Feast Days for the Radically Reverent ~ St. Valentine's Day
Valentine’s Day.
The words bring up conflicting feelings in so many of us, as does the subject of love, generally speaking.
But celebrations on this day are quite old, ancient in fact, and carried heft and weight long before Hallmark came into the picture.
The day was first honored as a series of days, the 15th – 18th of February, in the Roman Empire. These feast days were known as Lupercalia, sacred to the Goddess Juno and the God Pan. Lupercalia was not about erotic love between people.
If anything, it was about the erotica of the land itself as it started to wake up to the first hints of Spring. These feast days were about purifying and waking up. Whips were used to asperge the land as well as to lightly whip people into wakefulness after the long slumber of Winter. There is evidence that people donned the sacred goat horns of the God Pan, ran around, caused mischief and caroused as they woke up their bodies and their blood and sent out intentions for good health (including good sexual health) for the coming year.
So, there is a briskness to this day. An invitation to wake up, to return to wakefulness, to take care of yourself and to bless yourself…and the land where you live…with health and vitality for the coming year.
Then, there is the source of the name of our modern holiday/holy day, the martyr St. Valentine who was a Christian in a time when it was deadly to be one.
The Saint seems to have had something of the romantic in him…he was known for performing marriages for people who legally were not allowed to wed one another, and he was also known for performing marriages that allowed men to get out of conscripted military service.
This draft dodging, illegal wedding performing, priest was put to death for his actions and beliefs but his legacy lived on in the form of this day which centered not romantic love, but the love of Christ for all Creation…a love that, as legend goes, St. Valentine made tangible in the form of paper hearts…the ancestors to today’s Valentine Day cards.
It was later, under the influence of Chaucer, that the day became synonymous with romantic love…and even as it has, it has still not lost all of its original root stock because in many European countries rituals around Valentine’s Day also honor the soon to come Spring.
When I reflect on the different layers found in this one holy day what I see is that Valentine’s Day is actually a day for many different kinds of love.
It is a day to honor your love of the land and the care you have for yourself and your precious body and health.
It is a day to honor love that has been marginalized or forbidden or made illegal.
It is a day to honor love that triumphs over war.
And it is a day to honor romantic love and the love that flows through all of Creation.
It is a day to honor all of these.
So, it is a day for you no matter what your relationship status may be.
Valentine’s Day belongs to all of us.
Areas to especially consider as you make your petition include:
- Physical health, returning to vitality and full energy after Winter’s slumber.
- “Waking up” in whatever ways and on whatever levels are appropriate for you
- Matters of the heart: including heart healing, heart opening, and leading with heart.
- Love and Romance whether that involves finding the right partner, deepening an already present relationship, or healing from a relationship that has ended.
- Generosity on all levels
- Coming into right relationship with the waking land
As always, those who wish to add extra magic to their celebrations may order the custom candle for February: Heart Flame. Find it here.
What are Feast Days for the Radically Reverent?
Born into a family full of many devoted Catholic practitioners, Feast Days are one of the aspects of folk tradition that I love best. There are hundreds of Feast Days – in fact, according to official Catholic calendars every single day is a feast day – and that alone is a though worth pondering – what would happen if you treated every day as a feast day?
Years ago in my own practice I began creating altars and honoring ceremonies on Feast Days that have deep personal significance to me and inviting my community of soulful seekers to join in the process of honoring by sending in their own prayer requests, blessing ways, petitions, and thanks givings.
The results are always stunning. They remind me again and again that the act of blessing is transformative and also deeply universal — every year individuals from all over the world and many different cultural and ethnic backgrounds identifying as Christian, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and followers of various alternative spiritual paths come together in blessing. It is a profound time always and one felt deeply by all participants.
These Feast Days can be found on various calendars but we celebrate them together with one thing in common – radical reverence; this is reverence that goes right down to the root of things in plain speech and in direct, heart-felt actions.
Feast Days for the Radically Reverent are open to all people who would like to come together to celebrate, request, and bless. They are 100% free of charge and always will be.