Whip My Roman Sex Gods: "Valentine's Day", Goat Blood and the Sex Lottery

Just as much as there's a difference between passion and Puritanism, there's also a difference between passion and promiscuity.

Balance is key.

By the way, the Catholic Church wasn't the host of Puritanism. That came from the Protestant Reformation...

...and the Catholic Church was tolerant of pagans. Witch-hunts were mainly a Protestant thing that went along with the expectation of good works to represent a predestined calling.

The Catholic Church recognized international, diverse, multiculturalism. If you ever talk with an intellectual fascist or racial realist, you'll know they're some of the first critics of that.

The problem is some pagans let things get out of control. The Catholic Church wanted to maintain artistic culture without letting it become abusive of other artistic cultures.
 
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I'm curious, Pogo....do you have any parallels that would stand up to scrutiny?.......

If by "scrutiny" you mean something stronger than whining "is not!", then good news; I am once again home and reunited with my library. Some of this will be redundant with what I put in the OP a year ago, although I get the distinct feeling that OP went unread...

In the Roman Lupercalia (a feast in honour of the pastoral god Lupercus) mentioned at the outset of this thread, young males would draw a "billet" -- a little slip of paper with a girl's name on it -- for erotic games. In 496 AD, Pope Gelasius decided to put an end to the Feast of Lupercalia, and he declared that February 14 be celebrated as St Valentine's Day.

Historically:
>> Saint Valentine's Day embraces a time of year that is historically associated with love and fertility. It encompasses the sacred marriage of Zeus and Hera in Ancient Athens and the Ancient Roman festival of Lupercus, the god of fertility. {poster note: see more on sacred marriage below]
The priests of Lupercus would perform a traditional purification ritual, slaughtering goats to the god, and after consuming wine, they would run through the streets of Rome holding aloft the skins of the goats touching anyone they met. The occasion compelled floods of young women to the streets in the belief that being touched would improve their chances of conceiving and bring forth easy childbirth. There remains some speculation over the exact date of the celebration.

The first official Saint Valentine's Day was declared on 14th of February by Pope Galasius in 496, in memory of a 3rd century martyred priest in Rome. It is not known for sure whether Pope Galasius was honouring this 3rd century priest or whether it was one of two other martyred priests associated with the 14th of February. One was Bishop of Interamna (modern Terni) and the other apparently suffered in Africa along with a number of companions. Nothing further is known about these two Saint Valentines and it is the priest in Rome that has become the most widely acclaimed of the three. << (here)

Further back, Lupercal was said to be the birthplace of Rome, the spot where Romulus and Remus were suckled by a wolf (lupus). The festival Lupercalia, on the ides of February, incited fertility for the coming year and honoured Pan (who comes down to our time as "Cupid" among other forms), who protected flocks from wolves. The idea of lupine foster-mothers was a recurring mid-Eastern mythological theme, making appearances in the origins of Zoroaster, the origins of Turkey and the Canary Islands (Canary, from canis), and even the fable of Little Red Riding Hood. But we digress.

(But to entertain that digression momentarily, if you really want to get hung up on a single tree ignoring the forest, Little Red Riding Hood is yet another manifestation of the dying-and-resurrection mythological motif. Perhaps you'd be less defensive if put that way.)

As the Christian Church rose in European influence, it subsumed the older pagan festivals and mythological personages into holy-days and saints, in this case substituting the names of real-life partners with sermons or saints' names to be emulated over the next year (with predictable popularity), and eventually coming up in the 5th century with a St. Valentine, a sort of conglomeration of several irreconcilable biographies built vaguely on the spirits of Eros/Cupid and the aforementioned Pan.

Presumably then, the Roman billets were the ancestors, if indirectly, of today's Valentine cards. I can remember a custom like this from my (Catholic) grade school, although I'm pretty sure that custom stopped well short of erotic games. :eusa_shifty: But it did involve billets.

