The Merry Month
The extended hours of daylight are very noticeable here in England by May, and the weather is getting much warmer, so the month has brought a full flush of fresh green growth and a plethora of wildflowers. All the hedgerows become white and fragrant with hawthorn blossoms, the grass in the fields is lush and tall, and the woodlands are carpeted with bluebells. It is a month of blue skies and cotton wool clouds, of bonfires, maypoles, and May Queens, of fairies and enchantments, of milk and honey, fledgling birds and the buzzing of the bees. In the solar calendar, May marks the real coming of summer, and all the folk customs and rituals of May reflect this.
The Romans called this month Maius, meaning “mother” or “nursing mother,” named after the Greek goddess Maia, the eldest of the Pleiades, one of the seven sisters represented by a bright cluster of stars in the constellation of Taurus the Bull. For the Romans, Maia embodied the concept of growth, as her name was thought to be related to maius and maior, meaning “larger” or “greater,” identifying her with the earth goddess Terra and Bona Dea, the good goddess. The Pleiades were important seasonal markers in the ancient world, rising heliacally (with the sun at dawn) in early May after being invisible for forty days, and again appearing on the western horizon at the beginning of November. This twofold division of the year, according to the position of the Pleiades, heralded the seasonal work on the land of planting and harvest, as well as safe summer sailing and the coming of the winter rains and storms, closing channels of navigation on the Mediterranean.116 Indeed, the Pleiades were important seasonal markers in the cultures of both the northern and southern hemispheres.117
In England, the customs and games of May Day were called going “a-maying” or “bringing in the May” and reached their heights during the Middle Ages. There are records of towns and councils spending significant amounts of money on public celebrations.118 Villagers would go out into the woods and fields to collect armfuls of flowers and greenery for decoration, a custom Kipling described in his poem A Tree Song:
Oh, do not tell the Priest our plight,
Or he would call it a sin;
But—we have been out in the woods all night,
A-conjuring Summer in!
And we bring you news by word of mouth—
Good news for cattle and corn—
Now is the Sun come up from the South,
With Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!119
Maypoles, usually made of stripped birch trees, were cut and set up on the village green and hung with ribbons, ready for dancing.120 Many communities elected a young girl to become the May Queen to preside over the festivities. Sometimes she was accompanied by a May King. In Elizabethan times the king and queen were called Robin Hood and Maid Marian. There might be a Jack in the Green, a man wearing a wicker cage covered in fresh greenery, to represent the opulent growth of the season. We can speculate that he is connected to the foliate heads (green men) found on architecture, and that he perhaps represented a vegetation or woodland spirit.
May Day bonfires blazed across the hilltops, and jumping the fire was thought to offer protection, blessing, and fertility. Even the ashes of the fires had special powers and were spread on the fields to protect them and bring fruitfulness. In Ireland cows were driven through the ashes to guard them from the attentions of fairies.121
The Puritans were outraged at the immorality that often accompanied the drinking and dancing, and Oliver Cromwell’s parliament banned maypoles altogether in 1644, describing them as “a heathenish vanity generally abused to superstition and wickedness.”122 Condemning the custom of going out into the woods to feast and gather greenery, Christopher Featherstone declared, “Men doe use commonly to run into woods in the night time, amongst maidens, to set bowers, in so much, as I have heard of ten maidens which went to set May, and nine of them came home with childe.”123 Philip Stubbes complained that, of the girls who go into the woods, “not the least one of them comes home again undefiled.”124
The birth of summer obviously means the death of winter. Death and rebirth is a theme enacted in many seasonal mumming plays and in the May Day dance of the Padstow Obby Oss (hobby horse) in Cornwall, England. The evening before the dance, the village is decorated with green branches and flowers. The sinister black Oss, led by the Teaser, parades through the town to the accompaniment of drum and accordion. Now and then the drum falls silent, and the Oss gradually falls to the floor, only to rise again. At midnight the Oss dies, to be reborn again next summer.
As the death of winter takes place, so did many European festivals of the dead, in order to make a purification before the summer began.125 For the Romans May was generally an unlucky month, when marriage was forbidden. It was also the time of the Lemuria, a festival to placate the Lemures, the wandering spirits of the dead, which St. Augustine described as evil and restless manes that tormented and terrified the living.126 The Lemuria was a three-day festival (May 9, 11, and 13) when the head of the household rose at midnight and cast black beans behind him for them to feast on, saying: “These I cast; with these beans I redeem me and mine.” This had to be said nine times without looking back.
