On Being Holy When There Are No Kings But the Oak!

(The Wyld Fire Beltane Hunt features an activity prior to our Beltane ritual, where participants who identify as Hunters (active, seeking energy) chase after the participants who identify as Holies (representing receptive, life-generating energy) in search of one Holy who is secretly our Queen of May. Hunters must answer riddles and undergo trials and tribulations in their search, and the one Hunter who "captures" the May Queen is crowned the Oak King. The following is a first-person perspective from our 2025 May Queen.)

"I have run [as a] holy for five years. I hunted once, and braved the chase. But what I really yearn for at Beltane is to hold a riddle and conspire with my comrades to keep it sacred, to scamper through the woods with a secret. 

To choose the role of the Holy in our Beltane Hunt is to choose choice itself. In the manner of true sovereignty, the Holies invoke the kind of intrinsic power that seeks to bestow. They represent the seeds of what will flourish, and the May Queen chosen by fate and will, their representative. 

There are many ways that a Wyld Fire Beltane Hunt can be run. I have seen May Queens joyfully discovered after a brief pursuit, and I have seen chases that tested the dedication of Hunters and made them despair of kingship entirely. That result is communally determined by the Holies, who can choose to employ their own clever tactics of subterfuge or to ease the way for their chosen and preferred. The emphasis should be placed on communally. Nothing Holy is solitary or detached. Being Holy is being connected, a conduit for power multiplied by the group. 

At the beginning of our sacred fire festival we burn away what we choose to let go. Some will throw their pain into the fire, honoring it before watching it curl into char. Some will use it to honor what was lost, or to create space to kindle a new desire. This year I plan to burn away the separation within me, any complacency with power hierarchies that act against our basic humanity, our actual source of sovereignty. The only power I can support is collective, born of seasons of interwoven growth. No kings but the Oak King!" 

Emily Schumacher

May Queen ‘25