Beltane | Pleasure, Fire & the Window of Tolerance for Joy | S2 Ep.7

Scorpio Full Moon May 1st 2026 | Psychology of Joy | Celtic Wheel of the Year and Beltane

Beltane is supposed to feel good, so why do so many of us flinch at pleasure the moment it arrives? I’m taking you into the fire festival of May Day as a real-world initiation: not just flowers and candles, but the raw nervous system truth of joy, desire, and what we do when life starts to open.

We start with the astrology of Beltane and why it matters. A Scorpio full moon opposite the Taurus sun asks for release so the body can actually receive spring’s fullness. Venus in Gemini sextile Saturn in Aries highlights relationships built on integrity rather than charm, plus the kind of self-love you can live for the long haul. Mercury conjunct Chiron in Aries brings a brave invitation to say the true thing, especially around identity, visibility, and self-assertion.

Then we ground the mythic in the practical: Beltane’s sacred fire, the May Queen and the Green Man as sovereign union, and fairy lore as a surprisingly modern warning about numbing out. From somatic therapy and polyvagal theory, we explore the window of tolerance for joy and why bliss can trigger collapse, guilt, bracing, or self-sabotage. You’ll leave with simple practices that expand capacity gently, including “glimmers,” plus Beltane rituals for intentions rooted in what you actually want.

If you’re ready to feel more alive without micromanaging the fire, press play, subscribe, share this with a friend who needs more pleasure, and leave a review so more people can find the work.

