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Condition: BRAND NEW
ISBN: 9781644110652
Format: Trade paperback (UK)
Year: 2020
Publisher: Inner Traditions


Description:
A practical guide to the celebration of Beltaine and the sacred herbs of spring

* Explores the identification, harvest, and safe practical and ritual use of more than 90 plants and trees

* Details rituals for honoring the traditional Gods and Goddesses of spring, such as the Goddess Chloris, the Goddess Flora, and the Daghda

* Reveals which herbs to use for luck, magic, protection, purification, abundance, fertility, and love as well as the herbs of the Faeries and Elves and herbs for journeying to the Otherworld and for contacting the High Gods and Goddesses

The festival of Beltaine, May Day, is a celebration of the return of spring and the promise of summer, a time for love magic and spells for increasing the fertility of the land and the plants that grow upon it. Like Samhain in autumn, Beltaine is also a time when the veil between the physical and spiritual world is at its most transparent and the ancestors and denizens of the Otherworld easily interact with the world of humans.

Presenting a practical guide to the celebration of Beltaine, Ellen Evert Hopman examines the plants, customs, foods, drinks, and rituals of May Day across many cultures. Discussing the gods and goddesses of spring, Hopman details the rituals for honoring them as well as traditional poems, prayers, incantations, folk rhymes, and sayings related to this time of year. She explores well dressing, the custom of honoring the source of sacred water by decorating a well. She also looks at Beltaines association with Walpurgisnacht and Hexennacht, which fall the preceding even