As the Wheel of the Year turns to summer, we honour the Goddess as the flower bride who seeks her groom, the Green Man, in the greenwood. Their passion and fire will bring in the summer and dispel the forces of winter and bane, and the Goddess will become the fertile mother. Now is the time of growth, for the blossoming of the earth, for warmth and celebration. So we kindle the Beltane fires, raise the maypole, and dance!
Early May
May 1: May Day/Beltane
May begins with the modern Pagan festival that is usually called Beltane. We know that in Pagan Ireland, the first of May was called Bealtaine or Beltene, though we don’t much about how they celebrated it. The earliest reference to it is believed to be in the tenth century CE Samas Chormaic, or Cormac’s Glossary, which describes cattle being driven between two fires the Druids made for luck:
Belltaine i.e. May Day i.e. “lucky fire” i.e. two fires which the Druids used to make with great incantations, and they used to bring the cattle (as a safeguard) against the diseases of the year to those fires, they used to drive the cattle between them.127
Cormac derived the name Beltane from “lucky fire,” though elsewhere in the text he speculated it might come from “Bial, an idol god.”128 While tene means “fire,” bel could be translated as “bright” or “lucky,” or it could be connected to the Gaulish sun god Bel or Belenos whom Julius Caesar identified with the Greek/Roman sun god Apollo. We can safely assume that bonfires played a part in the celebrations, a continuing custom well documented in succeeding centuries, well into the 1800s.
Though the Pagan Irish left no written records, the Christian chroniclers tried to record earlier customs and myths (though often not without inserting Christian messages and classical legends). From these we know that the early Irish had a twofold division of the year. In the fifteenth- or sixteenth-century CE manuscript Tochmarc Emire (“The Wooing of Emer,” probably transcribed from an earlier tenth-century source), the hero Cúchulainn explains: “For two divisions were formerly on the year, namely, summer from Beltane the first of May, and winter from Samhain to Beltane,” making it clear that Beltane was considered the start of summer. In the early 1500s, a quatrain says this of Beltane, describing it as a time of increase and plentiful milk:
I relate this to you, a surpassing festival,
The privileged dues of Beltane:
Ale, roots, mild whey,
And fresh curds to the fire.129
Beltane certainly seems to have been the Pagan feast that the Irish church feared most. The Book of Armagh described Beltane as “an idolatrous ceremony,” featuring “the Druids, singers, prophets,” and attended “with manifold incantations and magical contrivances.” Beltane was also the first Pagan festival to have been suppressed, according to The Life of Saint Patrick, where the fires of Beltane and the Easter fires were said to be in direct opposition until the Pagan ones were defeated.130
Many of our present May Day customs come from the Roman Floralia, such as fetching in armloads of greenery and flowers. It lasted several days, spanning the end of April and the beginning of May, and was a feast of joy and unrestrained merriment, with the whole city bedecked in blossoms and people wearing flowers in their hair and wreathing their animals in garlands. Offerings of milk and honey were made to Flora, the goddess of flowers and blossoms, youth and its pleasures, with prayers for the prospering of the ripe fruits of the field and orchard.
As always, with our spiritual practice, we look to nature for our inspiration and direction. At the beginning of May, we celebrate the Lady of Flowers and the Green Man coming together in love, the most powerful force in the universe, which binds spirit and matter together, creating the world from opposites. This union is the God and Goddess at the point of their sacred marriage, an act which brings about all of creation with the reconciliation of duality.
Beltane Ritual
Two pillars of wood are set up in the centre of the circle, three feet apart. One is decorated with a green lady mask and flowers, the other with a green man mask and oak leaves. A small green candle in a glass jar stands atop each. In the north the altar has a single red candle.
Take three breaths: together with the earth beneath you, together with the sky above you, and together with the circle around you.
Say:
With Beltane we celebrate the coming of summer,
When life is in full flow and the primal forces of creation join in union.
Go to the Goddess pillar and light the candle, saying:
I honour the Goddess and open myself to the Goddess within.
Go to the God pillar and light the candle, saying:
I honour the God and open myself to the God within.
