Valentine's Day

February 14th is the holiday that is today known as
Valentine's Day. This holiday started out as the
Roman Pagan festival Lupercalia, sacred to Juno-Lupa
(the she-wolf Goddess of the ancient Roman religion)
and also to the God Faunus (who was similar to the
Greek God Pan).

Lupercalia was a fertility festival that included
the sacrifice of dogs, goats and a female wolf.
On this day the priests of Pan ran through the streets
of Rome whacking young women with goatskin thongs to make
them fertile. The women seemed to enjoy the attention and
often stripped in order to become better targets. Also
during this orgiastic festival, men chose their sexual
partners by drawing the names of women out of a bowl.
Lupercalia actually kicked off a four day Festival
of Love in honor of Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love.

At some point February's orgiastic Pagan Festival of
Love had its name changed to Valentine's Day. Linguistic
scholars claim that the very name of "Valentine" has Pagan
origins. It seems that it was customary for French peasants
of the Middle Ages to pronounce a 'g' as a 'v'. Consequently,
the original term may have been the French 'galantine' rather
than the word 'valentine'. The word 'galantine' refers to an
amoral young man known for being sexually promiscuous and
having many affairs.

At some point the Roman Church came up with a bogus 'St.
Valentine' to honor on this day, but has always found it
rather difficult to explain this faux-saint's connection
to the not-particularly church-like pleasures of flirtation,
love and sex. Today however, the popular holiday of Valentine's
Day has been mostly sanitized, since it is usually celebrated
with Hallmark cards rather than orgies.


(excerpted from an article by David Kim)