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212: Beltane and Walpurgisnacht Fire Festivals
52 Plays1 day ago
It's gonna be May! Okay, okay, we shall cease and desist with the boy band GIFs and on to the show! All over Europe and other areas we celebrate May Day, Beltane, Walpurgis night, whatever you call it it's all about fire, coming together, and making babies! Or new life, shall we say, new beginnings. First spring has sprung.
So we dive into some celebrations and traditions from Bavaria, Germany, Scandinavia, which mostly call it Walpurgis night or some variation, and celebrate a Saint, a She-saint in fact! Then we get into Beltane, the Celtic pagan holy day, and have some fun, fire and feasts with Goddesses and Green Men. Put on your flower crowns and grab a maypole for this festive, fertile, fire-filled episode! No Fire Fest Fiasco here my friends, just good times and good intentions! Happy May-ing!
Sorry for the late posting, we are doing our best and putting up a new Patreon ep as well so watch out for that! Happy Listening!
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Castles and Cryptids'
00:00:01
Speaker
Darkcast Network. Indie pods with a dark side.
00:00:26
Speaker
Welcome back to Castles and Cryptids, where the castles are haunted and the cryptids are cryptic as fuck. I'm Alanna. And I'm Kelsey.
00:00:38
Speaker
And we are your hosts. and We know what we're doing. Maybe. How many times have we done this? 212? Classic. Classic.
00:00:50
Speaker
Of the regular ones.
Recording Challenges and Episode Planning
00:00:52
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Oh dear god. It's okay, we're okay. We recorded last night we did Patreon, now we're recording tonight for this.
00:01:06
Speaker
I know, we're not ones that usually like do a back-to-back, like we can't usually bang out a couple recordings per session because we just talk too much. And then we're like, wait. Yeah, not...
00:01:17
Speaker
Not unless we're only doing one of our segments, then it's okay. But these are like full length episodes. So I feel like, yeah, we'd have to be something where it's like, we do it for the day where we're like, this is Saturday and we start now and you're like, you come over and yeah, it's too much.
00:01:37
Speaker
Oh my God. Um, yeah, but we're back. Yeah. So this, uh, yeah, we did our Patreon one. So, um, We'll make sure to plug that.
00:01:51
Speaker
Yes, Disappearances, which was interesting and fun. But yeah, now we're going to more folklore. So yeah.
Exploring May Day and Valpurgisnacht Traditions
00:02:05
Speaker
sure I was just thinking about our leather there's two like ah polarizing ah sides of the podcast or true crime. And then like paranormal and folklore all the in between yeah yeah so it's like all right time for some something different and now for something completely different as they say on Monty Python um it's good though it's good to switch it up that's for sure so yeah this was like oh yeah it was a lot more to dig into where I was just like I guess yeah you know
00:02:48
Speaker
sometimes we try to base it what calendar day it comes out on and maybe it's Friday the 13th or whatever yeah you can kind of theme it around that but this time we're like oh it's around the first May it's May Day it's all of these names it's got all these traditions so it should be fun.
00:03:12
Speaker
This is, yeah, it ties into yours because you said you were kind of doing like May Day and that kind of stuff. And mine is like a variant of that that's kind of its own thing, but does have similar ways of celebrating it. But it has it's like its own thing in a number of countries. Yeah.
00:03:37
Speaker
Yeah, so I have some information about that and some fun little like quirky local things that different places do that kind of makes a few of them unique, which was fun. love that. I like I like learning about different places, holidays and i know traditions and that kind of stuff. I think it's really fun. They usually go back so much further than where we're like, in North America, we have Thanksgiving. Because like we wanted to sell like pumpkin pie and turkey and stuff. So we were like, remember that thing that happened? Yeah.
00:04:20
Speaker
It's much more rooted in tradition, I think.
00:04:25
Speaker
I'm sure if you look up any of these specific countries that there's a lot more you could get into, but this will be kind of a little bit of ah overview and like touching on a number of them instead of like deep dives on each of them which I'm sure you could do like going back into the history of each of the places and everything so that's how my notes kind of went to where I'm like oh yeah it does have all these different names and stuff yeah like yeah like it yeah and it's like what do you include what do you not it can be hard to figure out sometimes but uh this is
00:05:03
Speaker
what's known as Valpurgus, ah Valpurgus knight or Valpurgus knot. Oh, I love it when it ends with a knot or knocked or however the Germans hit it.
00:05:19
Speaker
Yeah, like the... Gotta get that...
00:05:25
Speaker
I sound like you're about to hop to a, yeah. but Yeah. ah Yeah, they' so it's also called Valpurgisnacht, Saints, Valpurgis, or Valpurgas, or Valburgis.
00:05:44
Speaker
oh my gosh night. There's also a bunch of variations that end with eve or day.
Origins and Celebrations of Walpurgis Night
00:05:51
Speaker
Like there's just a lot. I think the Wikipedia page had like 15 different ones that were like Valpergis, night, eve, day, noct. And then all. Oh same. I feel like there was 15 different spellings of Beltane as well.
00:06:07
Speaker
I was like, oh my god. I was like, god damn, I can't. So I was like, okay, there's like, Valpergus, Valperga, Valbergis, and then there's like, night, eve, day, noct, noct night, noct eve, noct day of like, each of those three ones. So I was like, okay, I think I covered it all. Midsommers. Even. now Yeah. Noct.
00:06:33
Speaker
ah But it does have a couple other names ah in different places. Like in Finland, it's called Vapu.
00:06:45
Speaker
And then Valborg in Sweden. And Vapin in Finland, Swedish. So there's like no within its own country, it has different names.
00:06:59
Speaker
And it's also known as the burning of the witches. o but yeah That's easy to remember. But why? Why are we burning the witches?
00:07:12
Speaker
We'll get into it. I mean, it does have like, yeah, there's like the, ah where it kind of originated and then how it kind of evolved, which there's more you can get into. i would kind of have like a brief thing.
00:07:29
Speaker
Yeah, because like cultures kind of come together and get taken over and then split off. And yeah, I heard countries kind of had its own thing. So it was hard to do like an overview specifically about like how it came to be in each of the countries, because that would be just too much.
00:07:49
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like I i came across the Valborg name in relation to, oh, this is what it's called in the sort of Germanic or some of the Scandinavian yeah cultures. And I was like, okay, cool. yeah
00:08:05
Speaker
So it's held every year starting on the eve or the night of April 30th and it can run sometimes all the way through until the morning of May 1st and then depending on the place sometimes it starts on May 1st kind of depends how the place celebrates it but most things start. Or it's a Friday. No. Which comes out yeah.
00:08:31
Speaker
Yeah, but most of the places it starts the celebrations on April 30th. And originally it was the night before the feast day of St. Valperga.
00:08:44
Speaker
and And it commemorates her canonization and the move of her relics to Germany, which happened on May 870. A Okay. And I have a bit of history about her.
00:09:02
Speaker
okay Yeah. She'd be saint-ing all over the place.
00:09:09
Speaker
Damn it. There's a saint for everything. i think there's a patron saint of thieves, which is just kind of funny to me.
00:09:20
Speaker
ah So Valpurgis Night is suggested to be linked to other, like the older holiday May Day festivals, which are in Northern Europe.
00:09:31
Speaker
ah And it it also kind of ties in and that like a lot of bonfires being lit. Yeah. yeah Yeah, a lot of bonfires almost always that's involved.
00:09:46
Speaker
um And the eve of this religious celebration later became linked to witches in German folklore, ah who in German folklore are believed to gather on that same night in, think it's either like Brocken, Brocken Mountain, which is the tallest peak in the Harz Mountains in northern Germany.
00:10:09
Speaker
Brockenbach Mountain, gotcha. Yeah, almost. Yeah. I'm so sorry. ah And the witches are said to gather there on this night and they conduct rituals and engage in Congress with the devil. Oh, sexy, sexy Congress.
00:10:32
Speaker
Yeah, I'm sure they're naked and they're dancing around a bonfire. They're riding those brooms. That's what they say. They'd be putting the oil on them and then just, I don't know.
00:10:44
Speaker
Oh my gosh. But it's celebrated in many places around the world and is observed by the Catholic and Lutheran Church as well as Anglican Communion.
00:10:59
Speaker
okay. Okay. They adopted it, did they? Yeah, kind of like adopted and it's evolved in different places. Yeah, much like lots of pagan holidays.
00:11:11
Speaker
it's It's ours now. You can't have it like you had it. We make it Christian.
00:11:19
Speaker
Most celebrations are centered around these bonfires and dancing, while some places it may include a mass or like a service that happens. ah And then there's also um a like pun kind of pilgrimage that happens that's participated in by like thousands of people every year. and it goes to the Church of St.
00:11:46
Speaker
Walpurgis in... I sh sh... oh, I shtit. It's like shnit, but it's got an extra key. I shtit.
00:11:58
Speaker
Nice. Nailed it. Yeah. And this is where the remains of St. Walpurgis are preserved.
00:12:12
Speaker
Oh. What did she do? Yeah.
00:12:21
Speaker
Yeah, we'll get into it. Like I said, there's a little bit. Cool.
00:12:29
Speaker
Yeah, so
00:12:33
Speaker
Valpurga, she was an Anglo-Saxon missionary. of a Frankish Empire and she lived in the 8th century and she was born in Devon, England and their family was like noble and kind of like held in a high regard.
