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Here is the full report of the Failte Celtic Festival!

For those who don't know what this festival was about... Failte was the name of a Celtic festival organized by a school in Belgium. Torc had pointed it out to me, whereafter I contacted them to ask if we could have an info table at their festival too, to promote the NOD (a Celtic event without any Druids wouldn't be complete now would it ) and also perform a ceremony for the public.

An agreement was made, and on Sunday we could use a tent to have our info table at, even use a TV+DVD to show a documentary of the Celts, and in return we would perform a ceremony at three different times during the day. So I chose to do a Beltane ceremony, as it was the day before Beltane Day and felt it would be the most appropriate thing to do.

We arrived there around 10am, were told where we could find our tent (which was a nice and large one too! and started to set everything up. Now I don't have pictures of the tent and of what all we had on display yet (those will probably still follow later), but this is what we had on display:

- Brochures that people could take
- Booklets with general information about NOD
- Booklets with general Celtic/Druid information, such as the Ogham, tree calendar, Celtic symbols, ...
- Two dragon candles
- An incense set that we received as a wedding gift last year from nighthawk
- A piece of wood on which I had drawn the Ogham circles
- A piece of wood on which I had written "NEW ORDER OF DRUIDS"
- A piece of wood with two candles in it
- Our Celtic antique artefacts in display cases (a La Tene Celtic warrior knife and axe, Celtic coins from Gaul and Britain, rings and other small objects)
- Our mead horn
- A Celtic card set (that Ambiorix Bradan had brought with him)
- Our Bodhran
- A large Celtic Cross (which I actually bought there at the festival!
- My newest book "The Celtic Chronicles" (which is about to be released - more info coming soon)

I think that is more or less everything.

We went there with 10 people: me, Willow Mist, ROMA, Messalina, her two children, Ambiorix (an NOD member of the Nervii Nemeton mother grove here in Belgium), my father (who filmed the entire event), ROMA's mother and another friend.

Soon after we arrived, we met with Dububrannos for the first time, also an NOD member who lives on the other side of Belgium, and was there to tell Bardic stories to the people. It was great to meet him in person, and I look forward to work together with him again in the future! We gladly shared our info tent with him as he didn't really have a place or tent of his own.

Reportedly over 2000 people visited the festival that day, and alot of things were going on: Irish dance, music, Celtic sports (hurling, Highland games, ...), re-enactors, lessons on how to wear the Highland kilt, and so much more!

And that brings me to our part in the activities: the Beltane Ceremony!

So we were asked to perform a ceremony, and as I explained earlier, I chose to do a Beltane ceremony. It was the first time I would lead a ceremony on my own, and I wanted to do it right.

A few weeks in advance, I had written out the entire ceremony from scratch. On Saturday afternoon, we gathered in a nearby park to rehearse the ceremony, which is a very important step in the finalising of a ceremony. There are always these practical parts that turn out not to work very well and some changes need to be made then. Having rehearsed the ceremony twice that day, we were ready for Sunday!

[b]Willow Mist (left) and Messalina (right) at the info tent.[/b]


[b]ROMA (left), Messalina and Phoenix, just prior to the ceremony.[/b]

We had taken 16 stones with us (four large one, one for each direction, and 12 small ones to fill up the gaps) and we laid them out in a circle on the grass. We then put the torches in the ground, got a table for the altar and set it up.

I had received a Welsh translation of a gods and goddesses blessing from Eagle Owl, who obtained it for me from someone she knows who speaks Welsh, just prior to us leaving for the festival. There was no time to rehearse the pronunciation any more, but I still wanted to put it to some use. So I used it to bless the altar with it.

Then I activated the circle. This is not to be confused with the opening of the circle at the beginning of a ceremony. I chose to activate the circle, because the stones would remain in place all afternoon, and the Beltane Ceremony would be performed in it three times.
Now we still needed one thing on our side: the weather. Weather forecasts had predicted an entire day of rain on Sunday, which would have been unfortunate. I had checked weather.com since Friday evening, and each time it said that it was dry now, but that it would rain in the next hour. But it never did. I checked saturday morning, noon, early evening and late evening... it kept saying the same, and no rain came. Sunday morning was the same.

