The Faerie Thorns stretching up the hillsides from the River of Love display masses of white flowers vying with emergent leaves to fill out the tangled arteries of thorny wood. The early, frost-daunting petals of Black Thorn loosen now. Within the Ring-Pass-Not of the knobby tangle of sharp-needled twigs, a miniature Faerieland for song Birds and small mammals is secure against restless predators.

In separate bands, adolescent girls and boys, with Dione and Dion, roam the warming foothills and canyons. They make certain all the Wildlings are pollinating. Some rare and lovely Plant Tribes, restricted to a single location, require special attention. But this attention must never exceed the guidelines of the Biomic Eco-organism. And these guidelines can only inform the Faerie Intelligence from its natural Center, the Muse Goddess.

While ensuring pollination, the young Fays learn the vast Lore of Wildness and Forestry, the whole Mystique of how Soul and Soil may mix. Their bodies grow strong and trim. They feed exclusively on wild plant foods that they themselves must recognize.

The longing of the Grand Microcosmic Polar Opposites, male and female, for each other, creates the gorgeous surrealistic interiors of dream. At night, on distant ridges, the boys and girls spy each others‘ ripening bodies int the flickering campfires. Older celebrants who wish to undergo further, subtler pubescence, join the youngsters for the vigils of Huath. Hu is the Mighty God of panting exhalations and exertions.

The burgeoning Fays call to each other across the great divides, like wild birds or coyotes. If they approach each other in the dark, they display themselves with taunting enticements. Then the girls bound off screaming. The supreme mystery of sexual polarization deepens in isolation. Thus the bolt that will jump the gap at Midsummer gathers a tremendous charge. During this phase of the Sacred Year, the pan-erotic power of the human nature being is expanded into passionate compassion for All Wilderness.

When late at night, the campfires no longer glimmer in the waters, the old romances of the stars are recounted by elder Seers. Young Spirits are dextrously drawn from the flesh to fly, like eager fledglings, through glowing astral wonderlands. The mutant powers inherent in the mounting tides of pubescence are sublimed to exfoliate the Hidden Magics of the Soul.

During their adventures in pollination and nature Lore, the unfolding boys and girls occasionally meet on either side of those Hawthorn hedges that stretch into Mayland from the Willow-domed Riversides. The Thorns lead out around ponds towards the Oak and Holly dotted fields and High Holy Maze-groves of Summer. When from East and West the lads and maids meet across the Thorns, they sometimes don the big wings of metamorphic plant servitors: Butterflies and Moths. They perform mimes of pollination emphasizing local topography in their gestures as expressions of human erotic embrace. The lads come a-whirling bull-roarers. Total synesthetic Land-Sky Language emerges from the Whitethorn Mimes. An atmospheric body develops from the thickening desire these performances engender. And in that atmospheric body of the Polar Mysteries, the many sacred Land-Sky profiles of the region take on sacramental relief.

The hedges themselves seem to sigh out a deep lovely mauve of melancholy longing. Pledged lovers may touch each other dreamily through the hedges, or from either side of a great Oak trunk, until discovered. Others prick each other with the Hawthorns, place their wounds together for a furtive moment and then run off. Some of the initiates gaze at each others’ reflections in pools, or in special Anima-Animus mirrors cunningly blended in sylvan screens of stock and stone. But they never look at each other directly, unless from a considerable distance. Sometimes they approach each other with masks or veils over their heads, so naked torsos and limbs may learn fully to express the developing uniqueness.

The Flowering Ones undergo Soul-revealing nocturnal vigils. They purge themselves in various ways: steam baths, mud immersions, internal cleansing, hot springs, until their taut bodies are perfectly relaxed.

Towards Midsummer Day, all those who are engaged give themselves over utterly to lonely wanderings in the wilds, and complete fasting. Their Star Bodies learn to zoom together over the billowing hills and down the shadowy canyons of night. They are becoming Faerie Spirits; their communal marriage to each other will also marry them to the Elements and to All Nature.