May day celebrations in Britain, particularly in the West Country, are notably pagan in their aesthetics. This documentary looks at one such celebration in Cornwall and one in Devon. Each very different but clearly both containing rites of pagan origin.
https://youtu.be/TQfMoAxaNkU

"Nei, zer is no vay diss cud be used as a veapon. zee shaft is too long and ze head far too heavy for a man to vield in dis vay"

"hold my beer"

Born in the 17th century, the man dubbed the saviour of Stonehenge, who first realised its solstice alignment, an early archaeologist who preserved and documented many of Britain’s Neolithic megalithic monuments, correctly realised they were pre-Roman and led some of the first proper excavations of Indo-European barrows. William Stukeley FRS FSA was an occultist, freemason LARPing as a druid!

Originally an Anglican clergyman, his antiquarianism led him to a career as a pioneering archaeologist. This fascination with the past cannot be separated from his unusual religious beliefs. He was a Freemason, influenced by Pythagoreanism and Neoplatonism. but believed that this was consistent with the beliefs of the ancient Druids who he thought had acquired the True Religion of monotheism from Phoenician traders in antiquity.

In 1722, he founded the Society of Roman Knights, devoted to the study of Roman era Britain. The Knights each took a name from the Celtic period, Stukeley's was "Chyndonax"

En route to Avebury in 1721, in the Kennet valley he felt the need of a geological map
“I have often wished that a map of soils was accurately made, promising to myself that such a curiosity would furnish us with some new notions of geography, and of the theory of the earth, which has only hitherto been made from hypotheses.” The greatness of his work is based on this tendency towards maps, plans and drawings as in the precision of his drawings of Stonehenge and Avebury.

WS correctly perceived that the innumerable barrows dotted about southern England were of pre-Roman origin by their situation in relation to the Roman roads, either jutting over them or by their lack of proximity to them. He also correctly attributed many of the southern hill forts to the earlier Belgics, rather than the Romans.
William Stukeley first travelled to Stonehenge in early summer of 1719 with Roger and Samuel Gale. He wrote at the time

“The Wiltshire downs, or Salisbury plain, (as commonly call,d) for extent and beauty, is, without controversy, one of the most delightful parts of Britain. But of late years great encroachments have been made upon it by the plough, which threatens the ruin of this fine Champlain, and all of the monuments of antiquity thereabouts...And however I succeed in accounting for these wonderful works: at least. I shall be instrumental in preserving their memory, in giving just drawings of them.” Stukelev's book 'Stonehenge A Temple Restor'd to the British Druids' was first published in 1740.

Stukeley spent many weeks in the next five years accurately measuring, observing and recording. He concluded that Stonehenge was not of Roman origin as others supposed but that the measurements, in cubits, suggested an earlier civilisation. He believed it was a Temple to the Ancient Druids, built by immigrants from the near east, possibly Phoenicians, who had entered this country by the Promontorium Herculaneum, Hartland Point.

His belief that Stonehenge was built c. 500 BC and that Phoenicians were involved was wrong, but indeed it was built by people originating in the Near East (Anatolia), more like 2500 BC, although they had nothing to do with Druids or Phoenicians. His guesswork is still very impressive based on the limited resources at his disposal. Stukeley's accurate drawings of Stonehenge are still used by archaeologists to this day.

Dr.Stukeley is best known as the first person to discover the alignment of the stones with the midsummer and midwinter solstices. He also named the group of two upright stones topped by a horizontal lintel as a 'trilithon' (from the Greek for 3 stones). With Edmund Halley, the astronomer, he proposed that the builders of Stonehenge had aligned the stones with the magnetic north.

The contents of the Bronze age barrows were then believed to be “Celtic” and pertaining to the culture of Druids, when in fact they predate the arrival of true Celtic culture in Britain by more than 1500 years. The illustrations from over 250 years ago of beads, bones and fragments of Bell Beakers from the barrows are still easily recognisable as belonging to that early Indo-European culture.

If you deny the importance of PIE and that they were Europeans, then you are ngmi

I’ve been noticing a trend among pagan circles to vehemently reject, or attempt to disprove, our Indo-European ancestry, oddly enough just as it was proven that the Indo-Europeans originated in Europe with the Sredny Stog Culture.

They say it’s would mean we’re not indigenous to Europe…as if the leftist framing of “indigenous” would ever be allowed to be applied to European peoples. 
Yet, the recent findings placing the origins of the Yamnaya and Corded Ware Cultures with the Sredny Stog Culture shows that Indo-Europeans are indigenous to Europe. Attempting to denounce Indo-European heritage as non-native is pointless.

It seems like a lot of them don’t like to admit any relation to Iranians or Indians. Yes, the percentage of Indo-European admixture is lower in India, but the influence is quite visible in the more ancient, unchanged sects of Buddhism and Hinduism. It should be a source of pride that our ancestors conquered half of the known world, before they’d even figured out how to work with iron.

Each year I share my May day playlist - mainly old folk songs which were sung on May day/Beltaine/Valborg/Walpurgisnacht

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/78ttf7MudoKilVZ1vQMFIY?si=7548221b5b9d491d

In addition to my new video about Easter, you should check out this older one which explains the connection of Easter to May day

https://youtu.be/SkYkF184ceo

The Heathen year has two parts, the winter half and the summer half. I don't see a problem with mixing West Germanic and North Germanic customs personally, but generally speaking it is good to be consistent.

The tenth moon marks the start of winter and is called Winterfylleth in Old English or Vetrnætr in Norse.

This is six moons from Eastermonth so if following the English system then you celebrate Easter blot on the fourth moon, or Sigrblot for Odin in the Norse system.

A lot of the English/German rituals of Easter/Ostara would be inappropriate in Scandinavia because Spring/Summer starts much earlier in England and North West Germany than in Scandinavia (see picture).

So while the fourth moon marks the start of the light half of the year for all Germanic Heathens, in practice it is still snowy and cold in Northern Scandinavia. So naturally it is better to pray to Odin for victory than to a dawn goddess who we infer was associated with the new life of the returning sun.

The East Scandinavian cluster chads! Special thank you to Ryan Murray for creating the illustrations of the Late Neolithic Scandinavians.

The Puritan scum banned May day. But we brought it back again along with the Monarchy!

In 1661 a 130 foot tall Maypole was erected in the Strand, London to celebrate the restoration of the English monarchy. A previous Maypole that had stood nearby at the remains of the medieval stone Strand Cross had been destroyed by the Puritans in 1644 for being seen as heathen in its nature.

Another famous London Maypole once stood at the crossroads by St Andrew Undershaft church, which got its name from the fact that the Maypole stood taller than the church, hence the church was under-the-shaft. The Maypole was kept in Shaft alley but by 1517 celebrations had been stopped as they had become to rowdy!

The Norse god Baldr is the same as the English god Bældæg "pyre day" and the latter refers to some kind of fire festival in Germanic cultures. The two names sound the same but they are not cognates, however other evidence proves they are the same god as I show here

https://odysee.com/@SurvivetheJive:c/balday:2?r=AEKqgwkPWidrWMdxwxNjBE8p3kA9tT6n

While Easter month was certainly dedicated to Easter and we may reasonably assume that some of the rites became associated with May day, it is also clear that in Germany and England May day derives from a fire festival for Baldr which was called Pholtag "Baldr day" in Germany and also explains why the Anglo-Saxons called Baldr Bældæg "fire day". I suspect Baldr's fire day was held on the fifth full moon and so May day falling between Easter and Baldr's day, is a mix of the two.