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For The Love Of Valentines
By Mama Donna Henes, Urban Shaman
The Romans celebrated the sacred sexual frenzy febris,
in Latin) of the Goddess of Amorous Love, Juno Februa, on February 14, coinciding with the time when the birds in Italy were thought to mate. These orgiastic rites of the Patroness of the Passionate Heart, merged with Lupercalia, the festivities in honor of the pagan god, Pan which were observed on the following day, February 15. On Lupercalia, (named, incidentally, in honor of the she-wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus), men and women inscribed their names on love notes or billets and then drew lots to determine who their sex partner would be during this festival of erotic games.
Lupercalia, which combined elements of worship of Juno Februa and Her northern equivalent, the Norse goddess Sjofn, was the original Valentine's Day. Naturally, the fathers of the early Christian Church outlawed its observance as lewd and heathenish. However, they were quite unable to halt the practice. Eventually it was necessary to create a sainted martyr whose feast day would be observed on February 14th. In this way, the Church could sanction a celebration that it simply could not suppress. There are, depending on the source, anywhere from three to eight Saint Valentines. Each has a conflicting biography concocted by a different author. But in every version he emerges as the patron of lovers, bowing to the original intention of the occasion.
The first St. Valentine's Day was celebrated in 468 AD. In the beginning, the Church attempted to institute the practice of exchanging billets printed with pious sermons and scripture to encourage a holy attitude -- what a dry substitute for a direct experience of divine ecstasy that the people craved. Needless to say, the experiment failed on a grand scale. By the fourteenth century, the celebration of Valentine's Day had lost all Christian content and had reverted back to the love fests of old, albeit, tempered by more than a thousand years of church-imposed morality built on the separation and opposition of body and soul. One now strove for perfection of the spirit through the repression of the body. Courtly love, which was chaste and pure, was the ideal in the Middle Ages.
Valentine greetings have their roots in the love billets exchanged at Lupercalia, though the first love letter was written on a clay tablet some four thousand years ago. It was signed, “your loving wife who has had a child.” Charles Duc d’Orléans is credited as being one of the early creators of modern valentines. Confined in the Tower of London after the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, he sent his wife, “poetical or amorous addresses,” that is, rhymed love letters. Friendship cards were extremely popular in eighteenth century Germany.
The first American valentines were crude sorts of homemade cards exchanged by the colonists, but in 1723, Valentine “writers” were imported from England. These booklets, which included many verses and messages that could be copied out onto fine gilt or decorative papers in fancy script, were do-it-yourself manuals for the creation of a much more sophisticated and finely crafted Valentine project. Commercially printed valentines were introduced in about 1800. John McLoughlin, a New York printer is purportedly the perpetrator of the comic, or “vinegar,” valentine. They were popularized by the cartoon designs of Charles Howard that were called “penny dreadfuls.”
The symbols of Lupercalia come down to us intact, but thoroughly cleansed, completely abstracted from their original flesh and blood intensity. The cute little chubby Valentine cherub so familiar to us is an insipid and impoverished characterization of Cupid, the Roman equivalent of the Greek god Eros, the Hindu Kama. He was the son of the Roman, Venus and Mercury, The Greek, Aphrodite and Hermes. S/he was thus an Herm-Aphrodite, an embodiment of the duality and opposition of the sexual union.
The arrows that Cupid shoots are the phallus, the lingham. These projectiles of passion are often depicted as piercing the heart. The heart, the center of the soul. A bittersweet image, which intimates that love hurts. A graphic image of penetration which is reminiscent of the arrows that Hopi's shoot into rounded, vulvic bundles of corn as a ceremonial gesture of fertility.
We still send each other presents, jewels and sweets as well as love letters and cards, Lupercalia billets inscribed with the names of our desired sexual partners, decorated with cupids and arrows, birds, flowers and hearts. The other symbols are clear, but just what is this heart-shape supposed to signify, anyway? Certainly it bears no resemblance whatsoever to an anatomically correct actual heart. The zoologist, Desmond Morris speculates that the heart symbol is more reminiscent of a bending over buttocks -- because our ancestor kissing cousins, the apes, do it from behind. Pulease! Spare me.
The horizontal-double-dip-cone-of-a-shape that we call a heart has to be two round breasts above the magical triangle of love. A female torso. The tits and lips of the late Great Mother Earth, Herself. The love of our lives.
Let Her never be out of our hearts.
- Mama Donna
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Donna Henes is an internationally renowned urban shaman, eco-ceremonialist, award-winning author, syndicated columnist, popular speaker and workshop leader whose joyful celebrations of celestial events have introduced ancient traditional rituals and contemporary ceremonies to millions of people in more than
100 cities since 1972. In addition to her popular public rituals for equinoxes and solstices, she is the official Grand Spirit Marshall of the world famous Greenwich Village Halloween Parade and the Mistress of Blessing Ceremonies for NYC Earth Day Festivities.
She has published four books, a CD, an acclaimed quarterly journal and writes a column for UPI (United Press International) Religion and Spirituality Forum. Mama Donna, as she is affectionately called, maintains a ceremonial center, spirit shop,
ritual practice and consultancy in Exotic Brooklyn, NY where she works with individuals, groups, institutions, municipalities and corporations to create meaningful ceremonies for every imaginable occasion.
For information about upcoming events and services contact:
Mama Donna's Tea Garden & Healing Haven
PO Box 380403
Exotic Brooklyn, New York, NY 11238-0403
Phone: 718/857-1343
Email: CityShaman@aol.com
www.DonnaHenes.net
www.MamaDonnasSpiritShop.com/
www.TheQueenofMySelf.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Henes
http://youtube.com/watch?v=yAR-aIiQ_xE
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