The Celebration of Love
Valentine’s day… a day where Love is traditionally celebrated between two people. The day of lovers…
We are certainly sold the commercial aspects of this day and for those not in relationship, or those that have difficult relationships, or have lost someone - it can be a time of pressure, disappointment, sadness and loneliness. A time where you are reminded that you don’t have that type of connection in your life.
I feel we all yearn for the deepening touch of love in our lives. We want to make love manifest in our life. That is the pull in relationship as lovers – perhaps in many ways misunderstood; as that pull, that attraction - is calling you to be who you truly are, to be the Love that you already are. As man and woman, as lovers, you are called to embody who you are meant to be – which is rooted in your sacred essence. Where each of your unique frequencies find themselves in a dance of unfolding a deeper union as a pulse of embodiment and alignment. This may be the highest potential within pure tantra – but on some level we do know there is potential in attraction.
I think about my life as a girl growing up and crossing the threshold heading towards womanhood. And I truly felt that being in relationship was what would make me whole, make me complete. I was looking for something in the opposite sex that would confirm something about myself. That would validate my existence in some way. What I actually got confirmed was any self-doubt or any nuance of pain, every bad belief I held about myself or didn’t even know I had. And all the little dashed dreams and pure naivety about relationship and sexuality. And still I kept looking outside of myself in relationship. Until I was sat on my windowsill one day as a young woman in my early 30’s, looking out over the beautiful welsh land around me - at this point I was actually dating two men at the same time – and I just realised - I’m not going to find whatever this is that I’m looking for this way. It was nothing to do with anything outside of me. I’m not going to find it out there. From that point on everything changed. Men stopped noticing me. Or paying me any attention. Completely. I literally became invisible overnight. That was the start of 6 years of being on my own. A deep dive into starting a much more intimate relationship with myself.
Relationship can be tough. Being single can be tough. Being together can be tough. Being alone can be tough.
So, I have been reflecting on Love, relationship and Valentine’s Day. It’s a funny thing that we have this mass consumerism around this day especially when you look at the history of it. The history around Saint Valentine isn’t so love filled in the way you may think and even that is an overlay of the church over much older pagan rituals and celebrations.
That much older celebration was called Lupercalia and was celebrated by the Romans going back to at least the 6th Century BC.
The dates of this festival were from the from the 13th of February to 15th February. It has a tradition of fertility and purification woven into its festival. Which was said to be a festival of sacrifice, blood and strange violent acts to venerate the roman fertility god Lupercus.
Sacrifices of a goat and dog were involved in the cave where the twin boys Romulus and Remus who founded Rome were reared by a she-wolf. These twins were said to be thrown out of the ancient kingdom of King Amulius into the River Tiber for their mothers broken vow of celibacy. They were rescued by a servant and placed inside a basket that the river-God then carried downriver to a wild fig tree where it became caught in the branches. The brothers were then rescued and cared for by the she-wolf. In a den at the base of Palatine Hill where Rome was then founded. It is said that the twins were then taken in by a shepherd and his wife – that wife happened to be Acca Larentia - a Roman Goddess. She is an Earth Goddess and protectress, and the divine ancestress of Rome, associated with wolves, the Underworld, and the fertility of the earth and fields.
There are many strange customs as part of this festival, drink, sex, general wildness including the act of making strips of hide from the sacrificed goats which were used to whip women. Apparently wantonly by the women as all believed that this would promote fertility not just for an individual but in the livestock, crops and for the whole community.
What is interesting is that this God Lupercus that this celebration was offered to – is a male God. And is actually already an overlay of a much older Feminine Deity than the Roman empire God, possibly called Lupa or Lupus that played a major part in the beliefs of the ancient peoples around honouring the forces of creation and the Earth Goddess for their protection and nurturance. Delving into this is not for this post but its clear these rites came from a much older ritual practice that viewed the Goddess as the provider and honoured Her accordingly.
However, by 494 CE the Christian church forbid participation in the festival and transferred the Rites of Purification to the 2nd of February. The Christian church later overlayed St Valentines as a feast day to the martyred saint in an effort to Christianise the pagan festival.
What’s interesting is there are a few candidates for who this St Valentine was. From the one being known to convert pagans to Christians, the one who supported lovers by marrying couples before God, and to one who is said to have miraculous healing powers. Also, all these men were said to have been killed by the pagan Romans which gives them martyrdom.
In many ways I can see through the passage of time how ancient rites have become whatever they were needed to be or wanted to be for that epoch of time by the evolving powers that be. And for whatever story that was needing weaving to steer the people.
And here we are now today celebrating a day of lovers that has deep roots in ancient fertility and protection rites
And in our modern-day busy lives we have lost touch with the connection of the earth, the land beneath our feet, the recognised dependence on the Goddess of Fertility to nourish and nurture our bodies, our lands, our minds and our hearts.
On Valentines I see a much bigger need for the return to the depths of Love. Not the one we have bought into through our cultures twist on the perfect relationship, or ideal man or woman. Or the need of a relationship to be whole – to be complete. Of course, we can celebrate Love. And if we are blessed to share that love with another that’s wonderful, and a gift to drink deeply from. Yet let us not forget that the knowing of the Love inside, the Love you inherently are, your sacred essence as woman, your natural beauty and inherent way of Being – is that Love.
To look to the outer for that Love is what needs to be held lovingly in our hearts. To learn how to Be and Become an expression of that Love is what our earth needs and what life calls for. It is the ground of who we truly are as essence that we need to really know for all relationships to be nurtured in our lives.