Here burn the twin fires of Beltane, male and female,
God and Goddess, sky and earth, sun and moon,
Body and spirit, each flame burning in each one of us.
This is the time of purification by fire. As you pass between the pillars with their candles on top, know that you leave behind winter, negativity, and pain. Step forward between the flames, saying:
I leave winter behind and move forward into the work of summer.
Pause for a while as you reflect on this, then say:
We now celebrate the most ancient of magics, the magic of joining.
The Lady of the Land takes the hand of the Green Lord,
And their marriage brings life to the world.
Pick up the God candle:
This is the fire of the Lord.
Pick up the Goddess candle:
This is the fire of the Lady.
The two candles are used to light the single red candle on the altar.
United in life and abundance. Blessed be!
Lord and lady, illuminate me from within.
Fill me with the light of creation. Help me radiate light upon the world.
I ask this in the name of the Lord and Lady. Blessed be.
I take with me the energy of Beltane, when the spirit fully manifests
within the material world, and we are blessed.
This rite is ended. Blessed be.
Don’t forget to wash your face in the May Day morning dew, as this traditional rhyme advises:
The fair maid who, the first of May
Goes to the fields at break of day
And washes in dew from the hawthorn tree
Will ever after handsome be.
May 6: Milk a Punch Day
Cattle were turned out to their summer pastures at the beginning of this month. The Anglo Saxons called May Thrimilce, or “thrice milking.” Because of the richness of grass, the milk was of finer quality and the cows yielded much more abundantly and had to be milked three times each day, so it was in May that the Anglo-Saxons began making cheese. On May 6 Alderney farmers celebrated Milk a Punch Day, when they drank fresh milk as a toast to the season of plenty.
May 8: Flora Day
In Helston, Cornwall, today is the Furry Day, otherwise called Flora Day or the Floral Dance. It is one of the oldest surviving early summer festivals in Britain. There are several explanations for word furry, even that it derives from the goddess Flora and the Roman Floralia or the Latin word Feria, meaning a fair or holy day.131 The festivities, as Marian Green says, echo “the idea of the dance of life, and now at the very beginning of summer, the dancers welcome the strength of the returning sun.”132
Preparations for the big day begin in mid-April when gatherers cut branches of sycamore, beech, and other greenery used to decorate the town. Furry Day itself starts after sunrise when the dancers take to the streets and circle the old town. This is followed by the mummers’ play known as the Hal-an-Tow, when Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, St. George, and St. Michael, along with several other characters, act out battles in which good defeats evil (i.e., summer defeats winter) and sing the ancient Hal-an-Tow song, which includes the chorus:
With Hal-an-Tow! Jolly Rumble, O!
For we are up as soon as any day, O!
And for to fetch the Summer home,
The Summer and the May, O,
For Summer is a-come, O,
And Winter is a-gone, O.133
Afterwards, around 1,000 children dressed in white take part in the children’s dance. At midday the Furry Dance itself takes place, led by the mayor, driving out the memory of winter and bringing with them the warmth and blessings of summer.134 At the final dance of the day, the many visitors from all over the world are invited to join in, and the whole town is filled with dancers.
Flower Goddess Ritual
Decorate your altar with as many seasonal flowers as you can. Light two green candles and say:
Come, Lady of Flowers, so that I may honour you and sing your praises.
In your season every tree is clothed with leaves;
The grass grows high in the pastures.
You wear a thousand colours, a thousand different forms.
You are also the goddess of the fields,
For if the crops have blossomed well, the harvest will be good;
If the vines have blossomed well, there will be wine.
Honey is your gift; you call the bees to the violet
And the clover and the wild thyme.
Let me use life’s flower while it still blooms.
I pray you, goddess, bless me.
Allow the candles to burn out.
Mid-May
This really is the birds’ month. Bird activity is intense in May, and they seem to sing all day and most of the night. There are more insects flying in the warmth too, with many bees and butterflies on my herbs now.
There are blossoms on my apple and pear trees, the vegetable garden needs more time but is producing a greater choice of fresh foods, with spring cabbage, rhubarb, early lettuce, spring onions, radishes, and even early new potatoes. We can still get frosts in May, and the weather is still changeable; it can be warm and sunny or cold and wet. I won’t be putting in any tender plants until June, but I’m sowing more lettuce, radish, parsley, basil, and peas directly into the ground so that I can crop throughout the summer. In the greenhouse I’m sowing annual flowers and herbaceous perennials, marrows, courgettes (zucchini), autumn cauliflower, calabrese, and kohlrabi.
