Beltane Fire Festival

---

May 1st 2005
Edinburgh, Scotland.

Last night Clorinde and I went to the annual Beltane Fire Festival up on Carlton Hill. Beltane, for those not in the know, is actually an ancient festival which has been resurrected here in recent years, and traditionally it's purpose was to mark the arrival of summer and celebrate life and fertility. You can find out more on it by following this link for Edinburgh-specific Beltane: http://www.edinburghguide.com/feats/beltaneritual.htm

or this for the ancient aspects:
http://www.witchvox.com/holidays/dt_holidays.html?a=usma&c=holidays&id=2765


So anyway, off we went and it was both amazing and a bit of a disappointment. The crowd was absolutely enormous, literally thousands of people packed onto this fair-sized hill (p.s. for the Queensland residents, the hills here are bigger than ours but nothing compared to our mountains....I just hope you're not imagining football-field sized hills when I mention them) and the mood was amazing, but on the flip side you couldn’t see a lot of the processions and performances, which kept moving about and were surrounded with thick walls of spectators. My camera, I have discovered, is absolutely useless at night when there's fire involved, so unfortunately there are very few photos which make sense.

(I should also mention here that Clorinde is an unashamedly avid photographer, and so I have felt comfortable taking photos in situations I would otherwise feel like a dickhead. So that’s why I can provide more than the usual pics for y'all in these recent travelblogs).

But anyway, the Beltane fever had hit and it was amazing - I swear, everybody was on mushies or alcohol or drugs. The smell of marijuana was rife throughout the grounds and I'm surprised that there were no police repercussions and so forth, because it's just as illegal here. But the mood of the crowd, of these thousands of people, was a real trip, and even if there was not always all that much to see it was fun to just be there and experience that.

We pushed and prodded and laughed and rushed from one procession to another, and at one point even found ourselves in the midst of a Beltane mating dance or something, because the red-painted volunteers who had spent the night running around, cackling in people's ears and trying to frighten and titillate suddenly banded together, grabbed a torch, formed an arena, and then the women threw off their cloaks to display naked torsos! Seriously! Suddenly I, who had by chance been at the forefront, was jostled back by a tide of cheering males. It was hilarious. They danced about and howled in high voices - the red devil performers, not the men in the crowd - while a couple of the red males kept the crowd back at a somewhat respectable distance with the fire-sticks and by behaving like rancid monkeys, barreling into the overly curious. At one point the head male even had one of the girls over his lap and was spanking her. It was all nuts and not a little shocking. The camera flashes from the crowd were going off like mad.

But it was okay, because the night was all about fertility and being raw and earthy and uncivilized, and they certainly accomplished that! All in all it was an amazing night with a really great mood in the people all around us. And if Clorinde and I were wishing we'd drunk a little more or that they were selling something stronger than soft drink, then that was a small problem in what was a truly singular experience.

****************************************************
Note: I have since been emailed with a friendly hint from one of the performers of the night. Here are his words on the subject: "The people you photographed are the red men. We represent chaos, sexuality and mayhem." So my apologies

---

Comments

[deleted_1033]

Yay!
I'd love to check out beltane in Edinburgh some time. I'm an enthusiast when it comes to these kinds of things for sure. cheers, [url=http://www.luxotica.com]fireguy[/url]