The Bees, the Rain, and the Acorn: A Beltane Oracle Reading

May arrives and the world turns bright enough to feel like a spell: blossoms flare, the air smells green, and something in us starts to quicken. I’m Emily O’Neal, and I’m marking the Beltane May Day threshold as both a seasonal shift and a spiritual invitation. If you’ve been moving through life half-asleep to your own wonder, this is a gentle nudge back into the sensory world and into your own unique magic.

I pull three cards from my Elemental Wisdom Oracle Deck — create, cleanse, and seed — and let them guide a grounded, nature-based reflection on creativity, release, and patient growth. We linger with bees as living proof that “create” is not just hustle or solo brilliance: bees learn from each other, communicate, collaborate, and even play. From modern research to the old tradition of telling the bees, they become a symbol of community, witness, and building something sweet cell by cell.

Then we move to water and the cleanse message, borrowing from Celtic holy well lore and simple home rituals you can do anywhere. You’ll hear the exact blessing words I use, plus questions to help you name what you’ve been carrying into every room. Finally, the seed card brings us to the acorn and the oak: humble beginnings, long timelines, and the kind of spiritual practice that asks you to plant without proof and trust what you are becoming.

If this spoke to you, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs a spring reset, and leave a review. What are you creating, releasing, or planting right now?