Indeed the name of the month of February itself derives presumably from the febris ("fever") of love. In the Roman Empire Candelmas (February 2nd) commemorates Juno Februata, the virgin mother of Mars. Animals were thought this day to rise out of winter hibernation and provide predictions for the coming year, begetting our modern Groundhog Day:

The badger peeps out of his hole on Candlemas Day, and if he finds snow, walks abroad; but if he sees the sun shining he draws back into his hole. (German proverb) 3

The Celtic name for the same holiday, Imbolc ("in the belly") usually appends to the goddess/saint Bridget (Bride), though the designated Brigantian day may vary regionally from February 1st to 6th 1,2. Alternately the name of the month may come from februarius mensis, "month of purification", the last month of the Roman calendar year.

The previous Old English name for this month was solmonað "mud month"3 Good Saxon directness, predating the Norman French penchant for circumlocution.

Finally (from "sacred marriage above), part of this erotic ingredient, even after Christianization, was sacred sex, where common people engaged in sex as ritual, the couple representing spiritual union between Sophia ('wisdom') and the Redeemer. Kind of a proxy fuck, if you can first accept that fucking is an inherently spiritual act. It was called a "rite of spiritual marriage with angels in a nuptial chamber"5

More on that here and a primer here that may open some doors.


Additional sources:
1 Stone, Merlin: Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood (1979)
2 Logan, Patrick: The Holy Wells of Ireland (1980, UK)
3 Brewer, E. Cobham: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1870, UK)
4 DeLys, Claudia: The Giant Book of Superstitions (1979)
5 Angus, Samuel: The Mystery Religions and Christianity (1925)

Full disclosure: portions of this post are reprinted from my own earlier work elsewhere on the internets.


That's enough for 2014's version of Valentine mythology; we can pick it up again next year. See you next holy-day.
 
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I'm curious, Pogo....do you have any parallels that would stand up to scrutiny?.......

If by "scrutiny" you mean something stronger than whining "is not!", then good news; I am once again home and reunited with my library. Some of this will be redundant with what I put in the OP a year ago, although I get the distinct feeling that OP went unread...

In the Roman Lupercalia (a feast in honour of the pastoral god Lupercus) mentioned at the outset of this thread, young males would draw a "billet" -- a little slip of paper with a girl's name on it -- for erotic games. In 496 AD, Pope Gelasius decided to put an end to the Feast of Lupercalia, and he declared that February 14 be celebrated as St Valentine's Day.

Historically:
>> Saint Valentine's Day embraces a time of year that is historically associated with love and fertility. It encompasses the sacred marriage of Zeus and Hera in Ancient Athens and the Ancient Roman festival of Lupercus, the god of fertility. {poster note: see more on sacred marriage below]
The priests of Lupercus would perform a traditional purification ritual, slaughtering goats to the god, and after consuming wine, they would run through the streets of Rome holding aloft the skins of the goats touching anyone they met. The occasion compelled floods of young women to the streets in the belief that being touched would improve their chances of conceiving and bring forth easy childbirth. There remains some speculation over the exact date of the celebration.

The first official Saint Valentine's Day was declared on 14th of February by Pope Galasius in 496, in memory of a 3rd century martyred priest in Rome. It is not known for sure whether Pope Galasius was honouring this 3rd century priest or whether it was one of two other martyred priests associated with the 14th of February. One was Bishop of Interamna (modern Terni) and the other apparently suffered in Africa along with a number of companions. Nothing further is known about these two Saint Valentines and it is the priest in Rome that has become the most widely acclaimed of the three. << (here)

Further back, Lupercal was said to be the birthplace of Rome, the spot where Romulus and Remus were suckled by a wolf (lupus). The festival Lupercalia, on the ides of February, incited fertility for the coming year and honoured Pan (who comes down to our time as "Cupid" among other forms), who protected flocks from wolves. The idea of lupine foster-mothers was a recurring mid-Eastern mythological theme, making appearances in the origins of Zoroaster, the origins of Turkey and the Canary Islands (Canary, from canis), and even the fable of Little Red Riding Hood. But we digress.

(But to entertain that digression momentarily, if you really want to get hung up on a single tree ignoring the forest, Little Red Riding Hood is yet another manifestation of the dying-and-resurrection mythological motif. Perhaps you'd be less defensive if put that way.)