00:12:53
Speaker
She was the daughter of Richard the Pilgrim and Vuna of Essex.
00:13:03
Speaker
Good old Una.
00:13:08
Speaker
And her parents were revered saints themselves. So casual. She was a Nepo. She was a Nepo saint. I'm going to call it here Nepotism.
00:13:20
Speaker
Oh, they had a funny bit on a Smartless episode recently where they were, Sean Hayes was kind of saying how he's like, oh, I kind of would rather not have kids and regret it than,
00:13:35
Speaker
have kids and regret it or something like that yeah and then they like were joking about nepo babies and they're like that's what you should do sean you should have a baby and call it nepo it was a very funny bit wo no name your kid napoleon but then make their name their nickname nepo yeah at least they have a fallback they can go by the name nepo honestly call them like nepo I don't hate it It's kind of cute. Yeah.
00:14:08
Speaker
see Yeah. So like her parents were saints. a And Valpurga traveled with her brothers to Francia to evangelize the still pagan Germans and convert them to Christianity.
00:14:25
Speaker
Yeah. Gotta god them all up. Them heathens. Yes, I was going to say. Took the words out of my mouth.
00:14:36
Speaker
Because God forbid they have their own beliefs and way of doing things. That's right. God does forbid. Yeah. um And it sounds like they were pretty successful.
00:14:50
Speaker
I mean, the Germans named a holiday after her, so. So...
00:14:59
Speaker
Um, yeah, later on she became a nun at a monastery in Hedenheim on
00:15:11
Speaker
it's like, Hanencom? Hanencom? think that's how it was. Um, and that had been founded by her brother Willibad, or Willibald?
00:15:25
Speaker
think it's Willibald. Willey! Um, Yeah, and she like succeeded him in abscess and became like the honcho. Doing all right for herself.
00:15:41
Speaker
Yeah. ah Yeah, so that's what she did. And after her death is when her bones were transferred to that Eichstit ah and like buried at the church. And they did like a little...
00:15:56
Speaker
um
00:15:59
Speaker
Like ah they placed it, her remains in a rocky niche that is said to miraculously exude a therapeutic oil. oh my goodness. Which is really weird. um I don't know how this works.
00:16:17
Speaker
Are they sure it's not just that the rain has healing powers? It must be coming from the rain. don't know. Um, apparently they call it Valkyrgus oil and it is believed to come from her bones.
00:16:31
Speaker
And like some of the people that do that pilgrimage to that church, um they visit her shrine. And apparently people there like bottle the oil and give it to the people that make the pilgrimage. And apparently it's said to be highly effective against fighting disease.
00:16:52
Speaker
and Interesting. like I wonder if it's high minerals or something like spring water or like ah Hot springs? so Yeah. Perhaps there's some science behind it.
00:17:06
Speaker
Smells like sulfur rotten eggs. yeah Put this all over your face. It'll smell like a rotten egg. Yeah, it'll make me beautiful.
00:17:18
Speaker
It'll ah ward off evil and and people. Exactly. Everyone else. yeah sorry It's a very strong repellent for everything.
00:17:31
Speaker
That's right. That's why um garlic worked so well back in the day. It wasn't the vampires. It's the smell. oh Yeah. She quickly became one of the most popular saints in England, Germany, and France.
00:17:47
Speaker
So she's quite well known. And those are... Really? Yeah. Kind of cool. um Girl. Yeah. So St. Belperga, she was also hailed by German Christians for battling pests, rabies, and whooping cough, as well as like fighting against witchcraft.
00:18:09
Speaker
cause why not throw that in there? She's doing it all. Yeah. How does she do it all? Yeah. The big things of the time, I'm sure.
00:18:23
Speaker
yeah And it said that invoking her as a saint is believed to ward against evil magic. And it wards off malevolent spirits and protects livestock.
00:18:40
Speaker
um or sorry to ward off malevolent spirits and protect livestock people traditionally lit fires on hillsides um a practice that is still used in some regions today there's like yeah there's a number of different reasons for people like setting fires i know about like yeah Yeah, you can use it to like ward off animals or insects because of the smoke and... Oh yeah, practical reason, yeah.
00:19:15
Speaker
Yeah, and then there's like, is it...
Student Influence on Valpurgisnacht Celebrations
00:19:21
Speaker
I can't remember what the word is, but it's like when farmers do it so that their crops like don't burn or something. it starts with an as
00:19:36
Speaker
Oh.
00:19:38
Speaker
I know you could, like, if there's some fire that's coming and you wanted to stop it, you could set a smaller fire perimeter to try and stop the the flow of fire. Or like if there's um grasshoppers or locusts coming, like they might set fires for the smoke to help them.
00:20:01
Speaker
drive them away but I can't think of a ah word at the moment smoke them out yeah like I can't I've heard of some such like preventative fires or something like a fire break um yeah something like that I think yeah yeah so like it comes up a number of ways but Yeah, it's also to protect the livestock and ward off malevolent spirits.
00:20:33
Speaker
So that's kind of like the practices in general a bit of the history. but getting into like specific places.
00:20:45
Speaker
First one looked into was Bavaria. OK. Yes. I'm a fan their cream. Sorry.
00:20:56
Speaker
Sorry. Was it very in cream? Donuts or something. Oh. It's like, it's sort of like. I just like all donuts. I was like, give me like a cream or a custard, like a Boston cream, anything. And I'm like, I'm set. Yeah. Yeah. As long as it's not a plain unglazed donut, I'm going to eat it Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
00:21:20
Speaker
ah Yeah. um I remember saying that at my little check-in meeting with my boss. Anything else we could do for you? i was like, uh, I don't know. Some of us like so salty snacks. It's like, it seems like they're always buying us all these like big ass donuts and like fancy, like crumble cookies. And I was like, wait, are those giant cookies? But they were like smaller versions. Those are like, but still.
00:21:42
Speaker
If you actually look up the nutrition on those, it's insane. It's like a thousand calories for one of those sometimes. Okay, so I was glad they bought us like some of the mini versions because I had seen, i think I saw Zooey Deschanel doing review of some cookies in the center. I'm not sure if they were some other fancy cookie company. town I'm like, for me, a lot of it with with the fancy do donuts and this and that, it's just like it's just too much icing and sugar for me.
00:22:10
Speaker
It's just too sweet. um Yeah, it doesn't always focus on just being good. It's just like the picture aesthetic of it. Yeah, exactly. It just has to look good. Is it actually taste good? Is it like actually a unique flavor?
00:22:24
Speaker
Yeah, like when we went to that cereal killer place, literally cereal with a C in Vegas. Yeah. And i got the milkshake. It was like a Ferrero Rocher milkshake, but like there was nothing really Ferrero about it other than the the thing on top or whatever. I was like, eh.
00:22:46
Speaker
Oh, I don't even remember what I got, so that, like, tells you all you need to know. Yeah, because they most... Did you have a milkshake, too? Because they, like, they had all types of different cereal. I got something.
00:22:58
Speaker
Yeah. Something. I know I did not eat a bowl of cereal, because almost never knew. No, it certainly was not. But it may have been an ice cream or something, I can't recall.
00:23:08
Speaker
Oh, maybe. I don't know. It does not jump out in my mind. so ah No. Anyway. Yeah. ah Yeah. So Southeast Germany, the feast day is known as Hexenacht or Witch's Night.
00:23:27
Speaker
Cool. And here ah people dress as like witches and demons and they set off fireworks and dance and play loud music.
00:23:39
Speaker
Nice. I like it. Have ah have a nice party. Yeah, I like that name. It reminds me of when, I'm pretty sure I covered it here on the regular feed, the Nightwishes that were ah the German platoon of women who were bombing like the Russians in World War II or something. isn't They called them like the Nightwishes because they would glide in without their engines on and then bomb and leave as quietly as they could and stuff.
00:24:09
Speaker
I always thought that was such a cool name. Like, let's form a band and call it the Night Witches.
00:24:17
Speaker
I have no musical talent.
00:24:23
Speaker
Sorry. It's said to drive away both witches and the lingering spirits of winter. And cool it is noted for the phenomenon of the...
00:24:36
Speaker
uh, the Brocken specter, ah which happens on the Brocken mountain the witches supposedly commute at, um, to speak to the devil.
00:24:49
Speaker
Right. There's, like, this specter that gets seen sometimes when, like, certain lighting hits. It's, like, a phenomenon that's been witnessed multiple times. And this sometimes happens during the Balpurgus night.
00:25:04
Speaker
um Yeah, and the Brocken Spectre is a magnified shadow of like this observer, typically surrounded by rainbow-like bands, ah that's thrown into a blank of cloud, or a bank of cloud on the high mountain areas where the sun is low.
00:25:26
Speaker
So it's like a kind of like optical illusion kind of thing that happens on the mountain, but it has been witnessed on the Valpurgis night. so Interesting. Cool to see.
00:25:42
Speaker
Yeah, the Brock inspector. And in rural parts of southern Germany, it's popular for young people or the youths to pranks.
00:25:54
Speaker
ah Of course. And the the examples they gave, i don't think are great pranks, but okay. um The pranks they listed included tampering with neighbors, gardens, hiding possessions, and spraying graffiti on private property.