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Transcript

Spring Shift Into Beltane

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Welcome to Blooming Wand, your home for grounded spiritual content. I'm Emily O'Neill, Evidential Psychic Medium, Intuitive Healer, and Mentor. And if you mark the seasonal shifts, you already know that we're well past the spring equinox. But there's another important shift that happens on May 1st, which some refer to as May Day and others Beltane. When May arrives, it's clear that the sun is gaining in strength and power, and the air has that green smell that only happens in late April and early May. The slumbering earth is bursting with fresh life, and flowers are everywhere. It's hard not to fall into hopeful dreams and fantasies when spring, in her full beauty, seduces the senses. Yesterday, as I was meditating on what I wanted to write here, or share with you here, rather, I sat in my front yard and watched his petals from the cherry tree floated on the wind, and they were illuminated by the sun, and it was just really beautiful. And it looked like pink petal fairy magic. That's the best way I can describe it. And filled with delight, I thought, maybe I'm magic too. And I took a moment to savor the divinity of the natural world, and I offered gratitude for the reminder that I too, like the floating pink petals, carry a unique and special magic. And for those of you that are with me right now, this is your reminder that you also carry a unique and special magic. And it might be a part of you that really awakens in the spring, that's delighted by the beauty of spring. It might be a part of you that's been slumbering through the winter and it's ready to emerge. Take some time to think about what's magic within you. And if you feel a sense of quickening or awakening within, that's similar to what's happening in the natural world. Maybe you do, maybe you don't, but it's just something to take notice of. And as I was sitting outside, I did let my eyes wander and I took in the brilliant shades of pink, orange, yellow, and red. And the colors were so intense that they practically vibrated and they looked almost neon. It's that fresh bloom that's so bright, it kind of stuns the eyes almost. And those plum will fade, um, as all beautiful things do, which is why I really tried to be present for that beauty. And I was and still am in awe of just the splendor of those blossoms. And as I sat in contemplation, birds were dancing and singing in the branches of the oak tree while rabbits hopped among dead and dried leaves that had fallen from last year, and a pair of eagles perched in a nearby tree, and as I gazed off in the distance, a heron crossed the sky. And even though I live in an urban area, I often feel I have access to a woodland wonderland. And it never ceases to amaze me that in places where there are many homes, many humans, lots of traffic, lots of roads, lots of cars, that nature still finds a way to thrive. And that made me reflect on myself and think, you know, maybe you're just as resilient as, you know, nature is, and maybe I'm learning to thrive in some new ways. And maybe you are too. Something to think about. So this really is, at least to me, a special time of year, and Celtic calendars mark this moment as a fire festival called Beltane. And this is a time when people celebrate the peak of spring and the return of life's full creative force. And not unlike Sawin or Halloween, the veil between worlds is said to be thin at Beltane. But where Sawin invites us inward, Beltane calls us out, into the light, into action, into the fullness of what wants to be born and what wants to bloom. And to honor this time, I pulled three cards from my elemental wisdom oracle deck. And let's dive into the messages that came forward. The three cards that we pulled are create, it's a fire card, it has bees on it. The second card we pulled was cleanse, it's a water card and it has water on it. And the third card is seed, it's an earth card and it has acorns on it. And we're gonna start with the create card. And the message on this card is birth new possibilities through inspired action. There's a lot more in the booklet that accompanies this Oracle deck, so don't forget, if you have the deck, to take a look inside the booklet. But I really like bees. I like working with bees, I like sitting with the bees and watching them, and I do feel like bees are really magical little creatures. And the bees on this card have been on my mind all week. So if you're listening, there are four bees together on this card on a piece of honeycomb, and their little heads are all together. So you can tell they're working hard and communing and communicating with one another. But bees in and of themselves are fascinating, but I've been thinking about bees and I was really happy to see this card come up because I recently watched National Geographic's Secrets of the Bees. I almost said The Secret Life of Bees, which is a book that I really, really love. If you haven't read it, I recommend it. But the documentary is Secrets of the Bees. It's streaming on Disney Plus and Hulu, and I'm still thinking about what I learned, and I learned a lot. Just when I thought I couldn't love bees anymore, I found there was so much more to love about these extraordinary creatures. Scientists used to believe that bees were essentially automatons, hardwired and mechanical. What researchers have since documented is something entirely different. Bees can recognize cause and effect. They engage in social learning, watching other bees and passing new behaviors through an entire colony. And what the documentary reveals, what the documentary reveals rather, was genuinely astounding. And I think that if you watch it, it will rearrange your understanding of bees. It'll definitely give you a deeper understanding of them. It might even delight you to learn how miraculous they are. Now, researchers have documented bumblebees playing with small wooden balls for no reason other than apparent enjoyment. So there's no food reward, no survival advantage, it's just play. And in Japan, honey bees have been observed collecting leaves and