As the Christian Church rose in European influence, it subsumed the older pagan festivals and mythological personages into holy-days and saints, in this case substituting the names of real-life partners with sermons or saints' names to be emulated over the next year (with predictable popularity), and eventually coming up in the 5th century with a St. Valentine, a sort of conglomeration of several irreconcilable biographies built vaguely on the spirits of Eros/Cupid and the aforementioned Pan.

Presumably then, the Roman billets were the ancestors, if indirectly, of today's Valentine cards. I can remember a custom like this from my (Catholic) grade school, although I'm pretty sure that custom stopped well short of erotic games. :eusa_shifty: But it did involve billets.

Indeed the name of the month of February itself derives presumably from the febris ("fever") of love. In the Roman Empire Candelmas (February 2nd) commemorates Juno Februata, the virgin mother of Mars. Animals were thought this day to rise out of winter hibernation and provide predictions for the coming year, begetting our modern Groundhog Day:

The badger peeps out of his hole on Candlemas Day, and if he finds snow, walks abroad; but if he sees the sun shining he draws back into his hole. (German proverb) 3

The Celtic name for the same holiday, Imbolc ("in the belly") usually appends to the goddess/saint Bridget (Bride), though the designated Brigantian day may vary regionally from February 1st to 6th 1,2. Alternately the name of the month may come from februarius mensis, "month of purification", the last month of the Roman calendar year.

The previous Old English name for this month was solmonað "mud month"3 Good Saxon directness, predating the Norman French penchant for circumlocution.

Finally (from "sacred marriage above), part of this erotic ingredient, even after Christianization, was sacred sex, where common people engaged in sex as ritual, the couple representing spiritual union between Sophia ('wisdom') and the Redeemer. Kind of a proxy fuck, if you can first accept that fucking is an inherently spiritual act. It was called a "rite of spiritual marriage with angels in a nuptial chamber"5

More on that here and a primer here that may open some doors.


Additional sources:
1 Stone, Merlin: Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood (1979)
2 Logan, Patrick: The Holy Wells of Ireland (1980, UK)
3 Brewer, E. Cobham: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1870, UK)
4 DeLys, Claudia: The Giant Book of Superstitions (1979)
5 Angus, Samuel: The Mystery Religions and Christianity (1925)

Full disclosure: portions of this post are reprinted from my own earlier work elsewhere on the internets.


That's enough for 2014's version of Valentine mythology; we can pick it up again next year. See you next holy-day.

odd.....I don't see anything anywhere that speaks to Jesus and Horus......did you forget what you claimed already?.......
 
Excuse me but you've presented absolutely nothing in this thread beyond "Is not!" and "Luburruls!"

Poster please. Gainsayers are a dime a dozen with eight cents change. :eusa_hand:

well, if you are stupid enough to try, give me a parallel between Horus and Jesus.....I will be glad to prove you are wrong.....

And what would be the point?

the point?......I guess, backing up what you claim.....did you need more point than that?......
 
Sorry, I don't have any idea what the "church of the naturalist" is... :dunno:

I relate these things from decades of study in anthropology, mythology and religion. And these last couple of days I do it from memory as I'm away from home and my library -- which I trust a wee bit more than Wiki.

Wiki is not accepted as a legitimate research site by most accredited universities so I take Wiki with a block of salt. The Church of the Naturalist is my designation for those who practice rabid secular naturalism.
I'm familiar with the claim that you made but also understand it's a postulation put forth by some archeologists based on what appears to be correlative evidence. There is no empirical evidence making it nothing more than pure speculation, believing it is true classifies said belief as faith based, basically along the same vein as the Ancient Aliens "scientists" (tongue in cheek). Unless we develop time travel we will never be able to provide empirical evidence.