00:26:15
Speaker
no. Oh no. they've gone That just sounds like vandalism. so young Yeah, yeah, yeah. They want to be like, if you remember ah Winston on New Girl, he wants to he calls himself Prank Sinatra, but all his pranks are like super small or super, super big where he's like, I hid a pea in her soup. And we're like, yeah, I fucking asked. Oh, that one girl, she like they get married as a joke but then she's like it was real you just got rounded he's like ahhh!
00:26:48
Speaker
yeah That's not really funny like that's pretty fucked up. Oh my god. Yeah I was like and vandalism I was like well probably sucks for the people you're vandalizing.
00:27:01
Speaker
ah You freaking vandalizers no yeah yeah that's rough. Also reminds me, somebody somebody said something on a podcast where they saw a piece of graffiti. So I suppose it was a graffito and it just said, um like, fart or something.
00:27:20
Speaker
I was like, oh. Maybe that was their, ah you know. Their tag. Yeah. they're Yes, that's it. Their tag. Fart.
00:27:31
Speaker
Like a fart in the wind. So dumb.
00:27:38
Speaker
Um, yeah, so that's in there. Um, next is the Czech Republic where, ah April 30th is known as the burning of the witches or even just the witches.
00:27:51
Speaker
my gosh. And they light these, yeah, they light these really big bonfires up to eight meters or 26 feet tall. i can please Like Nobody's jumping over those fires. Yeah.
00:28:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:09
Speaker
They're constructed sometimes with like a witch figure that gets built and then they burn like the witch figure. So like, um, the fuck is that movie?
00:28:21
Speaker
Wicker Man? Wicker Man? Or whatever. Oh, they burn the thing and it's like the big wicker guy. Big effigy of whatever. yeah Yeah, so they yeah they have these huge bonfires that they start in the evening, preferably on top of hills.
00:28:42
Speaker
Again, kind of ties And people gather around them and the dense black smoke is said to make formations of witches flying away. Okay!
00:28:53
Speaker
Yeah! They just gotta shoehorn that witch imagery in there. that's interesting. Effigies of witches are held up and thrown into the bonfires to burn.
00:29:08
Speaker
And some places even burn like puppets that represent a witch on the bonfire. my God. Yeah. They really lead to the witches one in the Czech Republic.
00:29:20
Speaker
Right. ah Guess how many witches we burned. It's kind of like the way people talk about the Salem witch trials. and you're like, I don't think they burned anybody, but you you all just keep running with that.
00:29:35
Speaker
So that's what happens on April 30th. And then as midnight
Understanding Beltane and Its Celebrations
00:29:40
Speaker
starts approaching and the fires start to kind of dwindle down, people leave these celebrations in search of... Technically, they're looking for, like, a cherry tree that's in, like, a perfect blossom.
00:29:54
Speaker
Okay. Really? yeah So, like, totally swinging the other way because... Yeah, cherry trees did not come up in my research, so that one threw me for a loop.
00:30:07
Speaker
Yeah, this is the only one that has stuff like this. Yeah, because this is a tradition connected to May 1st, where young women should be kissed past midnight and during the following day um under a blossoming cherry tree. um Or if a cherry tree cannot be found, another blossoming like flower tree.
00:30:32
Speaker
And 1st of May is celebrated as the day of those in love. It's like Valentine's Day. They're like out that burning on beaches. We're having huge bonfires. But now it's a day of love.
00:30:48
Speaker
like The fiery, yes, passionate and love... infertility connection came up a lot in my research I was like okay and also a tree but not a cherry tree question mark makes me wonder if we need to do like um different trees and the lore associated with them like oh this is a witch's tree like the rowan and and like the elm and seems like trees got a lot of lore going on for some reason probably i don't know
00:31:25
Speaker
ah a
00:31:31
Speaker
Next is Estonia. Okay.
00:31:37
Speaker
Yeah, where I want to say it's like Volbrio or something. um I could not get a pronunciation at all. I remember trying. Just put on your best Eastern European accent and go for it. No.
00:31:54
Speaker
No. I don't have accent. Avance you to pronounce this word. just kidding.
00:32:05
Speaker
It's celebrated from April 30th and into the our early hours of May 1st, which is actually a public holiday called Spring Day. Wow.
00:32:18
Speaker
I want Spring Day off. Yeah. Great. And their holiday is a widespread celebration of the arrival of spring. And it's also influenced by German culture with the night originally standing for gathering and meeting of witches.
00:32:37
Speaker
And because of that, like modern people still dress up as witches, but they kind of wander the streets. And there's like, lot of places have like almost like parades or there's like carnivals and like fairs and that kind of stuff that happens.
00:32:52
Speaker
Oh yeah. Kind of cool. Yeah. Which is the door to door, least Halloween-y with the costumes and like.
00:33:03
Speaker
A bit. Yeah, I sometimes saw it called, like, the sister celebration to like, Samhain or however you say the Celtic version of the yeah original Halloween. Yeah, was kind of cool.
00:33:17
Speaker
like it. High Cornell. And getting into, like, the different ah places, a lot of it actually has to do with, like, college kids and, like, university students, which is really interesting. They have, like,
00:33:35
Speaker
very specific things that they have done traditionally some going back like at this point like 70 years which is crazy of like the university students celebrating in this holiday in specific ways so yeah there's a few of them that touch on it like uh there's the university town of Tartu I hope I pronounced that right, in southern Estonia. And okay the, like, um mayor of Tartu that, like, runs this, like, university town, I guess he gives over kind of like, the reins of the town symbolically over to the university students for that day them to celebrate, which is kind of cool.
00:34:26
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So the students start the night with a traditional procession through the streets um and then followed by the students of the different fraternities and sororities. They kind of like trick or treating. They go and like visit each other's like their houses at the sororities and fraternities kind of go back and forth.
00:34:52
Speaker
And yeah, just like throughout the whole night. But starting with like this kind of like parade thing that they do, the procession through the streets. So cool.
00:35:03
Speaker
i like that. That's not a bad tradition. Some of those universities are like, what is your tradition and how amazing and yeah. How questionable is it going to be in today's modern lens?
00:35:18
Speaker
Yeah. I don't think any of these are too bad. Okay, good. I was just like, I'm sure it's not that problematic. It's not. That one world. No, some of them are actually like...
00:35:31
Speaker
hilarious honestly um like Finland uh there in Finland the Valpurgis night or Vapu Vapin or Valborg depending on what area of Finland you're in uh is one of the four biggest holidays um it's kind of lumped in with like Christmas Eve New Year's Eve and Midsummer Okay.
00:35:58
Speaker
So it's a huge holiday there in Finland. Yeah, that makes sense, though. Like, they're all marking times of the year where we're at different, like, yeah parts of the Earth cycle. Yeah, like long like, longest night, longest day, all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:36:17
Speaker
Okay. So it's celebrated with the biggest carnival-style festival that's held in a bunch of Finland's cities and towns. with celebrations beginning on the evening the April 30th and continuing until May 1st, typically s serene centering around the consumption of sema, which is a homemade low alcohol mead. They got like a mead that they make traditionally and drink.
00:36:47
Speaker
Wow. I wonder how far back that goes. Kind of like they used to have like, you know, water wasn't always potable. So you'd have your like everyday ale that people would like drink with their breakfast and stuff. Like not to get drunk, but like just to have something to drink that you knew was like at a a potable or whatever. Yeah.
00:37:08
Speaker
ah They also consume sparkling wine and other alcoholic drinks. Love it. And then again, the university students have their own methods of celebrating.
00:37:19
Speaker
i bet they do. What was like once this like traditional upper class feast kind of for like celebrating saints and everything. It's kind of been taken over by different areas of university students since the 19th in Finland, they typically dress in black and wear a white student cap.
00:37:41
Speaker
I did see somewhere that said like um their student caps change color this time a year. Like when they're in the in the summer, they changed to white. And then in the winter, they were black.
00:37:56
Speaker
So like that's part of it, too, I guess, maybe. um And then apparently many higher education students also wear coveralls.
00:38:08
Speaker
that's like part of like the outfit of valpergus i guess okay i don't know what you mean by coveralls but there's so many different types of oh i suppose because i was like isn't that like mike myers uh i'm thinking of ah But I've also heard people say things in the UK like ah a flight suit for sort of a one-piece uniform. and Yeah. some Different terms, yeah.
00:38:43
Speaker
um So in, ah yeah, they have a lot of stuff going on here. There's ah in Helsinki and nearby regions like to Helsinki, they have very specific traditions that oh um some places also sort of do in that on April 30th at specifically 6 It's very specific. There's a like statue um called Havis Amanda that's located in the Market Square.
00:39:21
Speaker
um And it's like this like nude female statue kind of like posed. um Hell yeah. And they like put a hat on it. It like if they called it. It gets like capped.
00:39:37
Speaker
I don't know. Everything kept talking about stuff getting capped. was like, okay. I think there's like a truck commercial. It's like cap it. Yeah. yeah voice There's a a few other places that also do this, but they have... Really? they have their own own thing going on, which I thought this was just hilarious. Uh-oh.
00:40:02
Speaker
And I'm going to have to try and find pictures of them. Don't keep me in suspense. There's... um This one of their oldest traditions as well is this um two different publications that kind of go back and forth each year. So like one is on the even years, um which I think is called the, is it like Jolko?
