Burnt Offerings and Burnt Toast: A Beltane Prep Meltdown

Diary Entry – April 21, 2025

Let me start by saying this: Beltane is supposed to be sexy.

Fire. Fertility. Passion. Earth’s renewal.

Instead, I’m here standing in the kitchen wearing a vintage lace robe I found in a bin marked “lingerie and sadness,” a charcoal face mask that makes me look like a soot-covered raccoon, and holding a bundle of herbs I just yanked out of the toaster oven because I forgot them. Again.

The smoke alarm goes off. Again.

My grandson—Rowan, age eleven, neurospicy and deeply suspicious of anything that smells like patchouli—bursts into the kitchen holding the fire extinguisher he’s labeled “MOM 2.0.”

“Is it another potion accident or just dinner?” he asks without blinking.

I wave the singed herbs like a smudge stick and tell him it’s Beltane prep.
He stares at me like I just told him the dog’s a reincarnated wizard.
“Is that the fire sex holiday?”

That’s when my granddaughter, Wren—twelve, alarmingly literal, and always documenting chaos on her phone—snorts and mutters, “Yikes.”

Meanwhile, the dog (who I’m fairly certain is part-wolf, part-contractor) starts howling at the smoke alarm in solidarity. My husband, decked out in boxer briefs and confidence, stumbles in with one eyebrow raised. His grin is infuriatingly charming.
“I’m summoning passion,” I hiss.
He eyes the smoke. “Looks like you summoned the fire department.”

I throw a slipper at him. He dodges it with the reflexes of a man who’s been married to me for twenty-eight years and still thinks it’s funny when I threaten to hex his pillow.

The Beltane altar was supposed to be simple. Romantic. Maybe even sacred.
I was going to arrange rose petals around a crystal grid, light sensual candles, chant something vaguely Celtic, and maybe do a little intention-setting (aka witchy foreplay). Instead, I’m dodging kids, extinguishing flaming herbs, and getting judgmental texts from my mother—who believes Beltane is part of a Druidic Illuminati plot to control the weather.

Her latest message reads:
“You know what else involves naked dancing and chanting? CULTS. Also, don’t trust goats.”

Thank you, Mother.

Anyway, I tried to make the altar work.
I put out my best obsidian, even though Wren uses it as a paperweight for her comics. I added cinnamon and honey—until I realized Rowan had replaced the honey with slime in a mason jar. And I tried to wear my sensual priestess robe until the lace snagged on the dog and we both fell down the stairs.

By that point, the house smelled like a smudge stick got into a fight with a toaster, my face mask had cracked into a creepy haunted-doll smile, and my “passion” spell candle had melted sideways like it was trying to escape.

So I gave up.

I put the kids to bed (after promising no more fire rituals near bedtime).
I poured myself a glass of cheap rosé, threw on sweatpants, and stood in the hallway with a single tea light flickering on the floor.
And for one brief moment—amid the mess and the noise and the leftover chaos—I felt it.

The fire.

Not the literal one, for once.
The spark.
The part of me that still believes in magic, even when it’s covered in slime and smells faintly of regret.

So no, this year’s Beltane wasn’t sexy or sacred or even fully fire-safe.
But it was mine. Messy. Real. Imperfect. Sacred in spite of itself.

And if you, like me, are out here trying to manifest something while holding a cup of lukewarm tea and a half-burned herb bundle—you’re not alone.

Just maybe keep the extinguisher nearby.
And never underestimate the power of ritual chaos to turn a burnt offering into a breakthrough.

💜 Everlie