(Opinion)
THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO, Before the days of Rome, there was on the Ides of February the Feasts of the Goat.
The Feast of Lupercalia was an ancient pastoral festival, observed on 13-15 of February to avert evil spirits, in the form of hungry beasts and demons, threatening the pastoral flocks, as real as the circling hungry wolves and in the howling winds. In the month of purification the Ides were associated with cleansing rituals ridding the demons, releasing health and fertility.
The historian Justin mentions an image of “the Lycaean god, whom the Greeks call Pan and the Romans Lupercus,” being naked except for a girdle of goatskin, which stood in the Lupercal, the cave at the foot of the Palatine Hill where the twin founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus were suckled by a she-wolf.
For this Festival, a goat and a dog were sacrificed and salt meal cakes prepared by the Vestal Virgins were burnt in offering.
Lupercalia itself stems from an older tradition called Februa, a spring cleansing ritual. Februa, also Februatio, was the earlier festival of ritual purification, which is one of Spring washing and cleansing associated with the raininess of this time of year for these ancients, with torrents of flooding rivers and driving rains, the waters are known to have powers.
According to Ovid, Februare is a Latin word which refers to purification, particularly by cleansing with water, with the older roots of the word suggesting to purge impurities physical and of spirit. As to above, as to below, as mother Earth cleanses with rains and overflowing streams and springs, man too cleanses with the powers of water.
The Roman month Februarius, “of Februa,” gives name to the English February.
The meeting and meshing of cultures of man is like that of the chemical reactions of the micro where there is action and reaction and the evolution compounded result is the Creation of a legend associated with day of death of a Saint named Valentine, now on the same day between the rains of Lupercalia festival, from the sacrifice of goats and dogs, to the celebration of a Christian Martyr, from the ritual of love by lottery, to one that can be embraced in modern times through the charms of Hallmarked cards and boxed chocolates.
In antiquity, On this day, the young girls went to the temple of Juno, where there is a prophecy to full-fill to find unmatched mates in a ritual of partner selection to find true love.
Among the common people, that is, the young men of that day drew the raffle from the names of unmarried women.
According to the stories of the ancients, the resulting pairs sometimes resulted in failures and sometimes in a paring of two that truly fell into an everlasting love.
From thenceforth unto now, the husband was expected to give a gift to his wife in the from of flowers.
Later still, the day has become associated with romantic love of the flowery Chaucer sort, where the tradition of courtly love once flourished.
Presently in the Sphere of the West, it has evolved incorporated into an occasion in which lovers are encouraged to express their Love by presenting gifts.
The holiday is named after the Saint and Martyr Valentine from Terni and was founded in 496 by Pope Gelasius I, to replace the pagan festival of Lupercalia and was later deleted from the General Roman Calendar of saints in 1969 by Pope Paul VI.
As the Pentateuch says in Levitucus 17-7, which reached its present form in the Persian period (538-332 BCE),
“that they may slaughter no longer their slaughter-offering to the hairy goat-demons after whom they whoring.”
(Leviticus 17:7 )
Indeed, this day of Love Celebration has its roots in the Collective consiousness of our Mythos.
Happy Valentines Day