00:40:31
Speaker
Jolku?
00:40:34
Speaker
It was first published in 1978 and it's published by the students of the Aalto University. And it's published specifically for the holiday.
00:40:47
Speaker
Both of them are. Wow. Yeah, it's kind of cool. um This Jolko that's released on the even numbered years, it features short jokes, satirical writings and humorous ads, pictures and drawings.
00:41:03
Speaker
um
00:41:07
Speaker
And the students kind of like hand them out, i guess, and sell them. And they're wearing like their coveralls and they're walking around like selling them. And they kind of start before Valpergus. And then like it leads into the last day of April. so they kind of start doing it like in late April.
00:41:30
Speaker
but obviously they have to prepare for it. It's like a proper process. publication like it's like a magazine yeah um and that's been going on since 1978 and it's run by like the students at the alto university then hope it's got some gossip in it like the old broadsheets whatever they call it bridgerton gossip Hopefully it's got like short jokes, satire and like funny ads and stuff. And then so that's on the even numbered years. And then on the odd numbered years they have from the same university, the students released the...
00:42:11
Speaker
want to say it's like Appy or Apey, which is the oldest Finnish humor magazine published. It's related to Valpurgus Night. It was first published in Christmas of 1948. Oh, wow.
00:42:30
Speaker
So a long time ago. it too is released by the students at the Alto University. um and the this like appy or ap is like a gimmick um kind of publication because it's printed on toilet paper and a bed sheet like it's just a fully joke and for some reason their wikipedia articles there was like a separate one for each of the publications there was no pictures
00:43:03
Speaker
ah So I'm going have to try and like specifically Google it and see if I can find pictures of these publications because they sound funny. I want to see what a printed newspaper like and light looks like on toilet paper.
00:43:15
Speaker
How is the name spelled? Because I'm assuming it's not that you said AP, but I was like, it's not like nowadays we have the AP, which is like the Associated Press. No, it's like the A with like those...
00:43:28
Speaker
like dots and then p y oh an umlaut yes okay yeah like in motley crew okay yeah yeah think that's called um yeah I always laugh at Associated Press because I'm like, I'm AP.
00:43:43
Speaker
That's my initials. Anyway. Okay. um Yeah, so this one that's on Odd Years, it's printed on toilet paper and a bed sheet. And it has often been stuffed inside of standard industrial packages such as sardine cans and milk cartons.
00:44:02
Speaker
So, like, I don't even know what that means. How do you fit a bed sheet in a milk carton? Or a sardine can? Or toilet paper in a sardine can? And it's all like folded up or something. So when you open it, it's like a ah trick can of like snakes or whatever. It's like, bah! It pops out at it you. Toilet paper magazine. I don't know. Excuse me. I don't know.
00:44:27
Speaker
It sounds hilarious to me. True. But yeah, but when you say print on bed sheets. You win the most. Yeah, it's a bit hard to picture. You're like, oh, so you cut those up, right? Yeah, I was like, what do you mean, Finland? You guys are just doing the most.
00:44:45
Speaker
Hey, paper used to be real precious, man. of Yeah. Yeah. So celebrations for the university students start at least a week before with them making like preparations for like the magazine articles and like everything even earlier. oh yeah. ah In central Helsinki festival or festivities, ah they include often a picnic on May 1st.
00:45:15
Speaker
um that again includes like food uh sparkling wine some people even like go all out arranging pavilions uh bringing their own tablecloths and like candelabras and playing classical music and just having like extravagant food like it's like a whole thing they're printing bed sheets yeah ah And they usually start this like picnic in these parks in the very early morning of May 1st and then they kind of, like the people that were partying starting on April 30th, kind of like party overnight and then like meet up with the people that are like setting up in the park and continue partying in the park.
00:46:02
Speaker
So they kind of like merge. Tag team almost. Yeah, you you go out, i I'll tag in you can sleep for a while. oh my God, like to think of going to efdoor outdoor festival like Coachella or some Canadian equivalent just makes me so tired to think about right now. It's a lot. I mean, the closest thing I went to, it was supposed to be four days and we only got to go to three of them. It was exhausting.
00:46:31
Speaker
Yeah, man. Like, I've been to raves. I don't want to be to one after, like, 24 hours. Like, where you go to rest. Nowhere.
00:46:42
Speaker
You, well, you do, like, the camping thing, which ours was, like, a shit show. That's why the music festival I went to, is like, got cancelled. Like, I think the year after we went was the last year it was held.
00:46:55
Speaker
Yeah. It was pretty big. Like, not Coachella big, but, like, over a hundred thousand people were there every day and they had five main stages and then like another seven that were like small dj setups that were going 20 like 12 hours a day is it the one that's pretty famous out here like sorry i know on the east coast we have one that's called like a evolve or something and then the west coast i feel like it's called like shh
00:47:26
Speaker
Oh my god. it's Oh, there's Chambalas. But this is, that's like EDM music kind of thing. um This was like actual like bands and stuff that played like. Okay. See, that's why I compare it to rapes because that's more what I know. And I haven't been to a lot of like outdoor like concerts that are at all. At anything. ah like uh mumford and sons was there and sam smith and drake was there they were like the headliners um the three main nights yeah drake a laughing stock i'm just kidding hey i was thinking of that meme of him in the big orange coat so stupid yeah
00:48:12
Speaker
anyway His show is pretty cool because we were on like, they had a huge like one story um thing that was being painted over the weekend with like scaffolding and everything. But there was like two flights of stairs you could take up to kind of go up it.
00:48:27
Speaker
And then they had some chairs set up. So me and the two people um that went or maybe the other girl was sick so maybe it was just me and my other friend we went up there and we were some of the only people that were up there because i don't think people realized they could go up there while and watching it was like dark Because it was like 11 p.m.
00:48:52
Speaker
And the people were like pretty small, like you could see the crowd. But like imagine, I don't know, 30 to people in front of you. And like when people were like jumping and everything, it looked like waves. Like it was crazy.
00:49:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's like you're in the skybox seats or whatever because you're like above them all looking down on the masses. It was yeah really cool. So even though it was Drake and I don't like most of his music. I can't name any of his music, but yeah.
00:49:24
Speaker
Same, yeah. Yeah, that was really cool. But anyway. Yeah, that's so cool. Yeah. Yeah, so like...
00:49:36
Speaker
um
00:49:40
Speaker
trying to find my spot yeah so they join up with the people in the parks that are like setting up these crazy food spreads and they keep like celebrating some student organizations reserve areas that uh where they traditionally camp every year and then they plan like student caps different meads streamers and balloons all have a role in the picnic and the celebration as a whole like there's a meaning behind like everything it's crazy Oh.
00:50:10
Speaker
um Yeah, it's just like a lot, but a lot of it um is like the students at the university that have really taken over the holidays. Nice.
00:50:21
Speaker
And everything, which was kind of cool.
00:50:26
Speaker
In Turku... um it's become tradition, kind of like in Finland, to cap the Posanka statue.
00:50:40
Speaker
um And then in another place called Zulu, I want to say, um they cap the statue of Franz Michael Franzen.
00:50:54
Speaker
And these are all capped by the university students. So... All cap? I thought they were all about no cap these days. What? Right? I don't know any of these places. yeah Okay.
00:51:09
Speaker
Yeah, neither do I. um Yeah, so they, followed by the freshmen, they take like this cold plunge, but they don't have a lake or anything to do it in. So they do it in usually water that has gathered in like a cold ditch in a nearby park.
00:51:28
Speaker
Oh no! Which sounds awful. I'm sorry. Don't swim in a ditch. Yeah. i don't know what's worse. Matt or celebrities talking about them doing cold plunges at their house. Yeah.
00:51:44
Speaker
If you don't start your morning by doing a cold plunge. Oh my god. Shut up, Will Arnett. We know. No, I'm just kidding.
00:51:56
Speaker
In Berlin, i guess, they... There's also, like, political stuff that kind of happens as well, which I didn't really get into a whole lot. But I guess there's, like, traditional leftist Mayday riots, I guess, that typically start on Valpurgus Night. And...
00:52:20
Speaker
Yeah, they typically happen in Berlin and, like, Hamburg, where it seems to be, like, there's, like, protests and riots that happen and, like, um people doing speeches and all this stuff.
00:52:36
Speaker
Like, anti-Wallpurgus? Sort of? No, it's just about, like, politics. Yeah. Yeah.
00:52:48
Speaker
They just like get up on their soapbox and they're like, now that you're here, okay. Yeah, I don't really know. It didn't even talk about them specifically like doing anything to actually celebrate anything related to the holiday other than those riots that I saw. So it did say that the riots themselves, at least the last few years, have kind of calmed down.
00:53:11
Speaker
Like they're not as bad as they've seen in the past, but... It's still classified as a riot. It's probably not great. Yeah.
00:53:22
Speaker
Start a riot.
00:53:25
Speaker
in hungary there's like elderberries that are used to decorate the houses and they're said to ward off witches on that day and according to hungarian folklore there are witches that are said to walk like around on may day and as the years have gone by like this belief has evolved to kind of witches being replaced by like fire, ice, caterpillars, and diseases that they're trying to ward off instead of like witches specifically.
00:54:00
Speaker
Okay and fire and ice being the actual elements not the uh alphabet organization. Capital I-C-E-Ice. no Anyway.
