May Day is not Beltane.

[kengr]

May Day is the first of May. Beltane is the point when the sun is halfway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice.

Beltane won't be until the 4th or 5th of may this year, depending on what time zone you are in.

See the archaeoastronomy website for the exact date time of all 8 sun feasts.

Comments

[griffen.livejournal.com]

Oh, don't be such a poop. Beltane is April 30-May 1 for me, always.


*smiles*

[kengr]

Yeah, but consider this:

Beltane is 3:55 am May 5th.

The Full Moon is 1:36 pm on May 4th.

Both times PDT.

Given that the Fuill Moon and Beltane are so close together, I'd say that using the night of the 4th/5th would be a good idea. :-)

Yer prolly right, but...

[lolleeroberts.livejournal.com]

As Mulder says to Scully when she complains that the Millenium isn't until January 1, 2001 - "No one likes a math geek, Scully."

[morgan-gw.livejournal.com]

That's interesting. I've been using my astrology program for years to find the actual cross-quarter dates, and I have 15 deg. Taurus as today (May 4) at 8:50 pm PDT (which is the 5th if you're at GMT). Between that and the Full Moon at 1:33 today, we celebrated Beltane Eve last night :-).

Of course, we would have also celebrated on the more traditional date as well, if other things (school field trips and SCA events) hadn't tired us out.

If anyone wants to see what Astrolog gives for cross quarters, I have a table at http://silver-gateway.com/grove/index.html. I don't bother with the quarters -- solstice and equinox info is easy to find.

Another thought

[morgan-gw.livejournal.com]

For some cross-quarters, I'll go with the astronomical date/time. But for others, using the "conventional" date can be better, because you're tapping into the combined energy of everyone else who's celebrating :-).

For Samhain, for example, we'll do open/public/family rituals on Oct. 31, and then something more private on Nov. 6/7 (whenever 15 deg. Scorpio falls).

A couple of other points: I know my FM time is a bit different from yours; my source was the (print) Old Farmer's Almanac. And to add to the magickal energy, there's a lunar eclipse today, too -- just not visible from the USofA and Canada.

[kengr]

Well, I got that info from the web site I listed. But I just ran the date/time thru an astronomy program I have and got a solar longitude of 45°0.0' for May 5, at 4:06 am PDT. that's a whole 9 minute difference from the web site, but may hours difference from your program.

At 8:50 PDT today, the sun is at 44°20.3' according to my program.

I'm to lazy to dig out the calculator and the book to figure it "by hand".

Re: Yer prolly right, but...

[kengr]

And my reply is "That's *calendar* geek."

http://www.tondering.dk/claus/calendar.html