animal feces to smear around their hive entrance, masking the colony scent to deter predatory murder hornets. Mason bees carry branches many times their own body length to build intricate stick nests. And when a honeybee colony needs to relocate, scout bees perform a waggle dance to nominate potential new homes, and the swarm only moves once a majority has been reached. So these are not automatons, these are creative, collaborative beings. Now, in Celtic mythology, they believed that bees were a link between our world and the spirit world. And if you wanted to pass a message on to somebody who had died, you could do so by telling the bees, and they would carry the message onward. Now this gave rise to one of the most tender traditions in European folk history, telling the bees, across England, Ireland, Germany, probably Northwestern Europe and other places, and eventually into the New England area of the Americas or the United States and Appalachia, beekeepers shared every significant life event with their hives. So births, deaths, marriages, long journeys, anything, they would share it with their beehives. The beekeeper would approach the hive quietly, knock softly to get their attention, and murmur the news. Marriages were celebrated by decorating the hives and leaving out pieces of wedding cake so the bees could take part in the festivities. Deaths were marked by draping the hives in black cloth, and to skip telling the bees was considered a serious offense. And the bees might leave if you didn't tell them what was going on, they might stop producing honey, or they might die in grief. And as recently as 2022, when Queen Elizabeth II died, the royal beekeeper walked the grounds of Buckingham Palace and formally told the bees that their mistress was gone, tying black ribbons around each hive. In this tradition, the hive is family and the bees are witnesses. They are intermediaries between the living and the dead, between the visible world and the one just beyond it. They have access to that feeling and sensing realm that you can only know through your feeling and sensing self. The hive is not a machine. It's a community of intelligent, adaptive, creative beings, each one contributing to something larger than herself. The honeycomb they build together is one of nature's most elegant feats of architecture. The honey they make is the literal transformation of flower into sweetness. That's the energy of this create card. It's not solo genius, it's not forcing something into being, it's inspired, collective, purposeful action witnessed by the spirit world and built by many hands. And it's all an offering to something larger than any one of us. So what are you building right now, cell by cell? I also I I'm sorry, I got a little tongue-twisted, but I also want to offer to keep an eye out for the bees and when you see them, sit and watch them and see if you can let the bees inspire you. I have no doubt that they will. And I've come to realize this rain was probably something my ancestors would have recognized as special, as I know that some of them also experienced sort of rainy and drizzly spring times. And in the Celtic lands where Beltain was born, water was as much a part of the festival as fire was, and holy wells were visited for healing and blessing, and their waters were thought to be especially alive at this threshold time. So before sunrise, people would gather early morning dew to wash their face, and in doing so gain health and beauty for the year to come. And some of my own ancestors came from England and Scotland and northwestern Europe and even Germany, which means somewhere in my lineage, someone may have done this, washed their face with early morning dew for that blessing and maybe even to wash away what weighed upon their spirit. So they may have even walked to a well on a May morning and cupped their hands in the cold water and prayed. And I find this thought, these thoughts really comforting. And as I honor this special time of year, I feel the healed and wise ones from my lineage drawing near. And I like to think about what they might have done in their own time to celebrate this threshold. Now you don't need a holy well to cultivate a ritual to honor this sacred time. Try this: pour water into a bowl, visit a bird bath or a creek, dip your fingers into its coolness. You can even do this at your faucet, you can do this when you're taking a bath or a shower. Just really connect with the water and remember that water is alive and it's the giver of all life. It has the power to cleanse your heart and spirit without requiring that you understand exactly how that works. You don't need to understand, you can just set the intention that when you're working with the water, that it wash away what weighs upon your spirit. But if you do want to have a little ritual, dip your fingers into the water and bless yourself and bless the world around you, and place your damp fingers upon your brow and speak these words. Let my heart be light and bright, and so it is. My grandmother Rosa May was born on May 1st, and so May Day has always carried a particular tenderness for me. As children, my sisters and I would gather dandelions and whatever wildflowers we could find, ring a neighbor's doorbell, place the bouquet at their threshold, and run, leaving the flowers behind as an anonymous gift. We didn't know we were practicing anything ancient or really special. We just knew it felt right to mark the day in some special way. Cleanse asks, what have you been lugging into every room? What story, what grief, what resentment, what old version of yourself is still taking up space that's ready to move on? Can you let the cleansing power of water wash away all those things without needing to understand how the magic might work? Our next card is seed, and it has two green acorns, not brown ones, two green acorns on it with a nice green leafy background. It has the message written on it plant seeds of beautiful new beginnings. And so if you're looking at the card or thinking about an acorn, I want you to think of an acorn and really look at it in your mind's eye, or if you're reading this or seeing this, look at this little