00:54:13
Speaker
Great! um okay and then in the netherlands uh it's i guess it hasn't been celebrated recently um
Valpurgisnacht's Role in Modern Culture
00:54:26
Speaker
because the valpurgus night falls on the nation's like queen's day like there's a queen's day and a king's day and i guess it on the same day as queen's day so they didn't celebrate it because they were celebrating queen's day Sure. Like, don't we have Victoria Day sometime in May or something where we're like, sure, we have the day off. Why? we don't care. Cool. Thanks. Yeah. Queen Victoria? Oh, yeah. I remember her Yeah.
00:54:57
Speaker
oh um Yeah, and then there's the island of Texel, which celebrates the festival known as Mireblis or Mayblaze on the same day. So it's like its own kind of holiday. But again, they light like bonfires near nightfall with the intention to drive away the remaining cold winter and welcome spring.
00:55:21
Speaker
Okay, good. Not drive away from the fires and leave them burning. That'd be bad.
00:55:29
Speaker
I just have couple more places. Sweden marks the arrival of spring and it varies depending on the region.
00:55:42
Speaker
But instead of focusing on like family and kind of thing, like some of the other places do, their celebrations are more of a public event. with local groups organizing different events to encourage community spirit like within each of the villages and neighborhoods instead of like celebrating with your family it's more like let's celebrate as a neighborhood that's cool so they also do the bonfires but they also do choral singing and there's speeches in honor of the arrival of the spring season which i guess are often given by a local celebrity
00:56:21
Speaker
So it's kind of fun. ah In Swedish traditions, bonfires dated back to at least the 18th century um when like farm animals were let out to graze and they lit bonfires to scare away predators to protect the animals.
00:56:43
Speaker
yeah yeah yeah that tracks in southern Sweden an even older tradition involved young people collecting greenery and branches from the woods at twilight these were used to adorn the houses of the village okay and I guess like if you completed that task your reward was to get paid in eggs which made me think of Easter so i was like, oh, i thought going to say get laid because everything came up with, yeah, like fires and passion and renewal of life. And like, I found a lot of those themes too. So I don't know.
00:57:25
Speaker
Get paid in eggs. Okay. Yeah, I was like, oh, I did not think that was how that sentence was going to They were paid in eggs. Truly. Okay, sure.
00:57:37
Speaker
I mean, if they're valuable enough, as we know, sometimes eggs can be very expensive. Yeah. And this was from Wikipedia.
00:57:50
Speaker
Uppsala, since 1975, the students honor spring by rafting on the Fyrus River through the center of town. They make these like rickety homemade...
00:58:08
Speaker
uh like often humorously decorated rafts and then they like float them down the river which is kind of fun yeah is this in Finland still or Sweden sorry no this is ah in Sweden okay the name of the place sounded like a like a place in Sweden but I obviously can't be sure of the spelling because we don't know how to pronounce shit i don't know how yeah okay interesting um yeah so they do these raftings and then several ah nations also hold these champagne races which have like two different things kind of involved the first one is where students go to drink uh
00:59:03
Speaker
they spray champagne or sparkling wine on each other. and then the walls and floors of the old nation buildings are covered in plastic, like Dexter style for this occasion as champagne is poured around recklessly and sometimes spilled enough to wade in. Like imagine wading through champagne.
00:59:27
Speaker
That sounds so sticky. That sounds gross. A little bit. when you put it like and that's in a building. Inside a building. it would be easy so sticky.
00:59:40
Speaker
And when i tell you that it reminds me of a place where they put down like a okay for our friends throwing your birthday party for a boyfriend and they would do this thing where they do uh mud like mud wars but they'd make a bunch of jello with yeah water and then it was like jello pudding wrestling you have to put down like a kiddie pool or like a tarp or something and then like yeah If you go wrestling in that, you are so sticky. You're like, get me in the shower. It's just like, like i I'm all for, I want to go do that. Like, you know, tomato throwing fest or in Spain or Italy or whatever. But I'm just like, oh my God. You have to be able to shower when you're that sticky. So gross. Yeah. Wading through champagne. is like a building, though, that gets like covered in plastic inside, I'm assuming. Because like, where else would it be other than inside a building?
01:00:37
Speaker
no But yeah. um yeah I guess spraying champagne however it's a fairly recent addition to the champagne race because the name derives from uh originally the students would run down the slope from the Carolina a Rediva like library so they would like run down that like to drink champagne and so they would like go to the student nations area and like They were running to drink champagne. Now they like have this whole, um, yeah, just pouring champagne now. Just waste.
01:01:19
Speaker
Running to drink champagne. Sounds like those very early Olympics you hear about where you're like, oh, they didn't have water for them. They had like brandy. Stupid things.
01:01:31
Speaker
And then lastly, because can't just talk about that side of the world, um the only thing I could find and the only thing that was on Wikipedia was on this side of the world was the US. And...
01:01:44
Speaker
ah I almost said strangely, but, like, maybe it isn't so strange. I was like... This is the only thing saw about it. 1966, Anton... Sandra LeVay... No. LeVay. satanic guy. Yeah.
01:02:08
Speaker
Okay. was like, no way. um Okay. Yeah, he chose the Valpurgis knot as the founding of the Church of Satan. Like, the day he founded it, he intentionally did it on the Valpurgis knot. That was the day the Church of Satan started. May
01:02:30
Speaker
All right. Lest we forget. The Satanic Bible also states that besides one's own birthday and Halloween and that Valpurgisnacht is the most important Satanic holiday.
01:02:48
Speaker
um And they memorialize it. is it always so fun like that? It's all about you and Halloween.
01:02:58
Speaker
It's the only holidays I care about. I guess I care about Christmas, but if I didn't get presents on Christmas, I wouldn't care. no it's just funny how people are always like, oh, satanic panic. And you're like, but Satanism is more about celebrating you, not the devil.
01:03:12
Speaker
And like themes like that. It's so funny to me. um Yeah, so they memorialize the holiday in... like their Bible saying it symbolizes the fruition of the spring inquinox.
01:03:29
Speaker
And he said he chose the date because of its traditional association with witchcraft.
01:03:37
Speaker
And then it said, additionally, the satanic temple celebrates Hexenoc as, quote, a solemn holiday to honor those who are victimized by superstition.
01:03:50
Speaker
oh that's kind of like you said the burning like witches and all that kind of stuff or say anyone that was like affected by some sort of a satanic panic type of situation where they're like we were innocent and yet proven guilty yeah oh my goodness That's interesting. That's what I got. it's ah Yeah, like each of the, each of the places you could kind of like probably go into their own like deep dive of like the history and how it's evolved in each of the countries and everything. But yeah.
01:04:28
Speaker
Yeah, man.
01:04:32
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah. Well, have a, a few mentions of some of what the other countries call like their celebrations and stuff. But um yeah, I think I said to you that I didn't think that these notes would end up being that long either. But like every time I was looking for more, there was just so much more. I was like, oh, I could yeah down this rabbit hole. Yeah, it's crazy. But yeah, we'll do a quick break and then another rabbit hole. deep debt
01:05:05
Speaker
He is. All right.
01:05:23
Speaker
Pat was like, you're still recording. I'm like, yes. He's still watching hockey though. um Yeah. It's
01:05:34
Speaker
getting a bit late but i it's not terribly long so if you don't mind if i kind of yeah ramble through it as i do just stop me uh yeah you've touched on some of this stuff anyway because it's like yeah yeah pictures and i i just focus mine on i would look up like beltane and the origins And then I called the subtitle of it, the fire fest that's actually lit.
01:06:07
Speaker
Nice. do Myself. Yeah. I love fire. Good.
01:06:15
Speaker
Fire fest. Yeah. ah Yeah. So from what I found too, like, like a lot of these celebrations predate Christian cultures and so they're like pagan like Celtic cultures and love to celebrate in places like Ireland Scotland and the Isle of Man I was like okay so like it's big in Britain and stuff anyway but oh and they've had a big uh celebration in uh Edinburgh for a long time as well um
01:06:55
Speaker
apparently the name also etymology means like a bright fire or lucky fire so that makes sense yeah i think it's mostly comes from some celtic or you know how etymology is all whack but yeah it's it has to do with fire like the name of this so i love that um it's a large part of all the rituals of this celebration and Yeah, the returning of the sun is part of it, of course, because it's on this wheel of the year pagan calendar seasonal cycle, which is divided by our orbit around the sun. We're like, yay, sun. We're dying over here. Seasonal depression. Let's celebrate. Yeah.
01:07:45
Speaker
I feel like it's ah definitely a lot more accurate than what our actual calendar is like the first day of spring. And then we're like, oh, we have two crazy snowfalls after that. And it's like, yeah, sure. Feels like spring. But like with this coming up this week, it's like, no our weather is actually like way better week than it has evening last week yeah yeah it's like yeah i finally feel the spring now yeah who came up with the gregorian calendar gregory yeah like yeah i get that it makes sense a lot they were like oh it does really make things even when you divide things by like on the clock of 12 or whatever so i'm like whatever whatever we had to do to
01:08:33
Speaker
make time easier so that the trains could all run on time and we could figure out time zones like but still yeah this makes so much sense because it's going with the actual sun and the planets yeah um uh oh
01:08:51
Speaker
Yeah, so they definitely always celebrate these types of like important points on the cycle, which are usually the equinoxes, the solstices and the cross quarter days, or kind of the in-between days. So this one is kind of like one of those in-between days because we're like um right on the cusp of being going into the longer days, I guess. Yeah.
