A wild dance: Reflections on bealtaine + embodiment

Towards May… every parish, town and village gets together, both men, women and children, old and young… they run to the bushes and woods, hills and mountains, where they spend the night in pleasant pastimes, and in the morning they return bringing home birch bows and branches of trees… (T)he chiefest jewel they bring home is their maypole, which they bring home with great veneration… then they fall to banquet and feast, to leap and dance about it, as heathen people did at the dedication of their idols… (Partridge, 1960)

Versions of the Maypole dance have been traced to Pagan cultures across Europe as a ritual dance carried out in celebration of fertility and the arrival of summer. The Maypole dance is one of few pre-Christian Indo-European traditions that has survived to this day, however, its’ modern incarnation is the product of reconstruction and a renewal of ancient practices that have shifted and changed the practice over time.

Bealtaine (meaning Mouth of Fire in Irish Gaelic) is a Celtic festival, celebrated on or around the First of May. The festival incorporates rituals associated with the sun, balancing masculine and feminine energies, and the return of new life. The Maypole dance is one such ritual, reflecting these aspects through its circular and interconnected dance steps, floral costumes, and decorations, the Maypole itself, and the colourful ribbons which are woven around it.

Ancient Celtic cultures were vast and nuanced, and information about Celtic cosmology and spirituality is often inaccurate, shaped through the bias of those who either sought to destroy or idealize these ways of life. From linguistics, folklore, and mythology, it is believed that the ancient Celtic peoples practiced an embodied form of spirituality, encompassing the uniting of opposites (light and dark, winter and summer, endings and beginnings), viewing time as circular rather than linear, and belief in an Otherworld which is embedded in the landscape and accessible through relationship with the more-than-human world. This embodied spiritual approach is immanent rather than ascendent; the body is not something to be overcome or transcended. The body is understood as very much part of the physical realm which holds its own gifts, and is an important part of cultivating creativity and power.

Traditionally, Maypole dancing involves two groups dancing in opposite directions around the “Maypole”, a central post (often made from the trunk of a tree) is adorned with colourful ribbons and garlands. Moving around the pole represents connecting with other realms, and an increase in power and energy. One group moves in a clockwise direction, while the other dances widdershins, or counterclockwise, as they weave between one another, creating an interconnected pattern with the ribbons on the Maypole, eventually ending their dance when they come to the end of the ribbon and stand close together around the centre.

There are many different depictions of Maypole dances and Bealtaine celebrations, some which are light and festive, while others have been depicted with a sense of chaos, hyper-sexuality, witchcraft, and satanism. Federici (2004) makes a connection between the Maypole dance and what later became known as the Witches’ Sabbat during the Witch Trials that tore across Europe beginning in the mid-to-late 1400’s. Dancing, sexual pleasure, reverence for nature, and communal practices were all suspect during this time and The Witches’ Sabbat – a form of communal devil worship largely constructed by the imaginations of demonologists and inquisitors —was the charge used to catch so-called heathens in such acts.

My interest in the Maypole has grown through seeking an embodied connection with my own ancestors, and through my research into the ritual and somatic practices of pre-Christian Europe in what is now known as Ireland, England, and Germany. I began exploring a version of the Maypole dance about a year ago, when I found a dance class being offered for Bealtaine called “Witchdancing” taught by Michael J. Morris. The class combined aspects of Pagan ritual with movement practices such as Continuum and Butoh, and inspired me to incorporate elements of circular dance and intuitive movement to lay the groundwork for a personal practice.

As I learn about the evolution of Pagan practices, I’ve found that much of my ancestral history is carried in this lineage of dance; the body movements encompassing a form of spirituality that was deeply earth based and communal, and then slowly demonized and stripped away. The more I explore this practice, the more I find it offers a tangible thread of connection to my history, through direct bodily experience. I wonder, as I step into various adaptations of this practice, if I am carrying forward the very intention of the Maypole dance – to feel interconnection between the material and spiritual realm through the body.

Tracing the historical context of this dance reveals a lineage of repression and violence. I became curious about why this particular dance threatened the forces of power that sought to squash it. Several themes emerge out of this bodily exploration that are represented in somatic states evoked through the Maypole dance. These include, opening to a wider realm of perception and connection through group ritual; moving counterclockwise as a way to connect with the shadow and unconscious; and the lack of choreographed steps, instead relying on spontaneous movements as they emerge from the body itself.

The Maypole and Group Dance

Dimech (2019) describes the circle dance as a form of ritual with powerful psychobiological effects. She describes a type of intercorporeal synchrony between participants, capable of facilitating heightened states of awareness and opening them to other realms. I have been drawn to how such body movements can evoke connection with mystical and transcendent experience through deep engagement with the materiality of the body. This reflects both a Celtic worldview as well as some Eastern lineages, including Vajrayana or Tibetan Yoga. Through this form of meditation, Vajrayana teaches that spiritual enlightenment is achieved not through disconnection from the body, but from a profound connection to physical reality, including the body and earth itself (Ray, 2008). The idea that enlightenment, or transcendence is obtainable through experiencing full embodiment is similarly reflected in the Maypole dance.

