Blog filter by Michael W Ford

Walpurgisnacht (Walburga’s Night / Walpurgis Night) is a Germanic holiday which is celebrated at the same time as Beltane. Bonfires are kindled throughout the land with a celebration of life, fertility and renewal. May-Eve or April 30^th (Walpurgis Night) onward to the 1^st of May is the beginning of Summer and a time, like Samhain or Halloween, when the veil between the world of the living and the Otherworld are thin. The Spirits of the Dead, Ancestral Shades known as the Fae may communicate with ease to the living. The actual namesake of Walpurgis Night, Saint Walburga, has little to do with the modern Pagan and Magickial celebrations of the beginning of Summer.

The Germanic practice of Witchcraft around the 16^th and 17^th Century are remembered in the tales of the Witches Sabbat: the dreaming spirits of sorcerers, nocturnal gatherings in person along with ghosts and demons go forth to hidden places. The Sabbat is the carnal revelry of primal ecstasy, when the Maypole represents the Union of Sky and Earth, the raging passion of Satyrs and the Earth-Spirits who dwell beneath a shaded soil to protect the Oaks and wilderness.