Dedication and the Soul, The Distance Between Lupercalia and Valentine's Day
Many people think of Valentine’s Day as holiday fabricated by the Hallmark company. They aren’t entirely wrong. Media, marketing, and the mass production of sweet sentiments has had a large influence on what we celebrate in February. Amorous poetry given on St. Valentine’s Day seems to have originated with the influence of Chaucer in the fourteenth century, perhaps most notably with his story Parliament of Fowls, wherein the first “love birds” gather to choose a mate for the year, and even the narrator is pushed through a gate offering two possibilities for those who serve love, bliss or pain. Love notes given as gifts acquired their ribbon and lace trimmings in the mid-nineteenth century, along with the transformation of chocolate, from a potent Aztec elixir to an ornately decorated assortment of treats, gifted in a perfectly Victorian memento box, as designed by Richard Cadbury in 1861. The advent of the penny post, in 1680 London, had already allowed people to mail their fond feelings to loved ones. Hallmark entered the scene in 1912, and quickly soared to the mass production of greeting cards, and before long Valentines, that we know today. Valentine’s Day is a socially sanctioned, domestic kind of holiday, with the power to make people feel particularly special, or particularly lonely, depending on the circumstances.
That is not to say that there is something wrong with celebrating love and dedication. These are two of the most important forces on our planet, for the individual soul and the collective wellbeing together. It is a theme at the heart of many myths and sacred texts, from Rama and Sita to Cupid and Psyche to Isis and Osiris to Inanna and Dumuzi, and far beyond, each story bringing its nuance of understanding to the mysteries we live within love, hardship, and wholeness. It is essential to our collective consciousness to explore the trials and the virtues of love and dedication to another, but there are a few things about this holiday that make me wonder about the more hidden, or unconscious, aspects of what we celebrate on February 14th. It isn’t only the odd history of Saint Valentine, stemming from Roman executions taking place on the date, or the dark legacy of the 1929 Valentine’s Day Massacre, both casting a shadow, but the fact that a lesser known ritual from the Pagan Wheel of the Year also occupies the date, or nearly so. Lupercalia, a psychic purification ritual stemming from Etruscan, and later Roman, culture takes place on February 15th, though on the surface it bears little resemblance to Valentine’s Day. In fact, the month of February takes its name from Februa, the ritual tools of purification used in this rite. The Latin word Februa means “to cleanse,” and a more ancient festival of Spring washing called Februalia, or alternately Februatio, possibly from the Sabines, was ultimately incorporated into Lupercalia.
There is a lot of debate about whether Lupercalia is an origin for Valentines Day. This is partly because what we know about how this ritual was practiced sounds brutal to our modern imaginations. It seems that the festival rites included banquets, dancing, the sacrifice of a male goat and a dog, men drawing the name of a woman from a vessel, leading to a coupling for the duration of the ritual, and the lashing of women who wished to become pregnant by priests known as Luperci, who used whips made of goat hide. If this festival is no longer practiced by new age Pagans, or if the Catholic Church took steps to abolish it, there can be little confusion as to why it was controversial. There are certainly plenty of instances when a primal ritual was intentionally replaced with a tamer, more acceptable version, and Lupercalia was banned by Pope Gelasius in the 5th Century A.D. The truth is, we can’t fully know the meaning and nuance of a mystery tradition we have not experienced in its cultural context. We can, however, take a closer look at the imagery and history, in order to understand it a little better.
Lupercalia rites took place near the Lupercal, the cave in Palatine Hill, which in Roman mythology is said to be the place where a wolf suckled the twins Remus and Romulus, who would grow up to be the founders of Rome. Rome absorbed knowledge and mythic imagery from earlier cultures, one of the most primary of which was The Etruscan civilization. In Etruscan religion, the she-wolf was an important figure. She represents the wolf goddess Lycisca. The founders of Rome are depicted as nursing from a wolf to represent that Roman civilization built their success on the foundation of Etruscan culture. Lycisca is also the wife of Lupercus, who undergoes twelve trials to prove his cosmic worthiness of becoming the new Sun god. It is on the day of the Spring Equinox that he completes these tasks and is given his reward. Yet, on the same day, while hunting a deer, he is struck by lightening and dies, only to rise from the Underworld the following morning, as the Sun. This myth, though much abbreviated here, has to do with the gradual return of the light which begins on the Winter Solstice, in the season of purification and renewal that occupies the space between Winter and Spring.
Lupercus is not the only god born in and of the dark of Winter who represents the Sun, in its return to fullness, or who dies in order to return to darkness and be born again annually. It is the story of the seasons, which is played out in the dance between Lupercus and his brother Cern, who represents Summer and takes over his reign of the earth realm, when Lupercus dies and sheds his wolf skin. This skin, found later by another hunter, is discovered to have the power to transform people into wolves, and the first man to wear it becomes the first Luperci. This is the start of the mystery cult, and many of its details are preserved in the Italian Strega tradition, by those who worship Diana as Queen of the Witches. Diana, also known by the Greeks as Artemis, is the wild maiden huntress and a symbol of the moon, a goddess for whom the wolf, the stag, the forest, and the Centaur, the mythic creature whose bow shot the lightening bolt at Lupercus, are sacred. The goat and dog are agrarian culture variations on the older imagery of the stag and the wolf, sacred representations of the power and fertility of the earth, and the instinctual wildness of the soul. These larger mythic elements reveal this to be both a story about the journey of the soul throughout a season or a lifetime, as it cycles through darkness and light, struggling with its dual nature and desire to transform, grow, seek challenge, renewal, and ultimately knowledge or transcendence, and also perhaps an ancient fertility rite which is about more than physical fertility. To what is the soul dedicated? In Raven Grimassi’s Encyclopedia of Wicca & Witchcraft, I found the following quote about Lupercus:
“In the ritual of Lupercus the wolf within is released, that which is untamed and unowned. Through this purging of the contaminations of modern domestic life the ritualist are realigned to their primal natures. Once in tune with this essential connection to Nature, they can then refocus upon the journey toward enlightenment. In this hunt for the true self, one is struck by lightening, and becomes transformed into a new light.”
What does it mean that Valentine’s Day now holds the place of this primal, ancient rite? Do these forces and the psychic need they represent still exist underneath the surface? Do we hunt for love, instead of for our truest self? Is the soul still dedicated to wildness, experience, and ultimately enlightenment? If we don’t acknowledge this in the light of day, will the unconscious ensure that we find these lessons through pain? Or, can we make room to examine the duality within us and our customs, even the ones that seem the most tame, domesticated, and commonplace? To what is your soul dedicated, and for what do you seek fertility this year?
Whether you revel in the gestures of loving acknowledgement or not, how can you love yourself and your complexity in the fiercest, wildest, deepest, and truest manner this February 14th and 15th? How can you give and receive love, while still releasing the “wolf within” to its most sacred purpose, and without asking it to be okay with being owned, tamed, or hidden under a facade?
May you truly love the wild within you, and give love from your truest self.
Ometoetl.
-This blog was written by Melusina Gomez, originally for publication with the eleventh house.