01:09:14
Speaker
Yeah. But yeah, it takes on many facets faces around Europe and elsewhere. as you touched on a lot of different ones in Europe that I didn't come across in my main research at all. Oh, nice. I was hoping.
01:09:30
Speaker
So was like, oh, I stayed clear of anything that specifically said it was like a May Day holiday or Beltane or anything. so I was like, okay, stay away from that. Just look up Balpurgus.
01:09:42
Speaker
Like, specifically that like variation of this sort of holiday. Like how this culture... Or like area separates it or yeah. so offensive Yeah.
01:09:56
Speaker
Yeah. It's, uh, obviously called by, oh no, Volpergisnat. Now I have to say it. Or ah Volborg.
01:10:10
Speaker
Um, as I found in Germany or Scandinavian countries, which you, uh, very much expand on, uh, But then it was also called different things, Root Festival, which just said Yakama.
01:10:25
Speaker
And I will admit, I did not look up what region or people that is from. Because there was ah so many. Qingming is what they call it in China.
01:10:37
Speaker
um I think it's called Whitsuntide, and that's the Dutch celebration. So like. The Netherlands? Yeah.
01:10:51
Speaker
And it may also be represented or associated with various goddesses, usually goddesses of love, beauty, and as I like to put it, baby-makin'. and So... And... Yeah, I would... Apologies to anyone if, like, multiple mentions of fertility is maybe a little triggering for some, but they use that word a lot.
01:11:16
Speaker
um so yeah they've got your Aphrodite is from the Greek the Venus Roman uh the goddess of like love Vlada is Slavic and Oya is Yoruba I don't know where that is and there's Amara Amara Matarasu, I'm so sorry, the Japanese, and Freya, the Norse, uh, and she's the goddess of love, fertility, war, and death. So I was like, she's doing a lot.
01:11:51
Speaker
She's like, got a busy, busy job. She's, you can pray to her from cradle to the grave, it sounds like.
01:12:03
Speaker
Um, yeah, specifically in places like Scotland, people would light the Beltane fires, um in the olden days they would like drive the cattle around them sometimes leap over them and that's why when you said they were like so tall i was like nobody's sleeping over them yeah um only the one place like specified how big the bonfires were i was like god damn that's a huge bonfire who is measuring this eight meters or whatever you're like Yeah, we're Canadian. 26 feet tall. Yeah, we we we usually say our height in in feet and stuff. So to me, like eight meters tall, like almost means nothing.
01:12:47
Speaker
But yeah, 26 feet.
Themes of Fertility and Nature in Celebrations
01:12:51
Speaker
Yeah. So I guess it started kind of petering out the celebrations, the performances in places like Scotland in the 1800s ish.
01:13:04
Speaker
That was sad. By mid-century, the fires of Fife had guttered out, and in the Shetland Isles, they followed shortly after in the 1870s, and they said like the last proper fire festival was held in 1820 in Helmsdale, and even Edinburgh's epic party had ended by the 20th century.
01:13:28
Speaker
Until 1988, that is. it's like hell yeah it all it all moved to germany yes uh yeah there was probably a lot going on then there's after you got done fighting the british in scotland they were like oh i guess we could focus on education and stuff and then they were just like boom libraries everybody's educated i love it um apparently the Beltane fires had traditionally always been lit on a ah hill in Scotland called Arthur's Seat um so probably that Arthur right I don't know that fictional great what is it yeah um and it said Arthur's Seat is an ancient extinct volcano that is the main um peak of a group of hills in Edinburgh
01:14:24
Speaker
scotland which formed most of hollywood park yeah so that area described by robert lewis stevenson as a hill for magnitude a mountain in virtue virtue of its bold design i just like that they're i did not expect scotland to have a volcano is that true i know they got a lot of mountains Yeah.
01:14:48
Speaker
Like, I know it's very hilly and like lots of valleys and everything, but I would not be expecting a mountain or not a mountain, a volcano. i know.
01:15:00
Speaker
Damn. Like, do we even have those? Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Apparently this guy, this Angus,
01:15:14
Speaker
I think it's Farcahar. funny Scottish last names.
01:15:22
Speaker
ah He brought helped bring back the efforts to celebrate Beltane and he was a member of this former industrial band called Test Department which was like amazing.
01:15:34
Speaker
I love it. um But they decided to pick somewhere like Arthur's seat wasn't as accessible in modern times maybe relocate it's all about the location yeah they moved the party to calton hill um which at this time had been fallen into disrepair and been known for you know more of a bad location that people will go to the miscreants and yeah do drugs there and whatever yeah
01:16:15
Speaker
Also, I was trying to confirm it on other websites, but didn't have ton of time to write much from the Calden Hill history website, as it were.
01:16:27
Speaker
But I think they used to have hangings there because it came up in them a historical novel I was reading around the time I was taking these notes. I'm like, oh, half string.
01:16:39
Speaker
They do be hanging people there. Yeah, let's let's ah bring up the vibes on this place, shall we? Yeah.
01:16:49
Speaker
So, yeah typically, I guess nowadays, they'll take start their kind of procession at the National Monument. They head on counterclockwise up this path. The drums are beating them on. They are meeting groups along the way, um, colorful characters that will either stall or help the, like, sort of head couple that's leading the group.
01:17:13
Speaker
Um, here that's usually called the May Queen and the Green Man, i guess. I like that, right? Florence Pugh! Oh my god.
01:17:26
Speaker
Midsomer! Wait! It's the prequel. Pre-midsummer. I think it is, yeah. Start summer. Oh gosh.
01:17:45
Speaker
There's a performance to, yeah, herald in the summer, the start of the summer season, as it were. uh the big fire the bonfire is lit and then typically i guess they all head down to place called the bower where then at least all the people that have been performing and whatever can have some food and refreshments and merriment and yeah get all warm and party on garth get it faced right and yeah so like the the revelers and the
01:18:17
Speaker
performers kind of, I think at this point kind of come together, which is another sort of theme of this sort of time of year is like, you know, everything coming together right now over me. oro I was going to say, speaking of, ah thought of you today, Gordo, we were talking about buying, um,
01:18:38
Speaker
cats and dogs and pears for companionship. He's literally just resting his chin like on my arm and then like looking up at me like, huh.
01:18:51
Speaker
Uh, yeah. Pat was like, always buy cats and pears because like otherwise they just sleep all day and then you come home and they want to bug you. i was like, yes, or you're trying to sleep. He's like, or you're trying to sleep. I'm like, or you're trying to podcast. like Yes.
01:19:06
Speaker
Yeah. But like we tried to leave to go out to eat this morning at this breakfast place and the dog was like tapping on the door and like trying to get us to stay. It was heartbreaking.
01:19:19
Speaker
Like stop it. We've gone out for the movies before. You'll be fine. he's just not used to being like left alone without at least rain or someone. Yeah.
01:19:36
Speaker
Alright, so the vibes, the themes were revolving around the fertility of the season, the sowing of the seeds, everyone's coming together, one with the world, tapping into your creativity.
01:19:49
Speaker
Some states can be about for older souls melding the parts of yourself like your masculine feminine sides. And I was like, all right. But it seems to kind of depend on your journey. And you can definitely find very many yeah more like woo-woo sort of, here are some incantations and stuff. like yeah Websites for inspiration on how to celebrate. Yeah.
01:20:15
Speaker
Oh yeah, like I think I got this from a site that was like Wee Moon something something and ah they said or I wrote, it's been called a pagan celebration of love, sexuality and renewal.
01:20:31
Speaker
um But also it had some good points in there like they said the traditional pagan Oh, hang on. My headphones. Would you like me to please charge them?
01:20:47
Speaker
The traditional pagan Celtic northern Northern European holy days start earlier than the customary native North American ones.
01:20:58
Speaker
So I hadn't heard this, but they are seen to begin in the embryonic dark phase, they said, e.g. at sunset or the night before the holy day. And the seasons are seen to start on the cross quarter days before the solstices and the equinoxes.
01:21:14
Speaker
In North America, these cardinal points the on the wheel of the year are seen to initiate the beginning of each season. i don't quite get it, but when they say it, like, starting to celebrate it the night before the Holy Day, it seems they do that with this one. Yeah, it's like... Or Halloween, where you're like, yeah, you start it in the night. Yeah. Because... Yeah.
01:21:41
Speaker
Okay, so that's... o That's the bulk of it and then I had a few things I had to rewrite out because I didn't have time to type them.
01:21:55
Speaker
Gordy's so drooly, baby. is he drooly? yeah so he's got like two like drips of like saliva on his chin. Buddy.
01:22:09
Speaker
budd So gross. this is So drooling. Fen was a little bit like that when we had some chicken nuggets and stuff earlier. He's like, Wendy's? Okay, don't brush against the mic.
01:22:26
Speaker
Ew, you drooled on the desk. It's like a puddle. my god. Six cat. You're so gross sometimes. He'll like cuddle with me and he'll move and then I'll just have like a wet spot on my shirt and I'm like, buddy, that's gross.