I think we're saying the same thing then. Although I have to add, never heard of "secular naturalism" either. Heard of "secular humanism" but for me this is simply ancient history, but I doubt such terms had been invented when I started self-educating which was somewhere around the Johnson Administration. And you know he was right after Lincoln, so that's a long time ago :eusa_shifty:
Naturalism is humanism taken to the extreme, radical secularism is secularism taken to the extreme, in essence both are the same as both practice a faith based belief there is no God and want to eradicate religion and spiritualism from the earth claiming both are the only real evil in the world. We have a few that post here.

The Horis/Jesus claim is predicated upon the same argument the Shroud of Turin (is the image of Jesus) claimants use. i.e. We have some empirical evidence verifying certain measurable aspects (though not connected or connectable sans speculation) ergo our claim is obviously proven......
 
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I'm curious, Pogo....do you have any parallels that would stand up to scrutiny?.......

If by "scrutiny" you mean something stronger than whining "is not!", then good news; I am once again home and reunited with my library. Some of this will be redundant with what I put in the OP a year ago, although I get the distinct feeling that OP went unread...

In the Roman Lupercalia (a feast in honour of the pastoral god Lupercus) mentioned at the outset of this thread, young males would draw a "billet" -- a little slip of paper with a girl's name on it -- for erotic games. In 496 AD, Pope Gelasius decided to put an end to the Feast of Lupercalia, and he declared that February 14 be celebrated as St Valentine's Day.

Historically:
>> Saint Valentine's Day embraces a time of year that is historically associated with love and fertility. It encompasses the sacred marriage of Zeus and Hera in Ancient Athens and the Ancient Roman festival of Lupercus, the god of fertility. {poster note: see more on sacred marriage below]
The priests of Lupercus would perform a traditional purification ritual, slaughtering goats to the god, and after consuming wine, they would run through the streets of Rome holding aloft the skins of the goats touching anyone they met. The occasion compelled floods of young women to the streets in the belief that being touched would improve their chances of conceiving and bring forth easy childbirth. There remains some speculation over the exact date of the celebration.

The first official Saint Valentine's Day was declared on 14th of February by Pope Galasius in 496, in memory of a 3rd century martyred priest in Rome. It is not known for sure whether Pope Galasius was honouring this 3rd century priest or whether it was one of two other martyred priests associated with the 14th of February. One was Bishop of Interamna (modern Terni) and the other apparently suffered in Africa along with a number of companions. Nothing further is known about these two Saint Valentines and it is the priest in Rome that has become the most widely acclaimed of the three. << (here)

Further back, Lupercal was said to be the birthplace of Rome, the spot where Romulus and Remus were suckled by a wolf (lupus). The festival Lupercalia, on the ides of February, incited fertility for the coming year and honoured Pan (who comes down to our time as "Cupid" among other forms), who protected flocks from wolves. The idea of lupine foster-mothers was a recurring mid-Eastern mythological theme, making appearances in the origins of Zoroaster, the origins of Turkey and the Canary Islands (Canary, from canis), and even the fable of Little Red Riding Hood. But we digress.

(But to entertain that digression momentarily, if you really want to get hung up on a single tree ignoring the forest, Little Red Riding Hood is yet another manifestation of the dying-and-resurrection mythological motif. Perhaps you'd be less defensive if put that way.)

As the Christian Church rose in European influence, it subsumed the older pagan festivals and mythological personages into holy-days and saints, in this case substituting the names of real-life partners with sermons or saints' names to be emulated over the next year (with predictable popularity), and eventually coming up in the 5th century with a St. Valentine, a sort of conglomeration of several irreconcilable biographies built vaguely on the spirits of Eros/Cupid and the aforementioned Pan.

Presumably then, the Roman billets were the ancestors, if indirectly, of today's Valentine cards. I can remember a custom like this from my (Catholic) grade school, although I'm pretty sure that custom stopped well short of erotic games. :eusa_shifty: But it did involve billets.

Indeed the name of the month of February itself derives presumably from the febris ("fever") of love. In the Roman Empire Candelmas (February 2nd) commemorates Juno Februata, the virgin mother of Mars. Animals were thought this day to rise out of winter hibernation and provide predictions for the coming year, begetting our modern Groundhog Day:

The badger peeps out of his hole on Candlemas Day, and if he finds snow, walks abroad; but if he sees the sun shining he draws back into his hole. (German proverb) 3

The Celtic name for the same holiday, Imbolc ("in the belly") usually appends to the goddess/saint Bridget (Bride), though the designated Brigantian day may vary regionally from February 1st to 6th 1,2. Alternately the name of the month may come from februarius mensis, "month of purification", the last month of the Roman calendar year.

