I Was the May Queen

I was the May Queen. It was a Beltane more than two decades ago, now. I remember standing in the circle while the reigning May couple strolled along, gazing at possible successors. I was humming as if a deep chord was playing me, using my nervous system for strings. I knew, and I was afraid. My feet turned and left the circle, carrying me away with them, to attend to some invented errand. I returned a few minutes later, breathing more easily, sure that I had safely missed the Choosing.

Fate is not that easily misled.

The May Queen and King had continued to circle, waiting for me, and when I stepped back into that Beltane ring, they closed on me. She asked the question that echoes down the years; “Will you serve your community as May Queen?” The chord in my body stilled. I could feel the breeze lifting my hair in that pause between one lifetime and another.

I said yes.

My partner had agreed to the same question posed by the May King. Each of us was crowned, and then we stepped into the pattern of Beltane, as the embodiment of the gods. We blessed the bread and the milk laced with honey and cinnamon. I remember that my crown of flowers itched. We spoke and we sang and all the time we were the same people we had always been, yet different. We were now strands in a web that goes back in time and across the world, connecting us to all who have become Spring for their people.

By the time evening came, my nervousness was subsiding and I was enjoying being Queen. The Balefire was lit, and as May King and Queen, we ran toward it, holding hands, naked except for our shoes. We leaped high, and I was young and beautiful and free, a doe springing over the fire, my buck beside me. We ran on, full of joy, straight toward the ring of people. I still remember the face of the man we bore down on, a beloved friend who opened the circle like a gate. We ran through, laughing at the surprised faces, and made off to where we had left our clothes under the trees.

We left the drumming of the Balefire behind us and went to bless the land. We found our spot in a borderland between a field and some scrubby junipers. We said the ritual words: “As Goddess to God, so earth is to sky, as woman to man, so chalice to blade…” I wrote a song about that, later.

We made love on the cold ground. I’d like to say right now that there was a noticeable lack of portentous shooting stars, no host of glistening fairies appeared, and we were not inexorably possessed by the gods. We were just two people, fumbling in the dark, good-naturedly doing what we’d been charged to do and then hurrying to get our clothes back on before we froze. Like so many experiences in Wicca, it was both profoundly magical and quite mundane. The land was blessed and so were we.

When we returned to the Balefire, most of the jumpers were done, and a drum circle had emerged from the chaos in the way of these things. I tied strings of bells around my ankles and danced around that fire with leaves still tangled in my hair.

I was the May Queen.

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