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
The word joy refers to the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune, and is typically associated with feelings of intense, long lasting happiness.
Dictionary definitions
Dictionary definitions of joy typically include a sense of ...
of
Living Earth
Living or The Living may refer to:
Common meanings
* Life, a condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms
** Living species, one that is not extinct
* Personal life, the course of an individual human's life
* ...
, a Denver, CO based nonprofit, several nationally and internationally known guests and performers have headlined at Beltania:
*
Selena Fox of
Circle Sanctuary
*
Janet Farrar and
Gavin Bone
Gavin Bone (born 19 January 1964) is an English author and lecturer in the fields of magic, witchcraft, Wicca and Neo-Paganism, and an organizer in the Neo-Pagan community. He was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire in England, in 1964.
Early life ...
* Christopher Penczak
*
S. J. Tucker
*
Wendy Rule
Wendy Elizabeth Rule (born 31 October 1966) is an Australian musical artist. She was born in Sydney and later moved to Melbourne. She performs regularly and has toured the United States and Europe. She has been based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Ea ...
* River and Joyce Higginbotham
* Betsy Tinney
* Lunar Fire
* Frenchy and the Punk
In 2009, a Guinness Book of World Records attempt was made for the largest maypole dance on Earth, with 196 ribbons. Ordinarily, a 20–30 foot tall maypole at Beltania includes 50-100 ribbons and is repeatedly the largest maypole dance in Colorado.
Throughout the festival, ceremonies are interspersed with workshops with special guest presenters and many local talented teachers, ritualists, and local/regional community leaders. Music performances run Friday and Saturday all day and into the evening. Trance drumming, ecstatic dancing, and chanting takes place throughout the festival and until the early morning hours. The "Green Man" and "May Queen" are crowned each year as a symbol of the masculine and feminine aspects of the Divine. A Rainbow Welcome Center hosts and celebrates the diversity of the LGBT community at Beltania.
Beltania is the main annual fundraiser event fo
Living Earth a nonprofit church in Denver, Colorado. Joy Burton is the festival's Executive Director and the Executive Director of Living Earth. From 2010 to 2017 Living Earth partnered in hosting Beltania wit
Northern Colorado Covenant of the River(aka NCCR).
In 2019 the Beltania Festival announced that it would be their last year of operations
News articles about Beltania:
2016
Conservatives flip out over Air Force Academy spending $380 so pagan cadets can worship2015
Celebrate spring at Beltania: Pagan Celebration and Music Fest in Colorado Springs : by Jen Mulson, Colorado Springs Gazette, Witchvox
2012
* Weaving Spirit at Beltania, by Michelle Cole, The Examiner
2011
2010
* Celebrating Beltane: Beltania 2010, by Joe Stone, The Examiner
Music festivals in Colorado
Modern pagan music festivals
Modern paganism in the United States
Religion in Colorado
Music festivals established in 2008
2000s in modern paganism