Beltania

The tradition & historical record

Beltania is an alternative festival held each year in Colorado. Approximately 450–750 attendees come to celebrate Beltane, also known as May Day. It is a musicfest with several days of diverse performances and also a spiritual retreat focusing on Earth consciousness and the modern nature-based spirituality movement. Beltane has been celebrated for millennia and dates back to pre-Christian Celtic times, and is a fire festival celebrating the bright half of the year. Traditionally, the Balefire is lit to signal the return of the sun's strength, and people dance around the maypole which symbolizes fertility. There's a lot more to the history, lore, activities, and symbology of Beltane, but Beltania is not designed to reenact or recreate ancient Pagan ways. Rather, it's a modern celebration and interpretation of this May Day tradition. Spiritual and religious rituals and ceremonies of a wide variety of Earth-honoring, Magickal, Metaphysical, or other Alternative traditions are represented at Beltania, including a sweat lodge, labyrinth walk, yoga, as well as eclectic and traditional ritual. Since 2008, when the festival was founded by Joy Burton of Living Earth, a Denver, Colorado–based nonprofit, several nationally and internationally known guests and performers have headlined at Beltania:

Selena Fox of Circle Sanctuary Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone Christopher Penczak S. J.

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Beltania”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.

Beltania is yearly festival held in Colorado, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ¹

The source record links this tradition to 1 external register, which can be verified through the citation. ¹