Also called Walpurgisnacht, Hexennacht, Valborg, Vappu, Pálení čarodějnic, St Walpurga's Eve
The night of 30 April, when German folklore said witches gathered on the Brocken mountain, and people lit hilltop fires, rang bells and made noise to drive them and winter away. It is still kept with bonfires in Sweden, Finland, Germany and the Czech Republic.
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Take care: Keep any fire in a proper hearth, fire pit or fireproof dish, with water or an extinguisher at hand; never leave flames unattended and check local burn bans. Burning effigies throws sparks; build away from buildings and trees and keep children back.
German folklore placed a great witches' sabbath on the Brocken, highest peak of the Harz, on this night. Farmers lit hillside fires to protect themselves and their animals. Goethe set a scene of Faust Part One on the Brocken on Walpurgis Night, which fixed the image for the world.
Swedes gather around large Valborg bonfires on 30 April with choirs singing in the spring. In Finland, Vappu has become a huge student and workers' carnival running into May Day.
On 30 April, pálení čarodějnic, villages build bonfires up to eight metres high topped with a straw witch figure and burn it. It is a folk festival now, often with children in costume.
The name comes from Saint Walpurga, an English-born 8th-century abbess who worked in Germany. Her canonisation and the moving of her relics to Eichstätt both took place on 1 May 870, so her feast fell on May Day and its eve became Walpurgisnacht. She was invoked against plague, rabies and witchcraft, which may be how her night became the night to ward off witches.
The bonfires likely belong to older May Day fire customs of northern Europe, comparable to Gaelic Beltane, overlaid with the saint's name. Goethe's Faust and Felix Mendelssohn's 1831 cantata Die erste Walpurgisnacht made the night famous in art. Some modern Pagans and witches now celebrate it as a festival in its own right, reversing its old purpose. In Germany the Harz towns around the Brocken hold large costumed Walpurgis parties every year, and the old protective meaning survives mostly as theatre.
A sealed bottle of pins, nails and personal traces hidden in a house to trap or turn back harmful magic aimed at the people living there.
Compass-drawn flowers, interlaced lines and Marian VV marks scratched near doors, windows and hearths to block evil from entering a building.
A Scottish Highland New Year rite of blessing a house with water and the smoke of burning juniper. It is an open European alternative to white-sage smudging, which belongs to closed Indigenous ceremonial practice.
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