acorn. It's rather unremarkable, and yet folded inside it is the entire mystery of one of the most sacred trees in human history. A tree that can live for centuries, it can shelter whole ecosystems and outlive lots of people that ever stood underneath it. It can outlive us humans. Some scholars trace the word druid to the Celtic root word dru or oak combined with wid, which means to know, giving us something like knower of the oak, which means the oak is not just a tree, but a whole way of understanding the world. The Druids considered the oak the embodiment of the Dogda, the god of wisdom, healing, and fertility. And in the turning of the Celtic year, the oak king rules the light half, making Beltane the very peak of his power. And so this is his time and his season. While the rest of the garden is kind of already showing off with these miraculous, miraculous blooms, the tulips are starting to fade away, the herbs are starting to rush upwards toward the sky, and the first vegetables are pressing through rich soil. But the oak is doing something different. It's beginning to form its acorns. In fact, it's just put out its fresh green leaves. And the oak's particular gift of the acorn is it's a small, humble thing that most people just walk right past and don't think about. But it's edible, nourishing. It's carried through history as food for animals and humans alike. And like I said, one oak tree can sustain an entire ecosystem. It's if you look into it, it's it's quite miraculous. And if that little acorn finds the right conditions, the right depth of soil, and the right season of rain, it will become something that outlives everyone alive today, as long as nobody cuts that tree down. And where I live, you cannot cut oak trees down. So that's a good thing. Here in the Pacific Northwest, the oaks are just pushing out of, they're just pushing out their very, very first tender leaves. And the acorns are quite a ways away, several weeks away. But by midsummer, the branches will be heavy and full, and by autumn they'll be letting go, dropping the future, those brown acorns down to the earth one at a time. So we're at the very beginning of this arc of the oak trees kind of ripening. And this is the invitation of the seed card. Not everything worth planting will bloom this season or next season, or maybe even in your lifetime. And some of the most meaningful things we do are slow. They ask us to act without proof, to put something in the ground before we can see what it will become. And we have to remember that good things come to those who tend with patience. So what seed are you holding right now within yourself, or what idea, or what promise that looks like nothing yet? And what are you being asked to plant before you can see what it will become? Now, if you're feeling the pull towards oracle cards or looking for a daily practice to support your self-care and spiritual practices, the Blooming Wand Elemental Wisdom Oracle deck is available now. It's 52 cards, five elements, it's sustainably printed and crafted. That was really important to me. It's small batch, independently published, made with love, and made for exactly these kinds of times. So you can get that at BloomingWand.com. And for those of you that already have the deck in your hands, thank you so much. Genuinely, every person who works with these cards and brings their own meaning to them is part of what makes our little blooming wand ecosystem alive and special. You're not just a customer, you are a co-creator of what Blooming Wand is becoming. And I'd love to know what cards you've been pulling lately. You can take a pick and send them to me at emily at bloomingwand.com and let me know how you feel about the card and what has come up for you as you worked with it. And I want to leave you with an affirmation to work with and a poem that was it's an old poem, but I've reworked it after being inspired through my own self-care and spiritual practices at this sort of May Day threshold. But I I have an affirmation for you. You can use it to with your own rituals and self-care practices, but I would invite you to speak it out loud if you can. Put it, write it on a piece of paper, put it on your altar. There really is something special about saying a thing out loud and sort of honoring an affirmation as we move through this threshold time. It might work a little magic on you. I don't know. So here's your affirmation. Like the bee, I build with purpose. Like the rain, I release with ease. And like the acorn, I trust what I am becoming. So happy Mayday and happy beltane. And I hope that the fire is generous with you this season, that wonderful, energetic fire energy that comes around the Beltane time. And here is this poem. I've titled it How to Answer, and it's about this moment of watching the birds. I've been doing a lot of bird watching. If you know me, that's nothing new. But in the mornings, I lay in bed with the window open and listen as they awaken with the rising sun. And as the sun crosses over the sky, the landscape skyline, the birds are really loud and they sing and they sing and they sing and they're so happy. And this is sort of inspired by that, and it's called How to Answer Trickling Through the Open Window, bird song tickles my ears. Please sing back to me. A bubbling brook of sound. Please sing back to me. Hearing their prayer, I tilt my head skyward and return the call. But no round or rolling note comes from my ill tuned human throat. A sound more frog than bird scatters on the air. And I begin to realize I begin to laugh as I realize the birds don't really care. They tilt their heads and carry on, just delighted that I'm there. Please sing back to me. I let myself dissolve into the birdland babble. Joined in joyful chorus, my voice expands and opens, and I see myself as I see them, soft and brown and singing a round and rolling tune. Sing to me, sing to me. Sing to me, sing to me. To answer the prayer of the birds is not to sing as they do, just join your voice with theirs. Give them the squeak, the croak, the broken note, and in that answering all are uplifted. So get those journals out, take good care of yourselves, and I'll see you soon.