Transcript

Welcome To Priestess Initiations

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Priestess Initiations, the Goddess Coven. I'm Casey Dunn, educator, priestess, and professional somatic therapist. In April 2025, I went through a Priestess Initiation of Old and launched the Priestess Initiations podcast six months later. Whatever brought you here today, I invite you to drop into the spiral with me. Let's begin. Welcome back to Priestess Initiations, the Goddess Coven. I'm Casey, and this week we're talking about Beltane. For those of you that don't know, Beltane is sometimes called May Day. And it is Friday, May 1st. It's always May 1st, but this year it's Friday, May 1st. And Beltane is the fire festival, the peak of spring, the moment when the earth tips into fullness. And I was spending this morning gardening. Um we are lucky enough to have a patio, and so I was planting my little herbs for the summer this morning. And that is so fulfilling, so perfect for this week of Beltane. And it's a little early, I know I'm in Colorado, but I couldn't help myself, and I'll bring them inside if I need to. So Beltane is when the wheel of the year is turning toward the light. And this episode is holding a bit of a paradox. So Beltane is the festival of pleasure, of fire, of sacred union. And yet in my work, I've I've come to realize again and again, this is my personal work, but also my work, um my work as a therapist. So many of us have a really complicated relationship with joy, with pleasure, with fire, with staying in the good and letting joy actually land in the body. So that paradox is the teaching this episode, and that's where we're going today. Um but before we get there, I of course want to give us a brief orientation to the astrology of the week. Um, and actually, it's not even the astrology of the week because we have so many transits this week that are great. And three of them fall on Beltane itself. So I'm giving you the astrology of Beltane. So this Beltane is landing in one of the most mythically charged full moons of the year. And so the full moon on Beltane, Friday, May 1st, is at 11:23 a.m. mountain time, and that is in Scorpio. So it's a full moon in Scorpio on Beltane. Scorpio is sometimes called the fire sign of the water signs because there's so much passion in there. Um, as a Scorpio myself, I definitely relate to that. And so this Beltane, the full moon in Scorpio, it's the sign of death, the sign of rebirth, and it's exactly opposite the Taurus sun, right? So that means the sun is in Taurus, it's always in Taurus, but for Beltane, I should say, but it's a it's directly opposite it. And this is cool because the moon and the sun have very different transit systems, so they don't always line up this way. But when you do a birth chart, when you do an astrology wheel, you'll start to notice that there are signs that are exactly opposite each other. Scorpio and Taurus are exactly opposite each other. And what that means is that this is special. This is a special moment. Beltane is the festival of blazing, of embodied aliveness, and Scorpio is the sign of depth transformation. So, what we're being asked here is to really look at what is it that we need to release, what do we need to transform to actually access and feel the full aliveness of Beltane? What fears, what armor, what ways of keeping ourselves small or hidden are being called into the sacred fire? This is the moon asking you to surrender. What is blocking your most authentic, fierce, embodied self? And something cool is also happening with Venus, and Venus' home sign is Taurus. Um, but Venus has entered Gemini, and so Venus on Friday, May 1st, again, and this time it's at um 12 45 p.m. So just you know, a little over an hour after the full moon peaks, Venus is going to be sextile Saturn. And so that means that Venus and Gemini is opening a harmonious, stabilizing current with Saturn and Aries. You can think of this as the lover and the teacher in conversation, grounding our connections and our creative expressions in genuine integrity and long-term discernment rather than fleeting charm or performance. So on Beltane, this is the sky blessing, real union, union in self, union between your inner divine masculine, divine feminine, union in self between what have you learned about self-love? How are you embodying it? Um, what are you ready to maybe teach about self-love? And the sky is blessing that over surface level relationships, right? So the relationships and desires that are harmonious are gonna be really blessed, this belting. The ones that are built on something true. And a third cool thing is happening on Friday, May 1st. And this one's at 2.08 p.m. mountain time. And so a few, again, just a little over an hour. It's not even a few full hours, it's just a little over an hour after Venus is sexile Saturn. Mercury is going to be conjunct Chiron and Aries. So Mercury is the messenger, right? And Chiron is the wounded healer. So this is the messenger, meaning the sacred wound in the sign of Aries, which is identity, self-assertion. This is a powerful threshold for healing through honest speech, for saying the true thing that you've been too afraid to voice. So on the same day as the full moon, the same day as Beltane, this is the sky weaving the sacred wound directly into the moment of release. What needs to be spoken into the fire? So the through line through all of these three major transits, cascading through Beltane on Friday, is the full moon calling release? Venus and Saturn bless what is real, and then Mercury and Chiron ask for honesty. And that's honesty in