01:22:44
Speaker
Like a toddler. Just like, bleh. Except he's always been like this. Yeah, you're like, I'm sorry, I'm lactating. no Yeah, that's what it looks like sometimes depending how he's laying on me. I'm like, that looks so gross.
01:23:02
Speaker
oh Like a drooly little baby. heart is it Such a baby. Okay baby, we'll get you to bed soon.
01:23:13
Speaker
So we'll close it out with some of these other details. So yeah, like that's based the pagan calendar, the wheel of the year, all these like different celebrations of the sun and stuff just based on the seasonal cycle, which is created by the earth's annual orbit around the sun. It's just like, so natural y'all. I'm like science. Yeah.
01:23:38
Speaker
Science rules. I know, but it's just like, we, we celebrate the sciencey days. No, the, the sun symbol days.
Rituals and Symbols of May Day
01:23:50
Speaker
Um, so yeah, like the solstices, which are just to remind us the extreme points of earth's axis, tilting towards or away from the sun. so and then you've got those equinoxes, which are called so, cause they're like the equal light and night sort of times a year. At least I'm going to say it like that night and day, light night, yeah light night, um
01:24:15
Speaker
like night, done. um So I love that we're celebrating this time year connections. sort of duality of how rain and shine and they come together in the ground to make things grow and like you know important to have all those parts April showers bring me flowers yeah you gotta open up to that rain baby not that I could find anything uh serious about this but they're just like sex magic and I'm like yeah chili peppers blood sugar baby sex magic I remember that album
01:24:55
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely some like sensuality, sexuality, fertility, like vibes that you keep coming across when you just sort of look at the origins. And I was like, oh yeah, the fires.
01:25:09
Speaker
They're like, come on baby, light my fire.
01:25:16
Speaker
But like true, just kind of celebrating connection with all life on the ah world, the animals, plants, even the elements. I'm like, Captain Planet. ah
01:25:28
Speaker
And like, also it'll be an excuse to have a bonfire and Cree made our Christmas tree finally. May she rest in peace.
01:25:41
Speaker
I'll be doing that once this comes out. We had a real one this year. And yeah didn't even know that. Yeah, I like a real one. every once in a while, but then we didn't put it out far enough. We left it on the porch and then pine needles fell off on the porch and then they kept getting dragged in by the dogs. So it's just gonna be really nice to have it all gone.
01:26:03
Speaker
Yeah. You can't rub your face on the mic.
01:26:09
Speaker
Phone is talking. So yeah, there's lots of different options, I guess, whether you like to celebrate a little or a lot. you uh yeah can have a bonfire or a candle or if you want to have a maypole dance they suggested just go into your oh yeah you know home depot here and buying a dowel and some ribbons and just yeah saw stuff about that that's not pretty easy right you can do it yourself
01:26:41
Speaker
different patterns, right? They like weave kind of in and out and it makes like a braided pattern or something too, instead of just like going around in a circle.
01:26:51
Speaker
Okay, yeah. And do you just glue them all at the top? Like, yeah, I don't know exactly, but it does make it sound doable. um much more doable than like oh yes you can celebrate with maypole dances or like it's good time to have a marriage you're like well that's a lot um to me i'm like also the fertility it's like maybe we don't just decide this is the day we're making a baby like you might not want to get that far into it maybe you want to just plant some plants or dig deep into the dirt of your own psyche um
01:27:30
Speaker
It's a good time to shed shed the dead and what does not serve you. Yeah. suppose. And maybe when you're lighting your fires, you can celebrate with some of the fresh food that might be available at this time.
01:27:45
Speaker
You could make a fairy altar also. Apparently the veil is thin at this time and you might get some visitors if you honor them with some flowers, foods, and nice smells.
01:27:58
Speaker
Nice. Yeah. I also like make a flower crown and cast a spell.
01:28:08
Speaker
Yeah. do have And oh a fun fact said something about newborns and it was like also, you know, whether they're human or just it a newborn idea or project that are conceived around Beltane or Mayday or what have you are called Mary Belton.
01:28:31
Speaker
Begots? How would you say that? Merry, as in Christmas, and then Begots. B-E-G-O-T-S.
01:28:41
Speaker
Merry Begots. Merry Begots. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, maybe it's kind of like the old saying with like, Monday's child is fair of face, Tuesday's child is full of grace, and like, you know, whatever day you're born. Kind of thing in the rhyme.
01:29:00
Speaker
Gordo just pawed at my stomach. Pawing at my gut? He's like, pet me! trying to grab your boob this time.
01:29:11
Speaker
think that was last episode. He was sitting behind me on the couch earlier and he was like kind of curled up no around my shoulder. He had like one paw on my shoulder from behind. I was like, oh, this is cute. And he was kind of like, yeah, my neck and then all of a sudden he just bit the corner of my shoulder. I was like, the body.
01:29:35
Speaker
oh He has a switch. I know.
01:29:46
Speaker
He really is. He's a demon cat with the sweetest little baby face. The cross-eyed and the snaggletooth and the all the things. And the fuzzy little like um like Siamese cat face but then he's all poofy because he's a ragdoll.
01:30:05
Speaker
But then he's a little asshole. What if he and Fen were friends and then they wouldn't have to be lonely every time we went out together? Yeah. it would be like Milo and Otis. Gordo used to, like, I don't know, when he was my brother's cat, they used to take him, um, to... And socialize him and... Yeah, he went to, like, a few houses that had dogs and then, um... Okay.
01:30:33
Speaker
he He likes other animals, he just doesn't like them to be in the house with him, is the thing. Because i thought when I had both the cats that, like, the other cat, because Gordo kept, like, trapping Bailey on the couch.
01:30:49
Speaker
Like, he would, like, follow her around the house, and I thought she... Sweet! Yeah. Yeah. And she'd be like afraid to go to the litter box or go to eat. She would just sit on the couch all day and he would like just like stalk her basically. That is rough when you think about it. One of them was yeah one of them was like peeing on the couch. And I thought because Bailey was like the one stuck on the couch all the time that it was Bailey.
01:31:15
Speaker
But after i separated them and Bailey went to go live with my parents, Gordo for like another week and a half kept peeing on the couch. So I was like, it was you that was peeing on the couch. And he was the bully the whole time. Yeah. So I think he's fine like temporarily around other animals, but I do not think he likes to live with them because he was very much like, yeah, like marking his territory and everything too.
01:31:46
Speaker
That sucks. I just sent you a picture of the page that fell on the ground that is literally standing on its edge. That's all. What? Oh, you'll see it. Witchcraft.
01:32:00
Speaker
And it is like nickel that fell on its side and it has not fallen over yet. my god. Witchcraft.
01:32:14
Speaker
I'll have to post it on Instagram now because I talked about it on the pod. But it is. It's just a loose leaf sheet that fell in. That's crazy. Standing upright. oh It's not AI, guys.
01:32:28
Speaker
Yeah. I love watching those videos where, like, um and sometimes it's a UFO or sometimes it's just, like, oh, like the, it was almost like paranormal activity where like the blanket started to come up on someone's bed and then she grabs her baby and she ran out of the room. But then they like analyzed it on the, it's on the show called The Proof Is Out There and they're like, they're video experts. So they'll like, you've been doctored and you're like, yeah, i guess that makes sense. It was very like, and then the blankets came up when I was just in bed and then I grabbed my baby and left and it was all caught on camera. And you're like, yeah, maybe that is a little bit unbelievable, but.
01:33:05
Speaker
Sometimes. You're like, I don't know. um Anyway.
01:33:16
Speaker
So yeah, it's a great time. Beltane made day to write down your wishes and intentions. Whether you burn them and then just blow away in the wind or sing them out into the universe. And song.
01:33:32
Speaker
Oh, oh. give me some money, please. No, a million dollars. ah And they just throw in something like, great time to track fertility. I'm like, okay. Maybe you're on that journey already.
01:33:53
Speaker
um There was stuff on the, like almost official Druid website, which makes me laugh. ah But like, since old times, Beltane is and considered buzzing with life and fertility. And they believed that the lady of the land takes the horned God's hand here.
01:34:17
Speaker
So instead of Queen May, it's going to be May. It's the lady of the land. um Oh, and this is when I ran across things saying that um the Hawthorne tree is associated with May Day or often called just the May tree.
01:34:39
Speaker
so when you said that, what did you say? The cherry tree? That's... Yeah, they do like cherry blossoms.
01:34:49
Speaker
Okay, okay. In one place, not in all of them. Yeah, so perhaps where they are found here, maybe in parts of the UK, I'm guessing.
01:35:04
Speaker
based on where druid shit seems to originate. May trees signal, their blossoms signal the start of Beltane. And so they're called, they're the Hawthorne tree, but they're also called the May tree.
01:35:18
Speaker
And that's where I wrote down, holy shit, the tree lore, I tell you. was like, we could go down another rabbit hole. For sure. Yeah, they would like so have terms like they're going a-maying and they might come back with Hawthorne boughs with blossoms on them for decorations or they might leave a branch on a doorstep and they had like different poems like this Robert Herrick one. There's not a budding belt boy or girl this day but is got up and gone to bring in May a deal of youth ere this has come back with white thorn laid in home.
