With Beltane, we invite the energies of life, joy, playfulness, beauty, and hope into our lives. We remember pleasure and presence and offer our gratitude for having survived the winter season and made it to the rebirth of spring. We celebrate the energies of the Maiden aspect of the goddess, which is about life, fertility, and potential. Here is a simple ritual that you can practice to celebrate Beltane this year.

As we greet the midway point between spring and summer, celebrating the ancient Celtic festival of Beltane is a joyous way to invite pleasure and connection into our lives.

Beltane, also known as May Day, falls on the first of May. It is a cross-quarter festival that marks the midpoint between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. In Celtic traditions, it also means the beginning of the abundant, bright, beautiful summer season.

So welcome to Witch Season. Halloween, or Samhain, is the official beginning of the Witches’ Year, if you’re looking at it from a pagan/Wiccan perspective. This is traditionally the time when the veils between the worlds thin. Some of us find it’s easier to tap into our intuition right now, to talk to our ancestors, and to get guidance from Spirit, whatever Spirit means to us individually.

There’s no evidence witchcraft as a specific religion ever really existed, though as a young teen who would light candles and try to cast spells while blasting the angsty strains of Alanis Morissette, I still can’t help but yearn for a ritualistic practice that literally gave women power. Magic wasn’t really what was being hunted, though: it was any form of power that could belong to a woman, especially if it related to her reproductive abilities.