identity, right? Like, who are you? Who are you who are you identifying as now after this crazy alchemical cauldron of transformation we just went through with the year of the snake and the beginning of the year of the fire horse has been a lot. Um, there's still been a lot of shedding, there's been a lot of wild astrology. So there's this ask of like, who are you now? Right? And what's real is gonna get blessed. As long as you're releasing what needs to be released. And it's so cool when the the calendar of the earth, right? You can think of the wheel of the year kind of as the earth's calendar, and astrology kind of as the sky's calendar. And right now they're speaking the same language this week, which is so cool. And they're both asking, what are you ready to surrender to the fire? What desires are you ready to actually claim? So I want to start with a little more about Beltane. Um, and Beltane means bright fire or the fires of Bell. And it's named for the Celtic sun deity Bell or Bellanos. And like I said, it's one of the four great um festivals of the Celtic Wheel of the Year. There's Imbulk, Beltane, Lunasa, and Sawin. And Beltane's celebrated on May 1st every year. It's the cross-quarter day between spring equinox and summer solstice. So it's the earth's peak fertility, is what we what we like to call it. So if you haven't done your planting and you've been waiting for May 1st, it's a great day to do that. The sacred fire is a big part of Beltane. And so in Celtic tradition, all household fires were extinguished and relit from the Beltane bonfire. The new fire was a new beginning. And if you remember back to our episodes on um Hestia and Vesta, the sacred flamekeeper goddesses, they're Greek and Roman, but there's actually a lot of overlap here. Both of them were the keepers of the hearth, and the fire was kept all year long. And then once a year the fires were extinguished and relit. And so in Celtic tradition, that has carried over as Beltane. And I shouldn't say carried over, they're separate traditions, but I love that there's a parallel there. Another cool thing that happens on Beltane is the cattle. So cattle were driven between two fires for protection and blessing. The idea of this is that everything is cleansed, renewed, and reignited. And then the May Queen, you may have heard of, and the Green Mayan, um, which you may have not heard of, but they are associated with Beltane. They're two Celtic archetypes that represent the sacred feminine and the divine masculine. And Beltane is a day of sacred union for the May Queen and the Green Man. It's the fertile earth and the wild green world coming together. It's not romantic in the modern sense, it's cosmic, it's more cosmic. It's the land choosing its consort, it's sovereignty enacted through sacred union. And all of this to say, the May Queen is also sometimes related to fairies, to fairy lore. There's a lot of that that comes up around Beltane. Because, like Sawin, Beltane is a threshold in time when the veil is thin. And so the other world is permeable. It's a time for magic, for ritual, for what lives just beyond the ordinary to make itself known. Um, traditional fire festivals sometimes have a may pole. You might have heard of those. Um, people dance around them and carry ribbons, and they weave ribbons around the pole in the center of the community. Um there's also lore around fairy circles. And some of this has to do with the May Queen choosing its consort, right? The May Queen and the Green Man. Um there's also a lot of fairy lore around Beltane of being careful with the food and beverage you consume, which you know is always funny to me because there's there's this truth that what we consume can dull our senses. And so when you drink fairy wine, supposedly, you know, you're in joy and you dance and you dance and you dance until you're dead. To me, um, with the background in psychology, that's a that's a warning about addiction. And also wine and substances are known as spirits, right? And so there's this idea that they help you connect to the other world. And I want to challenge that. I want to challenge that idea. Um because what I have found is that the most spiritually connected people are able to deeply connect to land and earth the most when they are consuming and living in harmony with earth, right? So it's less about consuming a substance, a mind-altering substance, and more about are you living harmoniously with earth? Where are you actually getting your fruits and vegetables? Are you getting them from the farmer's market if you can? Are you um growing yourself if you can? I know not all of this is possible given our systems and institutions. And when we're talking about Beltane, there is this ask of how are you going to be closer to the earth this year? How are you going to come more into right sacred relationship with the fertile earth? And in doing so, that allows you to be more fully alive. It allows you to dance with the fairies, but not get so caught up that you drink and dance until you die. Um, you can avoid the the fairy lore um issues. But Beltane is really asking, right? Like, can you be fully alive? Can you be fully alive and present in yourself? And that's partly why I'm bringing substances in here because many people feel that's the only way they can. And can you be fully alive and present in yourself? If you can't, if you need, you know, a little wine or something to access your joy, that's simply reflective of your window of tolerance for joy. It's simply reflective of our society that we live in. And it's something that maybe you can challenge yourself to work through