The herb garden is keeping me busy too. I collect the early fresh green growth of comfrey (Symphytum officinale) to make salves that heal cuts and small wounds, sprains, and arthritic joints. I also collect the leaves of the common mallow (Malva sylvestris), a soothing plant with a high mucilage content, which is useful for stomach ulcers and dry coughs in the form of a tea or to use as a poultice to reduce inflammations such as insect bites and boils. The fresh young leaves even make a lovely addition to a salad. The woodruff (Galium odoratum/Asperula odorata) is coming up everywhere, and I pick the flowers to make a May-time drink called May Bowl. The sweetly scented leaves can be dried or pressed between the pages of a book to scent drawers and linen cupboards.
12 sprigs young sweet woodruff, chopped
5 ounces (1¼ cups/140 grams) powdered sugar (icing sugar)
2 bottles dry white wine
2 pints sparkling wine
chopped strawberries
Place in all the ingredients except the sparkling wine and strawberries in a bowl. Cover for 30 minutes. Remove the herbs. Add the sparkling wine and strawberries. NB: Avoid woodruff if pregnant or breastfeeding.
Busy Bees
The bees are busy pollinating the flowers in the garden, the orchards, and the fields, and I am reminded that we are reliant on this precious insect for most of our crops. Without the bee, a great many (though not all) plants and crops could not be pollinated and would die out, affecting great swathes of ecosystems and agriculture alike. The ancients understood this and associated the bee with the Mother Goddess herself, the queen bee who rules the hive. She streams with honey, the sweetest substance in the world at the time,135 which the Greeks believed was the food of the gods themselves.136 Many goddesses were associated with the bee, including Artemis, Aphrodite, Demeter, Cybele, Diana, Rhea, and Aphrodite, the nymph goddess of summer who was served by priestesses called Melissae, or bees.
Bees and honey have been important throughout history as the only source of sweetness. Before sugar was known, honey was required for making beer, wine, and mead, as well as cakes and desserts. Bees have collected a great deal of myth and folklore. One of the most charming is the custom of telling the bees, whereby a beekeeper must keep his hives informed of important news, such as a death in the family, a wedding, or someone leaving home. If the beekeeper failed in this duty, the bees would find out about it anyways and go into mourning, which would mean they might leave their hive, stop the production of honey, or die.137
Goddess of the Bees Ritual
Have ready some mead and honey cakes (or vegan wine and cake if you wish) and a yellow candle.
Mother Goddess, you are the queen bee,
The lady of honey, the sweetness of life;
Come to my rite.
Light the candle:
You call the bees to the flowers
To pollinate them and make them fertile
So that we shall have fruit and seeds,
So that we shall live.
Without you the earth is barren.
You are the sweetness of life.
You are life itself.
Offer the mead by pouring it on the earth (or into a bowl, which can be taken outside and put on the earth later) and the cakes by placing them on the ground.
I make you this offering, Melissa, lady of the bee,
In thanks for your messengers, the insects.
In thanks for their work,
I will honour them.
Let blessing be.
Let the candle burn out.
May 11: May Eve Old Style/Beltane Eve Old Style
When the Gregorian calendar was adopted to replace the Julian calendar in 1752, eleven days had to be dropped from the calendar, thus drawing all the dates forward by eleven days, which is why the hawthorn does not blossom now on May 1. This makes today May Eve Old Style, when the Manx fairies and witches are supposed to be particularly active. In Ireland the Lunantishees, or fairies, guard the blackthorn trees and will punish anyone who tries to cut its wood on this day.
Solitary hawthorns growing on hills or near wells were considered to be markers to the world of the fairies; any human who slept beneath one, especially on May Eve, was in danger of being taken away to the land of the fairies. The flowering of the hawthorn marked the opening of the summer season, the time when people could get out and about and when young men and women could meet up, so it is not surprising that May was often considered the month of courtship and love. Moreover, the scent of hawthorn blossom is supposedly redolent of sex,138 and the hawthorn is associated with love-making. In ancient Greece girls wore hawthorn crowns at weddings.
