This is my annual long article about Beltane with additions and modifications because this year is actually different from last, though its patterns are similar. What follows is a summary of some of the stuff I have written in answer to questions about pagans and their festivals. It includes a brief history of how the current NeoPagan ways of celebrating the old festivals came about. A sort of Wiccan and NeoPagan history 101.

I was having a little discussion with someone who read my last postings and insisted, using Biblical references, that Satan and Lucifer were the same angel, and that Lucifer was thrown out of heaven because of his pride. Well we know how touchy the God of the Old Testament is about anyone else having a smidgeon of authority, or any other deity having any living followers, so the story has a ring of authenticity, mythologically speaking.

However, my well worn and cherished English Bible is the King James Version, and it says on the front page “ Translated out of the original tongues and with the former translations diligently compared and revised.” And this elegantly phrased statement was not what happened.

We are currently in the Chinese New Year and not all that far from our own. We have finished with the crass commercialism surrounding the celebration of the Christians’ Master and are heading into the other pagan season in honour of the goddess Estara, the goddess of fertility whose ancient pre-Christian symbols are the egg and the hare or rabbit.

In my Christmas series I suggested that you remember that the Pilgrim Fathers whom we are supposed to honor, kept Christmas as a fast day, and no celebrations were allowed. The –ism worshipped today in this country is Commercialism, the God of which is money and its derivative, power.