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At the crucial moment of our Spring Equinox ritual this year, I screwed up the chant.

Today, April 14, we're having a blizzard.

Now, do I honestly believe that there's any causal connection between those two facts?

No, of course not. Of course I don't. There is no connection whatsoever between a botched ritual nearly a month ago and today's weather.

 Hurray, hurray, the First of May:

outdoor f**king begins today.

Imagine: you live, in what is essentially a one-room house, along with your spouse, your kids, your parents, grandma, and an unmarried sibling or two.

Maybe even the cow.

All winter long you've been stuck in there with them all.

The whole smokey, stinky, crowded winter, with nary a moment of privacy.

Finally, after all those months, it's—almost—warm enough to slip off to the woods for some long-awaited quality time and a little surreptitious love-making.

At an elevation of 3,743 feet, the Brocken is the highest peak of the Harz range, Northern Germany's highest mountains. At such an altitude, winter lingers long.

That's why the witches go there for Walpurgisnacht.

We go there, they say, "to dance away the snow."

An ocean and a continent away, here in the American Midwest we're in a similar situation. The maples are blooming and the redbirds are singing for all they're worth, but yet another winter storm is bearing down on us, and we could well be seeing another 8 to 12 inches of snow this weekend. The Winter that Won't Let Go has still got us in its icy grip.

You can see why here in the North, the outstanding religious obligation of Beltane is to dance barefoot on the ground. Someone's got to melt all that snow.

Every year around now we sing the Minnesota May Song.

Bonfires, drinking, music, raucous celebration: Walpurgisnacht is a wild night that celebrates the coming summer – longer days, sometimes brilliant heat, and bursting fruitfulness. Since the medieval period, the bonfires were believed to ward off witches, but it may have been witches themselves who first lit the fires on hill-tops and mountains. Last year, I discussed the broom lore associated with this holiday. This year, I’d like to take a look at another favorite aspect: the alcohol, or more specifically, beer.

Homecrafted and Wholesome

Beer is one of the most-consumed drinks in the world, and an entire subculture has built up around craft beers, ales, and ciders over the past decade. Where I live, there are at least four or five craft breweries in a 30-mile radius. I love it. Beer is sacred to me (as it has been to many peoples since time immemorial), and the smaller and more artisanal a brewery is, all the better in my opinion.

Humans possess an innate spiritual capacity rooted in Nature, and Paganism is the natural expression of our common spirituality, arising from Nature and calling us ever back to Nature. This is my conviction.

In every place and time, before prophets gave humankind “revealed” religion, Paganism was our original faith, fulfilling our indelible spiritual needs with wisdom gleaned from our lived experience in Nature. And I hope—for the very life of our Earth and the flourishing of human persons within it—that Paganism may be not merely the ancient faith of ages past but rather our once and future faith. This hope is also my vision, and I founded the Pagan Renewal with a mission to help manifest this vision.

I’m thankful to PaganSquare for having reached out to us at PaganRenewal.org to see whether we would be interested in adding our voice to the chorus here on PaganSquare, and I look forward to writing more deeply about the Pagan Renewal here in the months and years to come. In this first post, however, I’d like to begin just by providing some background on myself and my path.

It’s been a busy winter. As I prepare to be a headliner at FPG Beltaine in a few weeks I find myself contemplating Beltaine as a holiday of healing.

The archetypes of the Warrior, the Pioneer, and the Hunter are highlighted this month by the Aries New Moon. In addition, three powerful planets in Capricorn will highlight the archetypes of the Builder, the Ruler (read: any governing authority), and the Elder.  It’s an active chart that presages shocks, surprises, profound shifts and changes in authority structures, extreme risk-taking, and conflicting agendas.