This page contains a mixture of recipes, charms and invocations. Enjoy!

If you wash your face in the dew, at dawn on May Day, you will be blessed with beauty for the next 12 months.

Candied Flowers

Ingredients

1 cup hot water
2 cups sugar
2 cups small rosebuds OR 4 cups violets

Method

The flowers, very fresh and firm, should be washed, drained, and stemmed.

Combine water and sugar. Stir until sugar is thoroughly dissolved. Add flowers. Simmer over medium heat until the syrup reaches 234 degrees fahrenheit on a candy thermometer (or until a small amount of syrup, when dropped into very cold water, forms a ball which flattens on removal). Stir flowers gently with a wooden spoon. Remove from heat and continue stirring until syrup begins to crystallize, and reaches the consistency of coarse meal.

Drain over a colander. Shake off excess sugar. Cool on wax paper. Pack into sterilized jars. Use as edible decorations for fruit salads, desserts, and cakes.

A charm for the Garden

Drop a handful of Rowan berries, gathered on Rowan Tree day (13th May - Old May Day) into any old leather (and they MUST be leather) boots or shoes you want to discard.
Take them and bury them deep, in a spot where your bedding plants grow best and say this little charm over them as you work;

Rowan fruit, boot and shoe
Bless my flowers the summer through
Faeries of the Wicken Tree
Work this growing charm for me

Work by the light of a waxing moon, on a Friday or a Wednesday, these being the nights of Venus and Mercury. You can then look forward to an abundance of flowers.

Short Cut Meade (Pan-Celtic)

Thought to be a gift the dieties and used to honor them,
especially at Beltaine

1/2 gal water
1 1/2 cups raw honey
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp allspice, rounded
1/2 cup Everclear (legal moonshine)

Slowly heat all ingredients except the alcohol in a large stock pot. As the honey melts, an oily crust will form on the top. Leave it there or not, your choice (more full bodied if left on). Do not allow the meade to come to a rolling boil. When it's well blended, remove from heat, stirring occasionally until it settles. When it has cooled, add Everclear and serve.

The birch

The Silver Birch is a Goddess tree, the symbol of summer ever-returning. Maypoles are best made from Thorn and Birchwood.

On the first of May, a little cluster of Birch leaves, pinned as a brooch to the cloak or bonnet of a maid, will work a love charm so that she may choose her suitor in the May Games.

Syllabub

In parts of Ireland the first milk of Beltaine was poured on the ground as an offering for the faeries. Next, for a real treat, the cow was milked straight into a bowl of whiskey, sherry, or mead for the frothy concoction known as syllabub - a breakfast that assured a merry start to May Festivities! Here is a version that doesn't require access to a cow.

Ingredients

1/3 cup of sherry
1/2 tsp amaretto liqueur (can substitute almond extract)
Juice and zest of one lemon
6 tablespoons sugar
2 cups heavy cream
12-18 amaretti cookies
6 wine or sundae glasses

Method

1) Put the sherry, liqueur or extract, lemon juice, zest and sugar into a large mixing bowl.

2) Add the cream and whip until the mixture stands in soft peaks. (note: personally I would whip the cream separately, then "fold in" the whiskey mixture)

3) Crumble 2 or 3 cookies at the bottom of each glass. Spoon cream mixture on top.

4) Chill for several hours before serving.

Serves 6.

Hazel

Weave Hazel sprigs into a chaplet and wear it in your hair on May first. This will bring you good luck all year and you will also have three wishes granted to you.

A modern invocation for the Festival of Beltane
from Caitlin Matthew's Celtic Devotional

Threshold Invocation for the Festival of Beltane (to be said at the front door of the house on the eve of Beltane, 30 April, in the evening)

Maiden of Flowers, open the door,
Smith of souls, come you in.
Let there be welcome to the Summer of the Year.
In bud and blossom you are traveling,
In fruit and fragrance you will arrive.
May the blessed time of Beltane
Inflame the soul of all beings,
Bringing energy and effort to conflagration.
From the depths to the heights,
From the heights to the depths,
In the core of every soul.

Elder

At Beltane, weave elder twigs into a garland. Worn around the head, it gives the wearer the 'second sight'.