Beltane

As I'm sure everyone is aware, the period that is roughly the 30th of April to the first of May is also Beltane. Lots of people think of Celtic practices as being very sexual,the Celts were very sexual people, but I think what lies behind that is the Celts' strong relationship with the Earth. Beltane is essentially a fire festival, a link was seen between fertility and fire. Possibly that might be a sexual connection. There is a cleansing that fire brings, just look at the examples of the forest fires we have here. Two summers ago they turned out to be deadly and many people lost their homes, but forest managers realise the need for controlled fires to clear out the forest floor, to enrich the soil. Fertility again.

There is also a testing aspect to fire. We talk about the assayer's fire, the fire that clears out impurities so that only that which is pure is left. I don't think we necessarily need fire to do this, but if we are to test ourselves, our beliefs, our strengths, then we need to subject ourselves to the same rigour, find something that peels away the excess layers, the baggage, the fat until all that is left is true.

That of course is what Descartes tried to do to find out what he could truly believe in. Anything of what he knew that could be doubted must be, and he found that almost everything he believed to be true could be doubted. Descartes, dead since 1650, continues to have his own work tested with the assayer's fire. The only thing that Descartes found he could not doubt was his own existence on some plane, because even if he were being deceived, in order to have mental processes, he must exist. When I was studying, there was a journal of Cartesian studies which appeared several times a year. Imagine if Decartes were still alive, would he be thoroughly pissed off that his ideas were still being challenged, or would he be immensely proud that his own method of scepticism is still causing debate? I think the latter.

One of the things I am finding about being outside of my own milieu is how much of what I believe in is constantly being assayed. But I think that was also true of being a teacher. I found the profession itself to be a process of constant testing, not simply by us but of us. And I think that out of that process comes strength and value.

I loved Descartes' work, I think his own education by Jesuits probably prepared him for the ideas and work he was to produce. But I love it also because it is like fire and like fire it has enriched the soil for so many other great thinkers.

Trial by fire, in its most literal sense, hardly something to be relished, but as a tool for personal growth, in the way that Descartes used it, one to be administered with honesty.

And the Celts, I think they knew what they were doing, fire giving rise to fertility not just of the body, but also of the mind and spirit. Not a Celtic myth, but an enduring one nonetheless, the phoenix rising from the ashes of a fire is a symbol that gives us hope.