We celebrate Beltane tomorrow, but it was traditional to burn all worn-out household items such as brooms, cloths, and wooden implements in the Walpurgis Night fires on 30th April. Life-size (or smaller) strawmen were made and ‘loaded’ with the ill-health and ill-luck of the past, then burned in the fires on Walpurgisnacht. This is the forcible casting-out of winter, illness and that which is worn out, so the May-King and May-Queen and their green-bedecked and licentious troops, can bring in the fertility of crops, beasts and mankind.

Prepare a figure of paper or straw, and load it with worn out items to represent the old season, and things you wish to be rid of to be burned on the bonfire or brazier. (If you can’t do this, take an old piece of paper, perhaps something on which you have written old ideas and things you no longer believe n. Write on it other things you wish to be rid of, and this can be burned in a candle flame.) Say:

I cast out winter, I cast out illness, I cast out ill luck, I cast out all that has passed its time. Let it be gone, so I may greet the summer anew.

© Anna Franklin, from the forthcoming Hearth Witch’s Ritual Year, Llewellyn, 2021