Beautiful Plants For Your Interior
Location: Wild Ways, Shropshire
Date: 1st – 6th May
Our Beltaine 2025 gathering at Wild Ways, was a vibrant and soul-stirring celebration of life, renewal, and connection. Set against the wild beauty of the Shropshire landscape, our community came together to honour the turning of the wheel in true Heart of Yew spirit.
Highlights of the Gathering:
Journey with Rhiannon
We travelled mythically and spiritually with the goddess Rhiannon, guided by stories from the Mabinogion. Her presence was woven through our days, offering wisdom, transformation, and deepening connection to the land and our own personal journeys.
Special Guest: Professor Ronald Hutton
We were honoured to welcome Professor Ronald Hutton, who offered a rich and engaging talk on Rhiannon. His deep knowledge and generous storytelling grounded our spiritual work in the depth of historical and cultural context.
Workshops & Meditations
A variety of workshops and meditative practices were held across the weekend, offering opportunities for both inner stillness and communal exploration. These included themed circles, nature connection exercises, creative expression, and embodiment practices.
Beltaine Fire Ceremony
The traditional Beltaine fire was the heartbeat of our gathering. With drumming, fire performances, and sacred ritual, we honoured the fire as a symbol of passion, vitality, and the union of earth and sky. In a moment of unexpected joy and symbolism, even the sheep leapt through the flames — a powerful blessing from the land itself.
Dance of Life & Maypole Celebration
We danced the Dance of Life as the sun set, moving as one in celebration of all that is fertile, wild, and joyful. Around our newly raised maypole, ribbons wove stories of connection, intention, and joy into the heart of the land.
Stone Crafting & Sauna Sanctuary
Workshops in stone crafting connected us with ancient ways of shaping and honouring the land. Our woodland sauna offered a space for warmth, release, and deep rejuvenation, surrounded by the quiet song of the trees.
Woodland Walks & Nourishment
Guided walks through the woods reawakened our senses and reminded us of the quiet power of simply being in nature. Our meals were fresh, nourishing, and cooked with love — eaten together as a true community.
Reflections:
Beltaine 2025 was a powerful weaving of myth, land, and community. It reminded us of the sacredness of joy, the importance of coming together in ritual and play, and the magic that happens when we listen to the land and each other. The laughter, stories, songs, and silences will echo long into the year ahead.
Weaving Fire and Form: A Beltaine Blessing
At Beltaine, when the veil thins and the land stirs with longing, we gathered — not only with each other, but with the spirit of the place itself. Each step we took, each offering we made, was a thread in a tapestry of renewal — one woven between humans and earth, fire and breath, story and silence.
As our hands shaped stone, planted poles, stirred pots and lit sacred flames, the land responded. It rose to meet us. The rhythm we raised through drumbeat and dance, through breath and bellows, echoed back in the wind through the trees and the soft thud of sheep’s hooves leaping through the fire. This was no accident — it was an ancient recognition. We were not merely celebrating Beltaine. We were becoming it.
The great fire blazed with our intentions — whispered, spoken, and sung. Into it we wove our prayers for fertility, for healing, for courage, and for love. The flames did not consume these things; they transformed them, sending sparks into the night sky like tiny messengers of hope.
In the heart of our gathering, we raised the sacred Hoop and Pole — the circle and the staff, the feminine and masculine, each holding its own power, its own wisdom. The hoop: soft, receptive, encircling, holding space. The pole: strong, steady, rising, reaching. Neither whole without the other. Not dominance, but dance. Not opposition, but union.
And in that union, we remembered something essential: the way forward is not in choosing sides, but in weaving together. The masculine and feminine — in all their forms and expressions — offer gifts that the world is aching to receive. Strength and surrender. Direction and devotion. Vision and intuition. When honoured in balance, they awaken something sacred in us all.
Around the maypole we danced, not just in celebration, but in reverence — ribbons flowing like streams of possibility, each step a promise to walk forward in beauty, together. To listen to the land. To honour the fire. To welcome the dance between shadow and light, within and without.
We did not just visit the land at Wild Ways — we were received by it. We left behind no scars, only songs. And as we packed away tents and hugged our farewells, we knew the fire still burned — not in the hearth, but in our hearts.