Welcome back to White Rose of Avalon, my Darlings.   This week’s Femme Fatale Friday blog post is about May Queen Devotionals and celebrating Beltane with Sacred Sexuality!   Now, it is quite well known that Beltane is a time of celebrating Fertility and Sacred Sexuality.   But, I want to focus on how Sacred Sexuality in and of itself can be a form of May Queen Devotion.

There are many May Queens, from the Avalonian May Queens, my beloved Guinevere, Blodeuwedd, and Rhiannon, to the Irish May Queen Maeve, and several other lesser-known May Queens.    All of these May Queen Goddesses are very connected to Fertility and Sexuality.    Guinevere is known to have made the marriage to Arthur, which can be interpreted as the Goddess of Sovereignty marrying the King to bless his rule of the land.    She then falls in love with a Knight (most often Lancelot) when Arthur does not pay her the proper love and attention.   Guinevere’s affair with the Knight leads to Arthur losing the blessings of the land, for she was the one providing the bounty and fertility to Camelot!    Blodeuwedd was called forth from the Otherworld to physical form by the magicians Math and Gwydion to be the Flower Bride married to Lleu Llaw Gyffes, and just like Guinevere, this cemented Lleu being blessed by the land.    When Lleu would leave Blodeuwedd lonely to tend to other matters, she met Gronw Pebyr, a lord from a neighboring land.   Blodeuwedd and Gronw fell in love, and their sexual union over three nights was as good as a marriage in medieval Welsh terms.   Sadly, they never got to be happy together, as they plotted to kill Lleu, were unsuccessful, and were punished with Gronw being killed and Blodeuwedd being turned into an Owl!   Rhiannon’s nature as a Sovereignty Goddess blessing the rulership of her husband, Pwyll, is well-attested to.   He repeatedly refused to put Rhiannon aside, first when she had not borne a child in the first three years of their marriage, as he knew she was fertile.   She bore him a son within the next year, but sadly, her son was stolen, and she was blamed for his death.   Pwyll, once again, refused to set Rhiannon aside and remarry, instead punishing her for their son’s demise.   Rhiannon accepted unjust punishment until her son was found alive and her story was believed!   Pwyll did not lose the blessings of the land because he never put Rhiannon aside, but her story is still very tragic.    Her connection to fertility is very obvious by both her link to horses and her nature as a Mother!   Finally, Maeve is an Irish Faery Queen Goddess whose name literally means ‘She Who Intoxicates’ and also gave us the word for the Honey Libation of Mead.   Maeve’s connection to sexuality and fertility is shown time and again in her stories, as she was known to take many lovers, bestow Sovereignty on many Kings, and bore many children to her lovers (both human and Divine)!

We can easily take notes from the stories of these May Queens by spending time with our significant others.   This can be in the form of creating and imbibing a Wine Potion and dancing with the revelry of Beltane’s energy, a favorite way of mine to celebrate with my husband.   This can be taking a walk together and picking flowers, enjoying the abundance of Spring’s bounty around you.   Or this can obviously be to spend time worshipping one another’s bodies!   All of these things tap into the Fertility and Sacred Sexuality energy of Beltane.    Whether you are doing the most innocent activities of making Flower Crowns and going on nature walks with your beloved, or engaging in actual sex, it is all a way to show your love for both your lover and the Divine energy of Nature at this most beautiful time of the year!

I hope you have enjoyed this short post looking at some ways to celebrate the May Queen this Beltane Weekend.   What are some of your favorite Beltane celebrations?   Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Note on Image: The image at the top of the post is ‘May Altar in Ireland, – Religious imagery of Mary as Queen of May, work of artist Clare O Hagan.’   I found the image on https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Queen. 

LINK TO AVALONIAN ROSE FAERY MYSTERIES PATREON: patreon.com/AvalonianRoseFaeryMysteries

Further Reading

• The Mabinogion translated by Sioned Davies
• Arthurian Romances by Chretien de Troyes
• Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory
• The Irish Queen Medb: History, Tradition, and Modern Pagan Practice by Lora O’Brien 
• The Sacred Sex Rites of Ishtar by Annie Dieu-Le-Veut