The previous Old English name for this month was solmonað "mud month"3 Good Saxon directness, predating the Norman French penchant for circumlocution.

Finally (from "sacred marriage above), part of this erotic ingredient, even after Christianization, was sacred sex, where common people engaged in sex as ritual, the couple representing spiritual union between Sophia ('wisdom') and the Redeemer. Kind of a proxy fuck, if you can first accept that fucking is an inherently spiritual act. It was called a "rite of spiritual marriage with angels in a nuptial chamber"5

More on that here and a primer here that may open some doors.


Additional sources:
1 Stone, Merlin: Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood (1979)
2 Logan, Patrick: The Holy Wells of Ireland (1980, UK)
3 Brewer, E. Cobham: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1870, UK)
4 DeLys, Claudia: The Giant Book of Superstitions (1979)
5 Angus, Samuel: The Mystery Religions and Christianity (1925)

Full disclosure: portions of this post are reprinted from my own earlier work elsewhere on the internets.


That's enough for 2014's version of Valentine mythology; we can pick it up again next year. See you next holy-day.

odd.....I don't see anything anywhere that speaks to Jesus and Horus......did you forget what you claimed already?.......

What the fuck does either Jesus or Horus have to do with Valentine's Day?

:dunno:
 
What the fuck does either Jesus or Horus have to do with Valentine's Day?

:dunno:

nothing at all.....it has to do with
Horus, Osiris et al become "Jesus".

which we both know we've been discussing for several pages.......did you decide it behooved you to run away from that discussion and pretend it never happened?.....

I will let you do that...all you have to do is say "it was a stupid, untrue comment and I wish I had never made it".......there, you can cut and paste it into your reply....
 
What the fuck does either Jesus or Horus have to do with Valentine's Day?

:dunno:

nothing at all.....it has to do with
Horus, Osiris et al become "Jesus".

which we both know we've been discussing for several pages.......did you decide it behooved you to run away from that discussion and pretend it never happened?.....

I will let you do that...all you have to do is say "it was a stupid, untrue comment and I wish I had never made it".......there, you can cut and paste it into your reply....

No, YOU've been obsessed with that (and it's two pages for me because it has to do with how each user sets his own options, which speaks volumes about your power of observation). You took a single detail out of an analogy that was only there to support what is a minor point in the dynamic of how history works anyway, and then proceeded to trot in your own strawman links, asked me if I wrote them, and without waiting for an answer commenced to argue them with yourself, about a point that has zero to do with this topic in the first place. You then asked me for parallels on the actual topic, I gave you a shitload, and you reverted right back to this Horus thing. Guess those parallels were inconvenient. You haven't addressed the actual topic in any way at all, yet you've got more posts in this thread than anybody else including me.

As I said before, you can do that on your own time and quit trying to derail this thread. I understand you realize you can't shut it up, so the strategy is to bury it in irrelevant shiny objects. It's an old old trick and it ain't selling. Grow up.
 
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You took a single detail out of an analogy that was only there to support what is a minor point

actually, I merely pointed at something you claimed and said "Look! Stupid!".......you were foolish enough to defend your claim so I proved you knew jack-shit about the topic.....

now you're floundering around because you aren't honest enough to just admit it.....
 
The true Valentine's Day? Forget roses and candy, sweetheart, and kneel before Lupercalia

Hot pagan sex and lustful gods and ancient wolf goddesses and potential marriage and more sex and more than a little crazed giddy divine animal blood sacrifice.

All followed by some nice light whippings administered by nearly naked grinning boy-men, casual flagellations by goat-skin, some joyful thrashing in the name of fertility and purity and, you know, sex. Ahh, Valentine's Day.

