Whip My Roman Sex Gods
You want the true Valentine's Day? Forget roses and candy, sweetheart, and kneel before the Lupercalia
By Mark Morford
Friday, February 14, 2003
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.
Because as everyone knows, the church is nothing if not all about rigid joyless dogma and romantic abstinence and mountains of little chalky candy hearts. Mmm, sanctimoniousness.
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. Did they succeed? Sort of.
Basically, it went something like this: In ancient Rome, on the 15th of February, in an altar called the Luperci sacred to the god Lupercus, in a cave in which the she-wolf goddess nursed founding twins Romulus and Remus, 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 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.
"This act of running about with thongs of goat-skin was a symbolic purification of land and men," says one rather dry, scholarly website on the topic. "For the words by which this act is designated are februare and lustrare, and the goat-skin itself was called februum, the month in which it occurred Februarius, and the god himself Februus." So, you know, there you go. February. Purity and lust and sex and gods. Really, what else do you need?
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.
But if there's one thing the sexless butt-clenched church really hates, it's sex lotteries. And free thinking. And good porn. Condoms. Margarita enemas. Literature. But especially sex lotteries. Go figure.
So along comes Pope Gelasius around 486 A.D. and declares, let's say, oh, February 14 to be dedicated to a saint, and we'll call him Saint Valentine, who might or might not be an actual martyr whose true history is murky at best, given how church records show at least four martyrs with the name Valentinus, whoops, oh well.
And of course, they outlawed the yummy sex lotto, the church did, changed the names in the urn from lusty single women to the names of pious saints to be emulated, whee what fun, and jammed their new holiday right up against the February 15 date of Lupercalia.
Which also had the added bonus of stomping all over the normal February 14 day of honoring Juno (Roman Goddess-A festival said to be of Juno Februata or Juno Februa, who presented an aspect of the Roman Lupercalia as a festival of a "Juno Februata", under the heading of February 14:), and focused it all on the makeshift Valentine, and voila, here we are: Hallmark cards and candy hearts and poisoned Ecuadorian rose workers. In a nutshell.
But of course, the modern V-Day isn't all bad. And this is not to say we should necessarily return to the old ways, a little bloodletting and lashing and animal sacrifice and random sex lotteries. Except for maybe the Mormons.
Because everyone knowns that right under the cheap veneer of Valentine's Day mega-marketing and hollow churchly romance is yet another delicious excuse to have more sex and indulge in fleshly pleasures and lick chocolate syrup off your lover's tailbone. Hopefully.
In other words, the church both succeeded in their hostile takeover, and failed miserably. Sure Valentine's Day is all romance and sentiment and Malaysian-made stuffed teddy bears on the outside, but it's all raw oysters and sly spankings and salacious romps and whipped-creamed nipples and soft divine bedroom cooing, inside.
Which is exactly as it should be. Which is exactly how we still, without even realizing it, manage to recall our delicious Lupercalia, take a big lick of ye olde pagan ways, regardless of everpresent churchly frowning and 'Be Mine' twittering and chubby Cupid chinz. Deep earthly sex and hoary gods and fertile lust and voluminous feasts of meat and wine? You're soaking in it.
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.
So. Buy those giant red balloons from Safeway. Nab that $29 heart-shaped diamelle necklace from the Shane Company. But don't forget to acknowledge that deep-down, gnawing, sly urge you're doubtlessly harboring to rush out into the streets and wait for the laughing naked boys and get yourself gently lashed with bloody goat skins and then go have sex. Just like the pagan lust-monkey you so wish to be. You go, Lupercus.