Maypoling

One of the cool things about being a Pagan is that we have the equivalent of eight Christmas seasons a year, with plenty of rituals and celebrations connected to our eight great holidays. So whenever May 1 approaches, I know I'm in for a merry week.

My last big Beltane celebration came Saturday, when one of my coven sisters and I drove up to Bodega Bay for my friend Anne Hill's annual maypole dance. Down here in Oakland, the hills are already turning golden brown, but western Sonoma County was still lush and green. My natural Capricorn penchant for extreme punctuality is a social liability in the land of Pagan Standard Time so before Becky and I headed to Anne's, we drove over to Duran Regional Park and stopped to look at wildflowers.

This is peak season for wild radish (Raphanus raphanistrum), which is one of the most ubiquitous members of the brassica family. Here's an explosion of wild radish that is typical of what I saw all along the roadside. And yes, that's one single bright yellow mustard (Brassica juncea) sticking up above the other blossoms.

The newly-emerging feathery fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) is a brilliant green, contrasting with the red edges of the sedge grass (Cyperaceae). Beyond the fennel we saw a few remaining shreds of some of last year's cattails, and heard the distinctive song of the Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus). Here's some fennel framed by the sedge.

Finally we gauged that we could leave for the party without arriving indecently early. We must have calculated the timing it just right because when we arrived, we found musicians already performing, and preparations begun for setting up the maypole. 

In my pre-Pagan life I've seen maypoles at various Scandinavian Midsummer folk festivals. They are not hung with ribbons for dancing, but generally have two circular wreaths suspended from a crossbeam at the top, as you can see in this photo of a typical Scandinavian maypole. It is said that the pole represents a phallus and the wreath is a yoni symbol. This always seemed perfectly reasonable to me.

Anne's maypole has ribbons attached to the top, and during the dancing, the dancers wind in and out, gradually wrapping the pole in an intricate lattice of multicolored ribbon. Here's the flower-topped pole just before dancing began. Given Bodega Bay's stiff afternoon breezes, it was a major task to keep the ribbons untangled before the dance.

But soon Anne assigned the ribbons to the dancers and the wild rumpus began.

Back in my earliest Pagan days, when I was a hard-core unreconstructed separatist Dianic, I wanted no truck with maypoles. They were way too phallic and, I thought, were just one more token of the patriarchy's worship of itself. I still belong to a Dianic coven, but have also gotten used to celebrating our holidays with men occasionally, and enjoying the energy of a multi-gender, multi-age Pagan event. Anne's maypole celebration had everything and everyone from kids to grandmas to dogs to guys in dresses dancing around the maypole. And it rocked! 

As the dance progressed, the ribbons became progressively shorter, and dancers had to move in closer to the pole. Here's Macha enjoying the dance, and Gidget, a silky terrier making the rounds tucked under Medusa's arm. In the third photo, you can see  Anne, our hostess, who finally got a chance to step into the dance.

Eventually some dancers were holding ribbons that were so short that they had to crowd in by the pole and wait for the others to finish dancing and weaving their ribbons.

Three musicians played accordion, clarinet and mandolin.

Becky ended up in several photos with Patrick McCollum, who was wearing his chaplain's jacket. Patrick is the Pagan chaplain for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitiation. (It's not that a lot of Pagans go to prison, but a number of the inmates find Paganism once they're incarcerated, and Patrick has made huge strides in providing them with the religious services they so strongly desire).The day after our maypole dance, Patrick led 60 inmates in a maypole dance at Valley State Prison for Women, one of the largest women's prisons in the world.  As far as we know, this is the first ritual of its kind in any prison in this nation.

Malendia, who accompanied Patrick to the prison, said that for many of the women, the maypole dance was the first time many of them had touched a ribbon or had a flower in their hair for years. After the dance the inmates met and reflected on the meaning of the dance of life in which everyone cooperates to weave a beautiful texture. Incidentally, Patrick will be honored as The Pagan Alliance's "Keeper of the Light" at our upcoming festival  at Berkeley's Martin Luther King Civic Center Park Saturday, May 12. Here are Becky and Patrick in mid-dance. And here's a frontal view of Patrick.

Eventually all the ribbons were wrapped around the pole in a basket-weave design. At that point, we all moved in to touch the pole and chant "Oooooohm" for a minute or so. The intention for this dance was healing, for individuals and the world, and I hope some of the magical energy and intention we raised did go out into the universe.

By the time the dance ended, the pole was shadowed by a large tree. I shot a photo looking up the pole, but the contrast with the bright sky was so great that I don't think this is a particularly effective image.

Several years ago, I attended a very randy maypole dance at Isis Oasis. The guys all went off into the woods to cut, trim and decorate a tree trunk that was to serve as the maypole. Meanwhile, all of us women spent the time covering a large arched garden trellis with flowers. This was the "yoni gate." The guys attached a carved wooden phallus to the pole and trotted it down to the gate with a bit of drumming and singing.  Then they moved the pole into and out of the gate a few times to much laughter before they finally--this is the only verb that will do--erected the pole. This celebration would not have flown very high in most Dianic circles, but we had one heck of a lot of fun.

But when I do think of maypoles, it's not so much the phallic association that comes to mind. Rather  I think of the pole as a representation of  Yggdrasil, the great world tree that connects the nine worlds of the pre-Christian Norse cosmology. I've never seen a diagram of the nine worlds that didn't look confusing and convoluted, so it's every so much easier to look up a maypole to the sky and down the maypole to the depths of the earth, and let all the realms float in between in my imagination. In any case, maypole celebrations are one of the great parts of this very fun religion of Paganism. How lucky we are!

May maypole Beltane ritual ribbons flowers spring phallic Dianic Pagan Paganism Northern+ California prison chaplain dance dancing Bodega+Bay Norse cosmology Yggdrasil