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
...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)
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
...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)
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