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1_Fires of Bel 3:310:00/3:31
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2_Bone Drum Ash 3:540:00/3:54
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3_Between the Horns 3:370:00/3:37
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4_Green Mans Blood 3:590:00/3:59
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0:00/3:19
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0:00/4:19
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0:00/4:13
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8_Oak and Flame 4:010:00/4:01
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0:00/5:02
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0:00/4:14
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0:00/3:59
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12_Crown of May 4:190:00/4:19
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13_Embers at Dawn 4:520:00/4:52
WHERE THE TRADITIONS BLEED
A Grimoire of Fire, Threshold and Ancient Memory
Before the borders were drawn, before one people called themselves Norse and another Celtic, there was only the fire.
On the eve of the first day of May, both traditions felt it — a thinning, a trembling in the membrane between worlds. The Celts called it Beltane, lighting great bonfires on hilltops to honour Bel, the bright one, driving cattle between twin flames to purify and protect. The Norse felt it too in their bones — Walpurgis, the night when the dead walk close and the völva speaks truth into the darkness.
They never needed to meet to share the same knowing. The old ones understood that fire does not belong to any single people. Neither does the threshold. Neither does the ritual of standing at the edge of something vast and whispering I am still here.
This EP was born in that space between traditions — where the boundaries bleed into each other and something older than both quietly breathes.
Enter. The fire is already lit.
1. Fires of Bel
Before Beltane had a name it had a flame. The ancient Celts called upon Bel — solar deity, shepherd of light — to bless the land as winter finally surrendered. Two enormous fires were built and every hearth in the village was extinguished. Only after the cattle walked between the sacred flames, purified by smoke and heat, were the home fires relit from the Beltane blaze. This track is that moment — the darkness just before the first spark catches.
2. Bone Drum Ash
The drum is the oldest instrument of ritual. In both Norse and Celtic ceremony, percussion was not music — it was a heartbeat synchronised with something larger than the human body. Shamanic practitioners beat bone drums to enter trance states, to cross into the otherworld, to carry messages between the living and the dead. The ash here is what remains after the crossing — proof that something burned, something transformed, something passed through.
3. Between the Horns
The Horned God stands at the threshold of every Celtic seasonal ritual — half animal, half divine, entirely neither. At Beltane he reaches his peak of power, the masculine force of nature in full bloom meeting the Goddess at the height of her fertility. To stand between the horns is to occupy sacred dangerous ground — the space where the human meets the wild and neither walks away unchanged.
4. Green Man’s Blood
His face peers from the stonework of cathedrals built over older sacred sites, leaves growing from his mouth, his eyes, his wounds. The Green Man is pre-Christian, pre-Norse, pre-Celtic — he belongs to the land itself. At Beltane his blood is the sap rising through every tree, the green force pushing through winter-hardened earth. This is not a gentle awakening. This is ferocious, unstoppable life.
5. Where the Traditions Bleed
The title track. There is a place in the old maps of Europe — geographically, spiritually, mythologically — where the Norse world and the Celtic world were never truly separate. Trade routes, migrations, shared coastlines, shared skies. The völva and the druidess both read signs in the same birds. Both traditions honoured the sacred feminine. Both lit fires in May. This track lives in that unnamed place where the boundaries dissolved long before historians drew them.
6. The Veil at Beltane
Samhain receives most of the attention as the time when the veil between worlds thins — but the old traditions were clear that Beltane holds equal power. The wheel of the year has two great hinges. At both, the dead draw close and the living feel watched. At Beltane the atmosphere is different from Samhain’s cold darkness — here the veil thins in firelight and flowering, in warmth and wildness. The ancestors come not to frighten but to witness the continuation of life.
7. Union of Flame and Root
Beltane is fundamentally a sacred marriage — sky and earth, sun and soil, the divine masculine and feminine in union. The Maypole is its most enduring symbol, the pole a world tree, the ribbons the threads of fate woven by human hands around it. In Norse tradition Yggdrasil holds the nine worlds in its branches and roots simultaneously — above and below united through one living body. This track is that weaving, that union, that ancient yes.
8. Oak and Flame
The oak was the most sacred tree in both Celtic and Norse cosmology. Druids took their name from the oak — dru-wid, those who know the oak. In Norse tradition the first humans were formed from trees — Ask and Embla, ash and elm, given life by Odin’s breath. At Beltane the oak king reaches his throne, and the Beltane fires were traditionally lit from oak wood specifically. To burn oak is to invite the oldest magic into the flame.
9. The Circle Remembers
Stone circles predate both Celtic and Norse cultures yet both peoples inherited and used them. Circles hold memory differently than linear structures — no beginning, no end, only continuation. The land at these ancient sites has absorbed thousands of years of ceremony, grief, celebration and prayer. Scientists call it superstition. The old ones called it listening. The circle does not forget what has been done within it. It simply waits for you to remember too.
10. Into the Greenwood
On Beltane eve young people went a-Maying — disappearing into the forest from dusk until dawn, returning with branches of hawthorn blossom to decorate homes and altars. The Greenwood was a lawless sacred space, a place where the rules of the village did not reach, where the old wildness was permitted to move through human bodies freely. This track is the walk in — the moment the trees close behind you and the firelight of the village disappears.
11. Whispers of the Fae
In Celtic tradition Beltane is when the Síthe — the fairy mounds — open. The Fae are not the delicate winged creatures of later folklore. They are the older powers, the ones who were here before humans named them, dangerous and beautiful in the way a storm is beautiful. The Norse knew them too as the Álfar — elves of light and shadow who moved between worlds freely. On Beltane night you leave offerings at the threshold. You do not look too long into the dark between the trees.
12. Crown of May
The May Queen is chosen, crowned with hawthorn blossom and early wildflowers, and for one sacred day she embodies the Goddess herself — the land made human, the spring made flesh. In Norse tradition Frigg, queen of the Æsir, presides over the fertile earth and the sacred bonds between living things. To be crowned is to carry something larger than yourself, to become briefly the vessel through which the old powers speak. This track is her procession.
13. Embers at Dawn
Every ritual ends. The fire burns down to embers as the first grey light touches the eastern sky. In both traditions the morning after Beltane held its own sacred weight — the liminal night completed, the new cycle officially begun. People carried embers home from the Beltane fire to relight their hearths, bringing the communal sacred flame into private life. The ritual is over but you are not the same person who walked into the firelight. The embers cool. The year turns. You carry the warmth home.
Where the Traditions Bleed is available to stream.
May the fire find you.