Month's Heading: May, the Celts are on fire while a god is born

May is the month in which life is in full blossom, the paralysis of winter is only a vague memory and the fires of summer start to insinuate themselves. Still, the abundant rains feed life’s vibrant flames of green, that constantly rise with their multi-coloured flowery sparkles (yes, I write these things on purpose xD). No, seriously, May is the last month to be well within spring, and it’s one of the most enjoyable parts of the year. The weather is simply wonderful, everything’s green, the air is humid and you just have to feel young! I wish it could be spring half of the year, and then it’d be autumn and everything would be just perfect! (God, I really think I should moderate my alcohol intake – I’m rambling incoherently… Oh wait, it’s not like that’s something strange for me, is it? ;-) ).



In theory, the word may comes from the Greek goddess Maia, a very minor divinity who was deliberately pushed to the background in Hesiod’s registry of the artificial unifying religion, the Theogony. She was one of the seven Pleiades, daughters of the gigantic Titan Atlas and the matronly divinity Pleione – some of the most prominent member’s of Artemis’s terrifying court of evasive nymphs and vengeful virgin hunters. Maia, who was the most beautiful, intelligent and virtuous of the seven sisters, was raped by Zeus in mount Cyllene, which oversees the city of Thesaly. She soon gave birth to a baby while hiding in a grotto, and when to sleep. As soon as she closed her eyes, the baby became a grown man and went on a stealing rampage, but he soon got bored, so he invented the lyre! Thus Hermes, the god of diplomacy, business, politics and thieves (I know what you’re all thinking and no, it’s not irony: it’s only the truth) came to be.



The Romans shaped her into Ops, Maia Maiestas, an earth/spring goddess in whose honour a festival was celebrated on the 1st of May. However, not everyone celebrated fertility in the same way. For the Celts, Bealtaine was a festivity of utmost importance, marking the beginning of the last quarter of the year and the pastoral summer. Since the Celtic calendar was a mixture of solar and lunar references, it’s possible that the date was so important because it marks the exact mid-point between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice: a time when the stars announced that the doors of the Otherworld had opened, and change could take place! The significance of these events has been endlessly celebrated in fairy tales, culminating in Rimskij-Korsakov’s
opus Night On Bald Mountain, the negative and mysterious nature of which attests to the pagan origins of the ritual.



Since I want to do something a bit different this time, I’m going to leave you with the first two movements of Carl Orff’s spectacular music monument to Medieval poetry, Carmina Burana/Songs Of Beuern. It’s impossible not to be marvelled by this music, which is both astonishing and terrifying in its sheer strength and explosive beauty – it also presents the beginning of a special month that will mostly be devoted to artists who have made some sort of work with folk music. Welcome to May! Enjoy the time! :-)

O Fortuna!/Oh, Fortune!

Fortunae Plango Vulnera/I Grieve Because Of The Blows Of Fortune