I totally forgot I was writing these up as I go! (Actually, I haven't been very diligent about the Project Protagonist posts, have I? I need to get back to doing this regularly.)
This time of year is complicated for me. It's not complicated in the same way that Yule is, with Family Thoughts and all the baggage that goes along with that. But it is a holiday that my ex had very strong opinions about properly celebrating, and that makes it harder to tease out the meaning for me than some of the others.
I still think of the day as Walpurgis because that's what I first learned it as, before I knew about the wheel of the year. (Hello again, Catholic upbringing, nice to see you.) I tend to consider it a complement to Samhain, a time when the veils are thin, the otherworlds are close, or whatever your description of choice might be. Magic is a little bit easier. Change comes a little bit faster.
The May Day energy is comparatively recent but can be very useful to draw on for certain kinds of projects. It's just another kind of change, really, and I could certainly see Puck having a great deal of fun with Occupy. Paradigm shifts are powerful, whether it is magic or socialism.
I imagine them as a pair - for me, Samhain is about internal shifts, and Walpurgis about external shifts. Samhain is the first new year, and is about clearing out old things about yourself, getting straight in your head. Walpurgis is the beginning of summer, making changes in relationships, friendships, how you interact with the world. Amber and I joined a gym and signed up for classes. We've made a major fertility-related decision. We've changed ourselves and now we're changing our world, and six months from now it'll loop around again, because that's what it does.