A Cross Quarter Fire Festival, Twice Revived

Beltane falls on the first of May by the northern hemisphere reckoning this rule records, one of four Gaelic cross quarter festivals, alongside Samhain, Imbolc and Lughnasadh, that fall roughly midway between the solstices and equinoxes rather than on them. Early Irish sources, including the medieval glossary Sanas Cormaic, describe Beltane fire rites in which cattle were driven between two bonfires as a purification practice marking the start of the pastoral summer, a period when herds moved to summer grazing, a practical agricultural transition given ritual expression through fire.

The festival that modern Wicca and Neopaganism keep as Beltane is a documented twentieth century revival rather than an unbroken continuation of the older Gaelic practice, folded into the eight festival Wheel of the Year framework alongside the other Gaelic fire festivals and two additional solar points, and reinterpreted with fertility symbolism, including the maypole, that draws on wider European May Day custom beyond the specifically Gaelic material. The use of the northern hemisphere reckoning here reflects a further modern practice, since Southern Hemisphere Wiccan and Pagan communities generally keep Beltane near the astronomically equivalent point in their own local spring, close to the start of November rather than May.