But on our way to the festival in the morning, it was raining. When we arrived there, it had stopped raining again, but it was still very cloudy and anything could still happen. And that's when the strange thing happened.

Only minutes before the ceremony was about to begin, the blue sky began to clear open, and the sun came out to warm us up. And it stayed that way, for the entire ceremony. After the first ceremony, it suddenly began to rain again and there was a stronger wind, but by the time we were about to begin the second ceremony, the sun had returned... It didn't rain again that day, although the sun didn't shine all the time, but at the third ceremony the sky was nice and clear once again! It would seem the Gods were with us.

I will now share some more pictures of the ceremony, as they will speak more than a thousand words.

[b]ROMA, Messalina and Phoenix when the ceremony is about to begin.[/b]


[b]Gregory (Messalina's son) blowed the horn to announce the ceremony.[/b]


[b]The Beltane Ceremony is about to start.[/b]


[b]Phoenix opens the ceremony.[/b]


[b]Willow Mist during the Beltane Ceremony[/b]


[b]Phoenix greets the Four Directions.[/b]


[b]The Confrontation between the Winter King (ROMA) and the May Queen (Messalina)[/b]


[b]The Winter King offers the Chalice to the May Queen[/b]

The ceremony was filled with symbols of Beltane. I was the ceremony leader, opening and closing the circle. Messalina was the Herald, welcoming and thanking the people for attending. Willow Mist was the very much needed helping hand, holding the ceremony book or booklets when necessary.

ROMA performed the role of Winter King, and later on as May King, while Messalina performed the role of May Queen or Flower Queen, for which her green dress was more than fitting! The items used were the sword and the chalice, and those among you familiar with the fertility symbols of Beltane will no doubt understand what they mean but it was very much a celebration of the rebirth of the land.

And that is why another important part of the ceremony was the crowning of the May King and May Queen, with a crown of green leaves.

[b]Phoenix crowns ROMA to May King.[/b]


[b]Phoenix crowns Messalina to May Queen.[/b]


[b]Also our friend Dububrannos attended the ceremony.[/b]

Another important aspect of the Beltane ceremony, or any Celtic Fire Festival (such as Samhain), were the two bonfires. Now we couldn't go about creating two bonfires there due to fire hazard, but we brought two torches with us that we put in the ground. Important was the part where people who wished, could walk between the two fires (the two torches) for protection and purification, whereafter I gave each a blessing and put the Awen symbol with oil on their foreheads. Some people also brought their dog and asked to put a blessing on the animal, for which I was very glad because it shows that mankind and animal are equal.

[b]Phoenix puts a blessing on ROMA.[/b]


[b]Phoenix puts a blessing on Dububrannos.[/b]


[b]Phoenix puts a blessing on a visitor.[/b]


[b]Phoenix puts a blessing on Yeti (ROMA's mother)[/b]


[b]Phoenix puts a blessing on Lucky, another friend who had come with us[/b]


[b]Phoenix puts a blessing on Laura (Messalina's daughter)[/b]
And of course, the ceremony couldn't be complete without the Awen Chant...


[b]Chanting the Awen[/b]

The ceremonies were a success, certainly for us for whom this was a great practice, although there weren't always many onlookers, but that was probably because it wasn't announced very well (a woman came to me asking where it was, just after the last one was finished, and she said she had looked all over for it but couldn't find it) and because somewhere halfway during the second ceremony a performance of Irish dancers suddenly began, instantly attracting the attention of most onlookers unfortunately, although that didn't bother me. The intention is what counts, after all.

The altar remained in place until we finished performing the last ceremony of the day, and at one point a young boy had even gone over to the altar, on which lay my ceremony book, and stood there for quite some time, carefully reading the entire ceremony in it! Some young girls had also come to our info tent to write some of the meanings of certain Celtic symbols that interested them, that was written in one of our booklets. We had several nice encounters with people there, and who knows how many brochures were taken along!

It was a day as succesfull as it was tiring (we had no chairs so we could not sit down for the entire day!) and by the evening, we drove back to Antwerp where we ate at the "Celtic Ireland" restaurant, and in the end were all so tired we just wanted to sleep. But I couldn't yet, because at 11pm I had yet an online Beltane ceremony to perform in the chatroom! Four ceremonies in a day is quite a bit!