However, while in some circumstances it was considered to be a tree of love, like other fairy trees, it was very unlucky to bring it indoors, except on May Day, when the taboo is lifted:
Hawthorn bloom and elder-flowers
Will fill a house with evil powers.
Ritual for Contacting the Goddess Within
Prepare an infusion of hawthorn blossoms by putting a half ounce of blossoms in a pot and pouring a pint of boiling water over them. Infuse for 10 minutes and strain into a cup. Hawthorn is wound about with the mysteries of the Goddess and should be treated with great care. For women who seek contact with the sexual side of the Goddess within themselves, hawthorn tea may be employed. It may be used by men to gain deeper understanding of this aspect of the Goddess and their female partners.
Go outside (if possible) to your garden or wild place early in the morning, beneath a hawthorn tree, if possible, and inhale its scent. Set up a stone for an altar. If you can’t go outside, decorate your altar with seasonal wildflowers. Put the infusion in your cup on the altar and light two green candles. Say:
Goddess, Lady, White Queen:
I come to you in the soft warmth of May
Beneath boughs jewelled with flowers.
Your perfume loads the air
With the scent of love and magic.
Take up the cup of hawthorn blossom tea, saying:
I bless this cup and ask that as I drink of it
I may learn more of the wisdom of the Goddess
Who is manifest within me.
I ask that I may learn more of her ancient ways
And feel her love for all creation as my own.
When you are ready, drink from the cup and feel the sacred flower spirit of the summer Goddess contact your spirit within and become one with you. Gaze at the wildflowers and feel the earth blossoming and growing around you. Feel your spirit grow and blossom within you and become one with the current of the year, the manifest love of the summer Goddess.
Pour the remaining liquid onto the earth as an offering to the earth Goddess, saying:
White Queen, I thank you for being with me this day
And ask that I may recognise that you are within me as I dwell within you.
Let me feel your presence in all things, visible and invisible.
This rite is ended. Let blessing be.
May 12: May Day Old Style/Beltane Old Style
The children of the Dorset fishing village of Abbotsbury still “bring in the May” on the old day. Carrying garlands made by a local woman, each one constructed over a frame and supported by a stout broomstick, they go about the village from door to door, and receive small gifts in return. Later, the garlands are laid at the base of the local war memorial. At one time this was an important festival marking the beginning of the fishing season, when wreaths were blessed, carried down to the water and fastened to the bows of the fishing boats. After dark, the fishermen rowed out to sea and tossed the garlands to the waves with prayers for a safe and plentiful fishing season. It is tempting to see a carry-over from Pagan times, when sacrificial offerings were made to the gods of the sea.
Late May
We enter the zodiac sign of Gemini, the Twins. Two bright stars called Castor and Pollux appear relatively close together in the night sky, forming the heads of the Twins, while the other stars of the constellation drop in two parallel lines from them, providing the bodies. In Greek myth, the heliacal rising of Gemini marked the period of calm summer seas and was associated with the twins Castor and Pollux, hatched from an egg after their mortal mother Leda was seduced by the god Zeus in the form of a swan. Though Pollux was immortal, his brother Castor was not. Such was their love for each other that when Castor died, Pollux appealed to Zeus, who placed them together in the stars. They spend their time alternately in the heavens and the underworld (when they can’t be seen) as the seasons change.
In Babylonian astronomy the constellation was known as the Great Twins, a pair of minor gods who were perhaps twin aspects of Nergal, god of the dead and the underworld.139 They were named Meshlamtaea (“the one who has arisen from the underworld”) and Lugalirra (“mighty king”) and were guardians of doorways in general but, moreover, defenders of the summertime entrance to the realm of the dead.140 In Babylonian tradition the two solstices were the two entrances to the underworld, the winter one (located in the region of Capricorn) used by souls journeying to the afterlife and the summer one (located in the region of Cancer, the Crab) used by souls incarnating or visiting earth.141 The Twins guard the entrance to the summer solstice next month.
May 25: Mother Earth
In summer the spring Maiden becomes the Mother Goddess, who begins to bear. On this day the Greeks celebrated the festival of Gaia, the deity representing earth, the fruitful power that sustains universal life and the ancestral source of all life.
