Blog Tour: Hold Your Own Faerie Beltane Celebration With Anna McKerrow!

Today we are doubly lucky as it's Beltane AND we have the lovely Anna McKerrow with us to give her tips and advice for how to celebrate this festival. For anyone who's interested in Paganism, beginning to practice, or just more interested in more background culture of the faeries and witches in Daughters of Light and Shadows and Queen and Sea and Stars, this post is for you! 

Tips for a Faerie Beltane

Beltane is one of the eight pagan festivals of the year, and is the pagan name for what’s now in our calendar as May Day, May 1st.  It’s a fertility festival, celebrating the lush fecundity of nature, as well as a fire festival (as celebrated on 30 April in Edinburgh every year).

Faery folk, or the fae, are believed to be an ancient race of people who lived in the British Isles long before the Celts or the Anglo-Saxons arrived. They are believed to have descended from the Tuatha De Danann (the tribe of the goddess Dana), a magickal race who flew into Ireland in ships descending from the clouds on Beltane. They came from the four great magickal cities - Falias, Gorias, Finias and Murias - and brought with them the four great treasures; the Lia Fail (Stone of Destiny), the sword of Lugh, a magic spear, and the cauldron of the Dagda. In Daughter of Light and Shadows and Queen of Sea and Stars, I used these four faery lands as the map of the elemental kingdoms that Faye journeys to from her ordinary modern day existence.

Beltane is one of the best times to connect to faeries because, as spirits of nature, their energy is high at this point of the year. One nice thing to do would be to create a small (or large!) faerie garden or altar in your home or garden. If you don’t have a

garden or outside space, that’s totally fine - creating a space indoors to honour the faeries that might be present in your house, protecting it (and even, according to some legends, tidying up when you’re asleep! I don’t think I have one of those faeries in my house…) is a nice thing to do at Beltane.

You can make this as simple or complicated a job as you like. Indoors, you could use a plant in a pot as the focus of your faerie offering and add in some crystals, a drawing or a picture of the fae, shells, something glittery… check out Faery Craft: Weaving Connections with the Enchanted Realm by Emily Carding or Betwixt and Between: Exploring the Faery Tradition of Witchcraft by Storm Faerywolf for more ideas.

It’s an ancient practice to leave a bowl of milk out for the house faeries in a hearth or on a shelf or something. In Daughter of Light and Shadows, I had my main character Faye help her friend try to placate faeries doing this. You could certainly leave something out for the faeries on Beltane night and thank them for keeping you and your house safe and blessed, and ask for their continuing help.

In outside space, if you have a tree, you could dedicate some space under it. I have a plum tree at the end of the garden which I dedicated as a faery space because there’s a big bush next to it where frogs seem to like to hang out, and frogs are much beloved in faerie. So I cleared a little area and put in a garden goddess type statue that someone had given me as a present. She has a flat lap which is ideal for leaving little offerings for the faeries. I leave shells, flowers, sometimes butter or milk. I say a few words honouring the garden faeries whenever I go there. Once I found a dead frog in the garden so I laid it to rest on the statue’s lap there, which seemed like the right thing to do.

Faeries have links to apple trees, rowan, hawthorn and hazel trees; they also like all manner of flowers and herbs including lavender, verbena, yarroe, thyme, petunia, zinnia, foxglove, primrose, cowslips, pansies, bluebells, clover, St. John's wort, oak, willow, elder, birch, alder, ash, and toadstools. You could plant some of these in an area of your garden you decide will be your faerie space on Beltane.

After planting/organising your space, maybe light a candle and burn some incense. Have a glass of wine, milk or water or some kind of nice treaty soft drink like fizzy elderflower with you. Toast the faery realm, call out to them and welcome them into the space you have created. Ask for their continuing blessings for you, your family and your home over the next year. If you’re outside, pour a little of your drink onto the earth and leave an offering of food, crystals, shells, or something you’ve made, as an offering. Dance under the moon if you like! Have this as something private or make it a nice occasion with friends, and have a feast and dancing afterwards. Enjoy it! The faeries are full of fun, and at Beltane, they might just come and dance with you…

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Daughter of Light and Shadows and Queen of Sea and Stars and both available at all good bookshops and online retailers now! 

Faye Morgan, a hereditary witch, moves away from her tiny coastal village in Scotland to London to be with her new boyfriend, Rav. But though she hopes she can live a normal life in a new city, her blood bond to the realms of faerie can’t be denied. With a faerie war brewing, can Faye realise her destiny and discover who she really is? A tale of faery magic, desire and modern witchcraft.