A guided meditation and a poem for the turning of the year

This episode is made for Beltane — the ancient Celtic festival that falls on the first of May, marking the beginning of summer and the height of the year’s creative power. Listen on this day if you can. But it will find you whenever you need it: whenever you need to remember what it feels like to stand in a sunlit clearing with the whole summer ahead of you.

It has two parts. The first is a guided meditation of around twenty minutes, drawing on the Beltane ceremony of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids; an inner journey through the imagery of the festival: the sacred grove at dawn, the calling of the four directions, the twin fires of sun and moon, and the standing between opposites that the tradition calls the kindling of the Mabon — the bright child of creative energy born whenever two polarities fully meet.

The meditation is intended as a complement to the ceremony for those who work with it, and as an accessible introduction to its themes for those who don’t. All ceremony material remains the intellectual property of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, and is used here with gratitude.

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The second part is W.B. Yeats’ poem The Song of Wandering Aengus – a Beltane poem in everything but name. Written in 1897 and drawn from Irish mythology, it tells of Aengus, the god of love and poetry, who catches a glimpse of a shining girl beside a river and spends his life walking the world in search of her. It is a poem about the nature of inspiration itself: elusive, transformative, worth every step of the long search.

There is no need to rush between them. Let the meditation settle before the poem begins.

The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And someone called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done,

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

The episode ends with Aengus still walking, still seeking, still certain of what waits for him at the end of the long years. Which is perhaps the most Beltane note of all to leave on: not arrival, but the luminous quality of the search itself.

The guided meditation draws directly on the Beltane ceremony of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids. All ceremony material remains the intellectual property of OBOD and is used here with gratitude. For more about the Order, visit druidry.org. The poem is in the public domain. Beltane as a Celtic festival is attested historically; the ceremonial form presented here is a modern reconstruction rooted in that tradition.