Mother Earth Ritual
Light a green candle on your altar and say:
Listen to the words of the earth mother. Know me. I have had many names. Some call me Gaia and others Rhea or Cybele, while to many I am simply known as the Mother, for I am the earth. I am the bringer of fertility, and
I preside over the whole cycle of being: planting, growth, and harvest; birth, growth, decline, death, and rebirth.
I am the great matrix of nature and my spirit flows throughout it, connecting it into a unified, sacred whole.
My magic flows throughout the world—every uncurling oak leaf in spring, every humming summer bee, every rutting stag, every misty shore.
The land beneath your feet is not merely dirt but a fountain of energy that sustains animals, plants, and people. All space is sacred space because it is my body.
I am the mother of all living, and my love is poured out upon the earth. All life, all creation is sacred. This is a truth that you cannot challenge or change without diminishing yourself. You are not separate from nature or above it but part of it. All life is equal; if the deaths of animals and plants are meaningless, then so is yours. You must learn to honour the divinity in all things if you are to honour the divinity in yourself.
Honour your spirit but know that you are also a physical being, alive and vital in my beautiful creation, able to see, hear, touch, taste, and feel. Life is not a punishment or a fallen state in which the soul has become imprisoned in matter but a wonderful gift to be explored and enjoyed. Powerful forces have united to make a gateway for your spirit to incarnate, grow, and transform.
I am the all-encompassing source of life. Within me there is no separation, no judgement; one being is not better or superior to another. I exist within you and without you, and my nurturing flow of life is always available to heal, balance, and vitalise, for you are my own child.
Finish the ritual by saying:
Mother Earth, I hear your words and will honour them.
Blessed be.
May 29: Garland Day
In Castleton, Derbyshire, this is Garland Day, when the Garland King rides on horseback at the head of a procession of musicians and young girls, who perform a dance similar to the Helston Floral Dance. The garland the king wears is actually an immense beehive-shaped structure that fits over his head and shoulders, covered with greenery and flowers and crowned with a special bouquet called the “queen.”
He is yet another representation of the spirit of increase and blossoming this month, like Jack in the Green or the Green Man. As Pagans, we think of the Green Man as a very real force of nature. We imagine him walking the land and kindling all he touches with his life force. As he mates with the Goddess, he co-creates the world.
Jack in the Green
Light a green candle on your altar and say:
Jack in the Green, our garland king
Clad in your summer crown
You kindle the land
With the touch of your hand
And dress its summer gown
Blessed be.
116. Krupp, Beyond the Blue Horizon.
117. Ibid.
118. Hutton, The Stations of the Sun.
119. http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_treesong.htm, accessed 15.1.20.
120. Hutton, The Stations of the Sun.
121. Cormac’s Glossary.
122. The Retrospective Review VIII (London: Charles Baldwyn, 1823).
123. Quoted in Hutton, The Stations of the Sun.
124. Ibid.
125. Ronald Hutton, Halloween? It’s more than trick or treat, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/28/halloween-more-than-trick-or-treat-origins?fbclid=IwAR13rqBx10qclv4giBmWmYstGVhsyM9GxrOxP8Q8Jo7e0_j3zBs2xsZ0o6U, accessed 18.8.20.
126. St. Augustine, The City of God, 11.
127. Cormac’s Glossary.
128. Ibid.
129. Kuno Meyer’s translation as found in Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson’s Studies in Early Celtic Nature Poetry (Cambridge: University Press, 1935).
130. J. B. Bury, The Life of St. Patrick and His Place in History (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries, 1971), 104–106.
131. Green, A Harvest of Festivals.
132. Ibid.
133. Roy Palmer (ed.), Everyman’s Book of English Country Songs (Littlehampton, 1979).
134. https://www.timetravel-britain.com/articles/history/helston.shtml, accessed 27.3.19.
135. Hilda Ransome, The Sacred Bee (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1937).
136. Ibid.
137. Steve Roud, The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland (London: Penguin Books, 2003).
138. Geoffrey Grigson, The Englishman’s Flora (Phoenix House, 1956).
139. Nicole Brisch, “Lugalirra and Meslamtaea (a pair of gods)”, Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses, Oracc and the UK Higher Education Academy, 2016, http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/amgg/listofdeities/lugalirraandmeslamtaea/, accessed 19.9.19.
140. White, Babylonian Star-Lore.
141. Ibid.