01:36:00
Speaker
And like they were going to bring them beauty. The fair maid who the first of May goes to the fields at break of day and wishes and washes in dew from the Hawthorne tree will ever after handsome be. was like, oh. Nice. su Fucking wash yourself in that dew, bitches.
01:36:24
Speaker
um ah To me, the funniest part, and I swear, I was like, i I gathered up my little hearth is witch compendium because I had no it had a Beltane section. And then as I was skimming this before we were going record, I was like, oh, yes, this something like this came up in my research. But I don't remember jotting it down again because I didn't.
01:36:48
Speaker
If you couldn't tell, I didn't have to have to type up all my notes officially. um okay so listen to this first part. The Beltane marks the return of summer with all its warmth and promise of plenty.
01:36:59
Speaker
The blossoming of the fruit trees marks the coming of the summer goddess, while the hedgerows blaze with the flowering of the hawthorn, which is said to carry the scent of female sexuality as the goddess prepares to mate with the god.
01:37:15
Speaker
it's It's the original fucking goop candle.
01:37:24
Speaker
vagina The smell of my vagina! ah My first thought was, I swear to God, the girls on um Creeps and Crimes, who are from like down south like Tennessee, like they talked about some tree that, like quote unquote, like smelled like sex or something like that. And i was like, what?
01:37:44
Speaker
And I had never heard of it. and then until like I was doing these notes, I was like, I have never heard of this. People out there are getting horny for trees. So fucking horny!
01:37:56
Speaker
Oh, they talk about... What? Yeah. This is my from my Hearth Wishes book, Anna Franklin. And they they talked about the Maying. in medieval England, the 1st of May was celebrated by going out into the Greenwood, a Maying, to collect greenery and hawthorn blossoms.
01:38:13
Speaker
Love chases were customary, and the fertility of the land would be ensured by sympathetic magic. In many areas, a May Queen was crowned with flowers and her male counterpart was Jack in the Green or the Green Man.
01:38:27
Speaker
She is covered in blossoms. He is covered in ivy, holly, birch, poplar, fir and other greenery. Once they may have been appointed by the village as representations of the goddess and the god and in some places they are still called the bride and groom.
01:38:42
Speaker
But then get this. The maypole is a phallic symbol with obvious connotations of fertility and revelry. Yes, and that's why children often are doing the maypole. They gone and done ruined the maypole for us.
01:39:01
Speaker
Throughout Europe, there are long traditions. Sorry, go ahead. You can make anything phallically related.
01:39:10
Speaker
tried to draw draw a tiny dick in my notes. um I won't read all the... ah recipes associated associated with but just to finish that paragraph ah throughout Europe there are long traditions of a stripped tree of birch erected in the village square or sacred site decorated with ribbons and greenery the dance around the maypole with some dancers circling sunwise some widdershins suggests a dance of death and rebirth god I love the word widdershins never heard it before
01:39:46
Speaker
We just say unfun things like clockwise and counterclockwise. Yeah. And then sometimes they say like anti-clockwise and widdershins and they' like, what the fuck?
01:39:57
Speaker
What do you mean, England?
01:40:01
Speaker
What do you mean? Anyway. That's me. I banged it out. What do you think? yeah Oh, so fun. It was good.
01:40:13
Speaker
Yay. I'm excited for springy time to yeah hopefully may finally come. so Summer is my favorite time year and spring is my next favorite. So I am so happy. Yeah.
01:40:30
Speaker
Spring went, oh, after you've had a good rainfall or two. Oh my God. Start to see the green come back. My favorite is like a rainy day where it's still warm outside. So like you can have your windows open and you can hear the rain falling and it's the evening.
01:40:48
Speaker
i know. I want to go for drugs. yeah Cause when it's cloudy, sometimes people don't want to go out anywhere. And you're like, well, literally there's like nobody here right now. Like let's go for a walk or whatever. Yeah. It's so cool.
01:41:02
Speaker
love it
01:41:06
Speaker
Ah, just those rainy days.
Podcasting Challenges and Future Content
01:41:10
Speaker
ye Oh, anyway, happy May Day to you all By the time this comes yeah out, i will uh edit it so that it turns out hopefully right on time this time because i've been last friday or two weeks ago it was a couple came out like friday night or something by the time i get it done you know it happens we both work full time and my schedule is really hard to work around a lot of the time even recording what's wrong with you having a life we had to record it like thursday
01:41:48
Speaker
that's why i didn't have it like edited i was like i'll do it sucks what's that sorry i said paying bills sucks it's a scam it's all scam life is a scam truly and they were joking about that on scam goddess they're like go back in the womb you don't have to pay utilities yeah I get it ah anyway hope you all are doing well
01:42:25
Speaker
we look forward to talking to you again in a couple weeks oh yeah what are we talking about we forgot to tell them we just picked we are Taking a trip to Peru for some true crime.
01:42:45
Speaker
i love how we both had to refer back to what we picked two hours ago. We're like, oh yeah! But we did pick it this time. Yeah, we were. It's true.
01:42:58
Speaker
I was a lot more tired. Now I feel jazzed up. What the hell?
01:43:04
Speaker
this works this way. a And until then, join our Patreon. Got plenty of bonus episodes, little videos and fun things over there. yeah That are only over there.
01:43:23
Speaker
You can check out anytime you miss us. And we always be adding more. right. Catch you next time. Bye. Bye.
Credits and Social Media Presence
01:43:54
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Castles Encrypted. We love all our listeners and appreciate every subscriber, every new review, every listen, rate and download. Our music is by Kobe Off Air and our cover art is by Antonio Garcia. We are also a proud member of Dark Cast Network where you can find the best and spookiest of all indie podcasts.
01:44:15
Speaker
Follow us on social media where we are at Castles Encrypted on mostly all of the things now including TikTok. Check out our bonus content on Patreon. cryptid clashes, video mini-sodes of your hosts making asses of themselves, ask me anything, quizzes, other special episodes, and more. Starting at just $2 a month, you can get one to two extra episodes, depending on your level.
01:44:40
Speaker
We produce, edit, and research everything ourselves, and any support you can lend helps us to keep it cryptic.
01:45:09
Speaker
I just have to look up pronunciation for mine.
Challenges of Pronunciation and Linguistic Anecdotes
01:45:12
Speaker
Ugh, now I'm hearing an ad ah about salad toppings. Fabulous, thank you YouTube.
01:45:22
Speaker
Salad toppings? Oh my god, what are you googling that this is your algorithm? That's funny. Well that's my ad it's not what I'm google for watching.
01:45:39
Speaker
Oh my god. Yeah.
01:45:44
Speaker
Oh yeah, because yours has like some Germanic sort of words. Yeah, there's a lot and I'm really bad at pronunciation, Oh
01:45:57
Speaker
man. Well, that's hard, right? Yeah, when it's not your first language that can make the pronunciation are always like worse than a native speaker is just going to be kind of. Yeah, and I have like really bad, i don't know, short-term memory about like stuff like that where, yeah I'll look up pronunciation and then an hour later when we're actually trying to record, i will not remember it and I'll have to look it up again. Yeah.
01:46:28
Speaker
So.
01:46:30
Speaker
We're doing our best. And yeah. that Etsy to me is like, at least you try to look it up. Right. Where sometimes I'm like, it feels like people didn't just do a quick Google on how to pronounce this, like English word name of a place. You know what i mean? Like, and then you can they could quickly found out how to pronounce it. But others are much more difficult.
01:46:55
Speaker
Like, uh, when I was listening to one podcast and they said Banff, bamfuffa. And was like, what? they're like, bamf. It's bamf.
01:47:08
Speaker
And they're like, bamfuffa. Or something. I was like, what the fuck is it? What are they saying? Well, if there is, yeah, if the common pronunciation, there's like a silent letter or something, then yeah. it's Yeah.
01:47:22
Speaker
But it is hard because there's definitely where you're like, oh, locals know what's pronounced this. And you're like, well, we're obviously not locals. So. I'm not even local to my own country.
01:47:33
Speaker
i Because we have like so many. Yeah, there's different like dialects, even within Canada, if people don't know. The indigenous place names in Canada can be very difficult to pronounce as well.
01:47:49
Speaker
A lot of times I can't look at the word and say it. I just have to know, like, look at it and be like, I know that word. And then I just have to say it. Like, I can't look at the word while I'm saying it or I'll mess up. I'll be like, I know, I've heard that word enough times. Yeah, and then you look at the spelling, which is not at all phonetic, and you're like, blah. Yeah, and it just trips me up.
01:48:15
Speaker
Yeah. Like, there's the one in BC where... we may have mispronounced on this one where it's like quenelle that's spelled like quesnel and you're like if you don't know then it's oh probably yeah there's like a lot of them or whatever i was like if i saw that spelled out i'd probably be like what the heck i know there's definitely some in new brunswick that fall under that category where you're like um it's oh yeah there's one where it's spelled kind of like
01:48:50
Speaker
with a bunch of G's like, maggaguwaavic and they're like, how's it pronounced? Macadavik. You're like, how would you know that? That sounds like the English trying to pronounce ah an indigenous name and we just like gave up.
01:49:04
Speaker
Really, our mouths can't form these words. Anyway, I digress.
01:49:12
Speaker
How did we get here?
01:49:16
Speaker
Yeah. is Pronunciation guides.
01:49:21
Speaker
Yeah. have so many. Okay. okay