{"id":52454745,"date":"2022-04-19T13:00:43","date_gmt":"2022-04-19T13:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.illuminatingspark.com\/?p=52454745"},"modified":"2022-04-19T13:00:43","modified_gmt":"2022-04-19T13:00:43","slug":"the-illuminating-spark-bealtaine-preparations-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.illuminatingspark.com\/?p=52454745","title":{"rendered":"The Illuminating Spark: Bealtaine Preparations Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some art project plans for the upcoming Bealtaine festival.<\/h2>
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(Image description: A photo of a flagstone path curving around the side of a hill. A rustic fence is near the path with green and brown grasses on each side of the path. A mountain is seen beyond the hill. Pinkish clouds are in a light purple sky.) Credit: Photo by Michael Cummins<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/p>

Bealtaine is roughly a couple weeks away, and it\u2019s time to get started on preparing for the festival. While this holiday doesn\u2019t have any traditional connections to Brighid, it\u2019s the festival I yearly rededicate myself to Her. My next flamekeeping shift runs into the start of Bealtaine, during which I keep a voluntary flamekeeping shift as well.<\/p>

While my focus is to have simple observations for festivals, I feel like my practice has been in a bit of a lull since earlier this year. This post is intended to give myself some direction and to hold myself accountable.<\/p>

There are a couple things I want to make in the period approaching Bealtaine. One is related to veiling, while the other is a tool I use within my practice.<\/p>

Back during the last autumn equinox<\/a>, I found a piece of driftwood I wanted to turn into a bell branch and replace the previous one. I\u2019ve been holding onto it since then and figure this is a good time to redo my bell branch as one of the bells fell off recently. A sturdier base might help with keeping the bells attached, and the driftwood\u2019s triple symbolism has a lot of significance spiritually.<\/p>

The other item I want to make is a flower crown. Bealtaine is the spiritual start of summer, and a key feature of that is flowers. I prefer a simple layout on my shrine, so the flower crown is a way to incorporate flowers into my celebration while also veiling. It will also use some art supplies I\u2019ve had for a while.<\/p>

There are other tasks I want to do in preparation for Bealtaine, but these two items are starting points for more tactile forms of art I want to show on the blog. They can be considered as a couple stepping stones to get me motivated for other things, such as the breviary.<\/p>

Each project will take time to do, so I need to allot time for each one. I figure the bell branch will take longer to create, so that project will most likely be started first. I\u2019ve made flower crowns before, so I feel like this will take less time to do and can be done closer to Bealtaine.<\/p>

My plan is to do a follow-up post on my progress. I hope that I\u2019m able to get some of the work done on the bell branch. However, depending on various factors, I may be delayed. I don\u2019t want to be hard on myself, but having these objectives to focus on are also important.<\/p>

Until next time!<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some art project plans for the upcoming Bealtaine festival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52454745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.illuminatingspark.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52454745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.illuminatingspark.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.illuminatingspark.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.illuminatingspark.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.illuminatingspark.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52454745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.illuminatingspark.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52454745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.illuminatingspark.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52454745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.illuminatingspark.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52454745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.illuminatingspark.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52454745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}