From here, you can move into some sensual dance in your room (either naked, or in lingerie or a silk robe). Here’s a playlist for that. You could even do some pole dancing: a sensual take on the traditional ‘dancing around a Maypole’ tradition. Find some ribbons or silk scarves and caress them over your body.

Our guided Feminine Activation audio is another perfect way to connect to your feminine energy on Beltane.

Enjoy celebrating the pleasure and fire of Beltane! I know I sure will *wink*.

Love,