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Tuesday, 15 February 2022

Happy Lupercalia


Today is the Feast of Lupercalia. The Roman celebration happens on the 13th, 14th and 15th February, the old Feast of the Wolf with celebrations. Food and merriment, music and dancing. The priests were called lupercali, who sacrificed animals and then smeared themselves in the blood. They might've got into a frenzy about it and resorted to being beastly and wolfish, taking to the streets across Roman cities to frighten women. Much more infamy goes on. Men pull the names of women out of a jar, and pursued them for sex, and if things went well, they might've fallen in love. Marriages happened as a result of Lupercalia. Sometimes things didn't go well, and many women were traumatised. The feral nature of the Luperci priests on the celebration were actually in charge of the event, and acted as leaders. Lupercalia was possibly a festival of the wolf goddess Lupa that nursed the children called Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome. Yet the celebration is also for Faunus, a nature god of fertility. It's known that goats and dogs were sacrificed at every Lupercalia. And it was believed a whack from a luperci priest made women more fertile. Pope Galasius I of the year 494 CE condemned the annual Lupercalia celebration. He incorporated it into a Christian holiday on 14th February of St. Valentine's Day. 

She Wolf Night

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