this beltane. Can you feel full aliveness? Sober? Can you let the fire move through you without micromanaging it? And so in psychology, we talk about the window of tolerance, right? Um, the window of tolerance comes primarily from somatic psychology and polyvagal theory, and it's describing the range of activation within which we can function, feel, and be present without either shutting down or flooding. And so, what does that mean? So, when we're talking about window of tolerance, usually most people are primarily familiar with their window of tolerance for fear or anger. Those are the two that people tend to relate to. And so your window of tolerance, if you think about, you know, a time when you are in traffic. You're stuck in traffic and someone cuts you off, right? And your whole body reacts. Maybe it reacts with fear, maybe it reacts with anger. But you get sent out of the present moment. You are unable to stay fully present most of the time. If you're awesome and you are able to stay fully present, imagine it's like a semi-truck that cuts you off, right? Something where you're like nervous system, you feel it. You feel yourself kind of get thrown out of the present moment. That is you experiencing anxiety, right? That's the upper edge of your window of tolerance. You're getting thrown out through the upper edge. Now, alternately, we go into the lower edge sometimes, which is where freeze lives. And so most trauma work focuses on expanding your window of tolerance, kind of expanding these edges, whether it's the edge of hyper-arousal up at the top, where you know you're getting flooded, where emotions are too overwhelming and they start to explode out of you, or whether it's kind of the lower edge where you go into freeze, you go into collapse, you dissociate, right? And so we we think about this a lot in trauma work, and we we practice this with depression, right? Um, trying to avoid that dissociative state on the lower edge of the window of tolerance. We practice this with anxiety, trying to avoid getting too far into that hyper-arousal, that upper edge. But positive emotions, joy, pleasure, excitement, bliss, can also take us outside of our window of tolerance. And not many people know this. But when you think about joy for a moment, think about a time when you were with your friends, maybe you were so overwhelmed with joy that you either had to leave, or you just burst over in laughter, right? Maybe you were a kid. This might not happen as much as an adult. As an adult, most of us shut down. Most of us go into collapse when we hit too much joy. But as kids, um, I remember a story with this. So I was um, we were my family was visiting my cousins, and we were in Costa Rica, and we were in this like eight-hour car ride. I was like delirious. And my cousin, he's he's a he's a funny guy, and he just kept saying the word pudding. And he just said it in like a hundred different accents in a hundred different ways. And I started laughing. I was exhausted. We know we'd been on the plane for a while. And then I just was laughing so hard I couldn't stop, right? To the point where it actually became somewhat scary. I don't know if anyone's ever laughed that hard. You know what I'm talking about. And on the other side of that laughter, when it finally did stop, I collapsed, right? My nervous system just shut down, and I conked out for the rest of that eight-hour car ride. I'm telling you this story because it's a good example. And a lot of us can relate to being a kid and feeling more joy. And a lot of us look back in our childhood and think, wow, I, you know, I had the ability to feel joy then. Where did it go? Well, you learned that you have to hold it together. You know, that you can't laugh so hard you pee yourself at Disney World by the time you hit 13, right? What's acceptable for a five-year-old and a 13-year-old is different. And so we socially trade out some of our upper edge of the window of tolerance for joy. And this is where substances come back in. Because when you start, you know, when you go to, you know, high school, college, when people in friend groups start consuming substances, many people realize that that's now a socially acceptable setting where they are allowed to express high levels of joy. The alcohol or whatever the substance is gives you an excuse. And it through that excuse, you let your social guard down. It takes practice to start doing this as an adult without substances. It's one of the reasons I love ecstatic dance, because ecstatic dance is a cyberspace, and everyone there is giving each other social permission to be in big joy. And so I want you to think about for yourself: where in your life do you numb out at the moment of pleasure? Where in your life do you feel it's not socially acceptable for you to feel joy? This is often like one of the first barriers. And it's one of the easier barriers to work with. What would happen if you gave yourself permission to be authentic in those spaces? It might feel scary, but when you give yourself permission to feel joy as an adult, you give others permission too. Right. And then something else I want to talk about is a little bit more on the trauma side. So this is, you know, when we're talking about wind of tolerance, and the nervous system doesn't distinguish between good overwhelm and bad overwhelm. It just registers that this is more than I know how to hold. So in life, what this looks like is collapsing after peak experiences, right? The joy hangover that I talked about in the car. But it's also feeling guilty when things are going well. It might be bracing against good news.