Moving with others creates a liminal state through which I feel both connection, and deep contact with my inner experience. I feel others around me, but their individual selves blend into the environment and become part of the energies I am interacting with. I am deeply present, eyes open and clear, and yet also aware of an unseen presence that has revealed itself. A warmth in my chest, a softening of my muscles, movement through my core, the emotion of tenderness and care emanating from my heart.

Moving Counterclockwise

The use of counterclockwise movements is of much focus in depictions of the Witches’ Sabbat. When done with the traditional gender roles in place, women usually dance around the Maypole in this direction. This aspect of the dance is often described with a sense of revulsion in later accounts, describing women holding hands and moving in a circular motion counterclockwise, in a subversive and eerie dance that led to convulsive, strange and disorderly movements, carrying the women into a kind of trance-like frenzy.

A similar connection between the counterclockwise orientation can be found in other spiritual contexts including in Esoteric Buddhism, where this direction is associated with the subconscious. In this context however, the subconscious or shadow is seen as something to work with and encounter through spiritual practice, rather than to avoid or fear. As Yasuo (1987) suggests of so-called primitive cultures, there is often a correlation between worshipping the earth and eros. The fear of sexuality, and women’s sexuality in particular, is prevalent throughout descriptions of the Sabbat, and was a key aspect of Bealtaine ritual as a celebration of fertility. This leads to questions regarding the role of the shadow, eros and subconscious in Celtic practices, and what lead to such fervent repression at the hands of inquisitors.

I slowly step one foot behind the other, as if I am walking backwards into another realm. What feels like an embodied thought bubbles up as I recognize that I am following the very steps that were deemed dangerous. I walk towards the edge, summoning whatever supports may want to aid me in this practice. I yearn to remember and feel a connection here. Inner knowing moves quickly, thoughts and feelings bubble up, insights and connections are made, as my mind drops away and I allow myself to move into the unknown.

Spontaneous Movement

There is no choreography in the Maypole dance. The dancers follow a cyclical direction and otherwise movements are spontaneous and intuitive. Of this aspect of the dance Dimech (2019) says “Spontaneous movement is the constitutive source of agency, subjecthood, of selfhood” (p. 52). This aspect of my practice has been perhaps the most powerful. There are moments when I follow the steps, moving cyclically couterclockwise, allowing my body to find a guide in these simple movements, but then releasing them when I feel an urge or impulse arise. The practice is to allow the movement to come directly from my body, from some unknown or unseen source that can guide and direct me. It is in these brief moments of dropping out of my thinking mind, when my body is truly carried for me, that I experience the spiritual aspects of this practice.

My mind seeks to grasp and control, trying to think my way into an experience. I gently nudge it aside, name it as thinking, and return to simply listening. I passively inquire into my pelvic bowl, my feet, my midline, allowing myself to notice without direction, feeling into the dimensions of each, keeping movements small and subtle. As I slow down, the smallest impulse may arise, I pause to notice its size and direction, letting my body show the way, rather than my mind taking the lead. I play like this back and forth, leading and following, until I slowly find a flow, and I am down on the ground, or arms are waving wildly. Sometimes sound comes, sometimes tears. I do my best to allow it all, a vessel, a chamber, an instrument.

 There is much that can be found in pre-Christian European body practices that reflect a worldview that has come to be associated with many Eastern and Indigenous traditions. If I trace these elements back to their origins, I can also find them amongst my own people, which offers a sense of dignity and peacefulness in my own spiritual journeying. In the process of embodying what became forbidden, erased, and demonized, the Maypole dance allows me to experience moments of somatic memory into the cosmology of my ancestors. This tether to something where I can feel dignity and integrity offers me a way to weave and dance within my present conditions with the reassuring tug of my ancestors near me, wrapped like a ribbon around my hand.

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Further Reading

Camillo, A. P. (2016). Maypole Dancing and Other Body Movements in a Neo-Pagan Bealtaine Ritual in Ireland. [Doctoral Dissertation, University of Limerick]. University of Limerick Institutional Repository.

Dashu, M. (n.d.). The Midsummer Dancers. The Suppressed Histories Archives. https://www.suppressedhistories.net/secrethistory/dancers.html

Dimech, A. (2019). The Brazen Vessel. Scarlet Imprint.

Federici, S. (2004). Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation.
Autonomedia.

Ginzburg, C. (1991). Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath. Pantheon.

Partridge, B. (1960). A History of Orgies. Bonanza.

Ray, R. (2008). Touching Enlightenment: Finding Realization in the Body. Sounds True.

Yasuo, Y. (1987). The Body: Toward an Eastern Mind-Body Theory. State University of New York.