The original, that is. Before it was called Valentine's Day, back when it was called Lupercalia, a big Roman festival in honor of the fertility god Lupercus, before the ever-scowlin' church got a hold of this ancient and rather odd and blood-pumped Roman lust-fest, co-opted it and de-sexed it stripped it of its more salacious and admittedly libertine joys, as the church is so tragically wont to do.

... Tried to convert it into a mildly consecrated (read: bland, not naked) day, the church did, "Christianize" that naughty pagan fest, and failing that because no way are you gonna trump ancient sex and lust with uptight chastity and faux-purity, they tossed in Saint Valentine to the mix, invented some nice legend, tried to turn this most funky of pagan holidays into an homage to saccharine romantic love and cherry nougat chocolates and Hallmark schmalz [sic].

... Luperci priests gathered and sacrificed goats and young dogs, the former for strength, the latter for purification and in honor of their strong sexual instinct and because it was a fertility diety and this is just what you did if you were a happy pagan citizen a couple thousand [sic] years ago.

Some hunky boys of noble birth were then led to the shrine, where the priests would dab their foreheads with a sword dipped in the animal blood, after which our baffled youths were apparently obliged to break out into a shout of purifying laughter because that's what the rite called for and no one is quite sure why and, well, wouldn't you?

Then, a feast. Meat. Wine galore. Followed by the slicing of goat skins into pieces, some of which the priests cut into strips and dipped in the blood and then handed to the boys, who would take off and run through the streets, gently touching or lashing crops and bystanders -- especially women -- with the skins along the way to inspire fertility and harvest and because hey, half-naked laughing boys wielding bloody goat skins ‚- what's not to love?

Actually, the women eagerly stepped forward to be so stroked, believing that such a blessing rendered them fertile (even if they were sterile), and procured them ease in childbearing, and made them look all gothy and cool and sexy.

... Then came the sex lottery. Oh yes. Say it like you mean it. Pretty much only have to say the words, "sex lottery," and already you're like, damn, count me in, sure beats dinner and a movie.

And all the young lasses in the city would place their names in a large urn, and the city's eligible bachelors would choose a name out of the urn and become paired for the year with his chosen woman, oftening resulting in marriage. You know, sort of like the Mormons. Only with actual sex. And booze. And without the creepy undergarments.


Lupercal was said to be the birthplace of Rome, the spot where Romulus and Remus were suckled by a wolf (lupus). The festival Lupercalia, on the ides of February, incited fertility for the coming year and honoured Pan, who protected flocks from wolves. The idea of lupine foster-mothers was a recurring mid-Eastern mythological theme, making appearances in the origins of Zoroaster, the origins of Turkey and the Canary Islands (from canis), and even the fable of Little Red Riding Hood. But we digress.

As the Christian Church rose in European influence, it subsumed the older pagan festivals and mythological personages into holy-days and saints, in the case of this day substituting the names of real-life partners with sermons or saints' names to be emulated over the next year (with predictable (lack of) popularity), and eventually coming up in the 5th century with a "St. Valentine", who was a sort of conglomeration of several irreconcilable biographies built vaguely designed on the spirits of Eros/Cupid and the aforementioned Pan.

So Happy VD And good luck in the lottery :eusa_angel:

...Because it's always good to know where your manufactured holidays really come from. Always healthy to pay homage to the true origins, realize how much calculated deceit has happened along the way. Just like Christmas and Easter and Halloween and any major holiday worth mentioning that the church gutted and renamed and from whose moist tremulous soul they tried to suck the pithy throbbing joy, ya gotta give props to the old gods, throw a karmic kiss to Lupercus and Juno and the she-wolf. Word. (ibid)

My Nov 10 Bday probably makes me the product of a VDay, er, celebration. My parents were hot numbers in their day
 
The true Valentine's Day? Forget roses and candy, sweetheart, and kneel before Lupercalia

Hot pagan sex and lustful gods and ancient wolf goddesses and potential marriage and more sex and more than a little crazed giddy divine animal blood sacrifice.

All followed by some nice light whippings administered by nearly naked grinning boy-men, casual flagellations by goat-skin, some joyful thrashing in the name of fertility and purity and, you know, sex. Ahh, Valentine's Day.