unknown 25:32

Right?

Ancestral Scarcity And Daily Glimmers

Rituals For Beltane Desire And Sovereignty

Guided Practice To Let Joy Land

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Have you ever caught yourself and you're bracing against good news? Waiting for the other shoe to drop, right? Sometimes we'll call this self-sabotage. We'll colloquially call it self-sabotage, right? That's when you're kind of compulsively create conflict when things feel too good. A lot of people do this in relationship. It's like things are going too well. That's not tolerable to the nervous system. It's too scary. And the way to work with this is just to start noticing when you do it. And you can work with a you know trauma-informed therapist to really deep dive into what's underneath that, to the fears that are underneath that. But right now, it's just starting to notice in your life where are you numbing out? Where are you waiting for the other shoe to drop? Where are you bracing against joy? And so this comes from polyvagal theory. And polyvagal theory, briefly, is the ventral vagal state as the physiological ground of genuine safety, connection, and joy. That's a lot of words. But essentially, there's a state in which we are able to feel genuine safety, connection, and joy. And many of us were not taught to live there. We were not modeled sustained joy. We learned that good things end, that pleasure is dangerous, and that visibility invites harm. This is not a personal failure. This is the nervous system doing exactly what it learned to do. And the window of tolerance can be widened, widened. Sorry, widened. Slowly, somatically, with practice and intention. And so that's what we're talking about today. And there's also an intergenerational thread that I want to name, especially because we're in our Celtic arc. But, you know, whether you have Celtic ancestry or not, many of us experience intergenerational trauma. And there's something called on Girta Mor, which is the great hunger scarcity as body memory. And so many Celtic descended people carry an ancestral relationship to pleasure being dangerous or short-lived. Joy was something that could be taken, and abundance was something that ended. So the body learned don't get too comfortable in the good. And that still lives in me, right? I have given myself permission to feel joy in public spaces, and I do, and I laugh, and I dance, and I play a lot more than I used to. And there are still times when I find myself bracing against abundance. And it's the hardest part of manifesting what you want when you want joy, when you want pleasure, when you want to feel safe. And yet you find your nervous system bracing against actually having that. And so this week I challenge you, one, to notice where you're bracing, and two, to give yourself permission, especially in social settings, to giggle. Giggle at something like a child. Let joy come in. And one of the best practices for widening your window of tolerance for joy is an exercise called glimmers. It's noticing the glimmers, we call them. And I love that word. It's so magical. And it also sounds like, you know, seeing across the fairy veil. But a glimmer is a small micro moment of joy. And so this might be going on your daily walk and noticing that there's a new flower in bloom. It might be waking up and realizing that your partner or your roommate already brewed the coffee and you smell it. It's something little, something simple. And the goal this week, the invitation I have for you, especially between, you know, when this episode drops in Beltain, is to notice a glimmer every day. And if that's too easy, notice a glimmer every hour. Every hour. What is one microman of joy in my life right now? And in doing this, we start to build our window of tolerance for joy. We start to become more familiar with allowing joy to exist. And so on that note, some invitations to celebrate Beltane this week. In Colorado, you cannot light a bonfire right now, but if you're outside of Colorado listening to this, you might be able to. So light a bonfire if you have access. And if you don't, a candle, a nice, contained, safe flame. The fire is the ritual. It doesn't have to be elaborate, right? And make a May altar. And so a May altar can be made anywhere. It can be made on your living room table. It can be made outside. But a May altar should contain flowers, especially wildflowers, green things, anything that represents the aliveness of the earth right now. May altars often contain ribbons, especially in red and white. Those are traditional beltane colors for fire and purity. Passion and new beginning. If you don't have those ribbons, maybe that's your candle colors. You could have a red candle and a white candle. Your red candle is calling in fire and passion, and your white candle is calling in purity and new beginnings. And be go like be sure to go outside. Like go outside. I know I say that every episode, but there's something really important that we're reclaiming right now. That part of my work, I feel, is to spread the reclamation of. Eat it slowly. Let it land. And the next piece might feel scary, but I invite you to dance. You can dance alone. You can put on music that you love. You can dance with a partner. You can dance with friends. You can find an ecstatic dance near you if you've never been. Beltane's a great time to go. Letting movement be the fire activation. Letting dance create that sense of aliveness in your body. And as you light your candles, name what you're calling in, right? Beltane is a threshold for intentions rooted in desire. It's not about what you should want, it's about what you actually want. So write it down, say it out loud, and then think about what holds you back from that. And this isn't necessarily about external circumstances. This is about what internally holds you back from that. Write that down too and burn it in your flame. And the last piece for all of us, right? Tend to yourself. Belatane sovereignty means knowing your own desire. And if you have a partner, tend to each other. Be present, attentive, caring. The sacred union of Beltane is about two sovereign beings choosing each other consciously. That's the ritual. And so for our closing practice today, we're going to work a little bit on widening the window of tolerance for joy. And this is a little bit more of a meditative practice, right? Because I cannot do therapy over a podcast. It's literally not possible. I'm um, and even if it was, I wouldn't. But I invite you to just start by finding a comfortable position, feet on the floor or lying down. And taking this little meditative practice as feels good for your nervous system. And so when you're ready, when your body feels comfy, think of something genuinely good in your life right now. Not a problem to solve, our brains love to fixate on that. Think of something that's actually working, actually beautiful, actually right. It can be small, it can be a glimmer. Or it can be big. But notice what happens when you're when you let it in. Notice what happens in your body when you actually start to feel the good. Does your chest tighten? Maybe your breath gets shorter. Do you immediately move to thinking about what could go wrong? That contraction you're feeling, that is the window's edge, the edge of your window of tolerance for joy. It's not failure, it's information. And now if you feel up to it, I invite you to breathe into it. Not forcing the joy to be bigger, just making a little more room for what you're already feeling to exist. Just imagining the edges of your window softening slightly. Like a muscle relaxing. Just a little more capacity, a little more permission to stay with the good thing for a few breaths.

SPEAKER_01 38:29

Breathe in and out.

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If your mind moves to worry or doubt, being gentle with yourself and just seeing if you can return. If you can return to feeling the good.

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Just for one more breath.

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This is the practice. It's not a one-time event. It's a slow, patient widening. Like roots finding water. Like the earth moving toward the light.

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So take a breath and feel your body.

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The aliveness of it. Your heartbeat, your warmth, the fact that you are here in a body on this earth in this season. And let yourself bring to mind one thing that you'd like to call in this Bell Tane. Not what you should want, what you actually desire beneath the performance and the permission seeking. Name one thing you truly want to call in. Say it aloud. To the season, to the earth, to whatever is listening. Maybe it's your cat. Then sit for a moment and just let yourself feel even a flicker of what it would actually feel like to receive that. To let the good thing land.

Subscribe And Mental Health Disclaimer

SPEAKER_01 40:55

I am allowed to feel this. The fire in me is sacred. Subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss an episode.

SPEAKER_00 41:16

Trust the spiral. This podcast offers spiritual and psychological education and priestess wisdom. This is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment. If you need mental health support, please contact a licensed provider and in a mental health emergency in the U.S., call 988.