The original, that is. Before it was called Valentine's Day, back when it was called Lupercalia, a big Roman festival in honor of the fertility god Lupercus, before the ever-scowlin' church got a hold of this ancient and rather odd and blood-pumped Roman lust-fest, co-opted it and de-sexed it stripped it of its more salacious and admittedly libertine joys, as the church is so tragically wont to do.

... Tried to convert it into a mildly consecrated (read: bland, not naked) day, the church did, "Christianize" that naughty pagan fest, and failing that because no way are you gonna trump ancient sex and lust with uptight chastity and faux-purity, they tossed in Saint Valentine to the mix, invented some nice legend, tried to turn this most funky of pagan holidays into an homage to saccharine romantic love and cherry nougat chocolates and Hallmark schmalz [sic].

... Luperci priests gathered and sacrificed goats and young dogs, the former for strength, the latter for purification and in honor of their strong sexual instinct and because it was a fertility diety and this is just what you did if you were a happy pagan citizen a couple thousand [sic] years ago.

Some hunky boys of noble birth were then led to the shrine, where the priests would dab their foreheads with a sword dipped in the animal blood, after which our baffled youths were apparently obliged to break out into a shout of purifying laughter because that's what the rite called for and no one is quite sure why and, well, wouldn't you?

Then, a feast. Meat. Wine galore. Followed by the slicing of goat skins into pieces, some of which the priests cut into strips and dipped in the blood and then handed to the boys, who would take off and run through the streets, gently touching or lashing crops and bystanders -- especially women -- with the skins along the way to inspire fertility and harvest and because hey, half-naked laughing boys wielding bloody goat skins ‚- what's not to love?

Actually, the women eagerly stepped forward to be so stroked, believing that such a blessing rendered them fertile (even if they were sterile), and procured them ease in childbearing, and made them look all gothy and cool and sexy.

... Then came the sex lottery. Oh yes. Say it like you mean it. Pretty much only have to say the words, "sex lottery," and already you're like, damn, count me in, sure beats dinner and a movie.

And all the young lasses in the city would place their names in a large urn, and the city's eligible bachelors would choose a name out of the urn and become paired for the year with his chosen woman, oftening resulting in marriage. You know, sort of like the Mormons. Only with actual sex. And booze. And without the creepy undergarments.


Lupercal was said to be the birthplace of Rome, the spot where Romulus and Remus were suckled by a wolf (lupus). The festival Lupercalia, on the ides of February, incited fertility for the coming year and honoured Pan, who protected flocks from wolves. The idea of lupine foster-mothers was a recurring mid-Eastern mythological theme, making appearances in the origins of Zoroaster, the origins of Turkey and the Canary Islands (from canis), and even the fable of Little Red Riding Hood. But we digress.

As the Christian Church rose in European influence, it subsumed the older pagan festivals and mythological personages into holy-days and saints, in the case of this day substituting the names of real-life partners with sermons or saints' names to be emulated over the next year (with predictable (lack of) popularity), and eventually coming up in the 5th century with a "St. Valentine", who was a sort of conglomeration of several irreconcilable biographies built vaguely designed on the spirits of Eros/Cupid and the aforementioned Pan.

So Happy VD And good luck in the lottery :eusa_angel:

...Because it's always good to know where your manufactured holidays really come from. Always healthy to pay homage to the true origins, realize how much calculated deceit has happened along the way. Just like Christmas and Easter and Halloween and any major holiday worth mentioning that the church gutted and renamed and from whose moist tremulous soul they tried to suck the pithy throbbing joy, ya gotta give props to the old gods, throw a karmic kiss to Lupercus and Juno and the she-wolf. Word. (ibid)

My Nov 10 Bday probably makes me the product of a VDay, er, celebration. My parents were hot numbers in their day

Or they could have been celebrating Abe Lincoln. You know, the whole log cabin thing....
 
I wonder if the wife is getting me that Swiss Army Hurrycane I've been wanting as a Valentines day gift............
 

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