St. Valentine’s Day
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Emperor Claudius II decided that men made better soldiers if they had no children or wives, so he outlawed marriages for young men and banned the fertility practice of putting names in a box, but continued the practice of sacrifices and slapping women and crops with bloody strips of skin.
Along came a pagan priest by the name Valentine, who dis agreed with the marriage ban, because it was an important part of the over all Lupercalia festival.
**** As a side not: All ancient beliefs had some kind of tie to fertility and crop growth in an agrarian society.
Valentine decided to secretly marry young men and women and continued the name picking practice, which was part of the greater Lupercalia celebration. Eventually his activities were discovered and he was imprisoned never to be heard from again.In 489 AD on February 14th, Pope Gelasius officially ended the feast of Lupercalis, saying it was unchristian, and outlawed in entirely.Romance in our daily language.
The French term amour courtois (“courtly love”) was given its original definition by Gaston Paris in his 1883 article “Études sur les romans de la Table Ronde: Lancelot du Lac, II: Le conte de la charrette”. Paris said amour courtois was an idolization and ennobling discipline. The lover (idolizer) accepts the independence of his mistress and tries to make himself worthy of her by acting bravely and honorably (nobly) and by doing whatever deeds she might desire. Sexual satisfaction, Paris said, may not have been a goal or even a result, but the love was not entirely Platonic either, as it was based on sexual attraction.
Perhaps the most important and popular work was that of Andreas Capellanus’s De Amore which described the ars amandi (“the art of loving”) in twelfth century ProvenceDe Amore deals with several specific themes that were the subject of poetical debate among late twelfth century troubadours and trobairitz. The basic conception of Capellanus is that courtly love ennobles both the lover and the beloved, provided that certain codes of behaviour are respected.
Now some scholars believed that Capellanus codified his writings in specific ways to send a message.Interestingly, De amore describes the affection between spouses as an unrelated emotion, stating that “true love can have no place between husband and wife,” although they may feel even “immoderate affection” for one another. Rather, the most ennobling love is generally secret (i.e., not public), extremely difficult to obtain and unconsummated, serving as a means for inspiring men to great deeds.
It was put forward that Capellanus was really speaking about secret male-male interaction and had geared the book to his affection for a young male. De Amore gives a listing of the stages of love, which resembles in some ways the modern baseball euphemism:”Throughout all the ages, there have been only four degrees [gradus] in love:
“The first consists in arousing hope;
“The second in offering kisses;
“The third in the enjoyment of intimate embraces;
“The fourth in the abandonment of the entire person.”
Courtly love is reserved for the middle and upper classes in De Amore. Attractive farm-girls (i.e., peasant girls) are to be shunned or raped.
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Valentine Day symbols
Valentine’s Cards: During the Lupercalia party time in Rome, young men chose their sexual partners by a drawing of “billets”-small paper cards-with women’s names on them (according to Barbara Walker’s 1983 Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets). Christians later denounced the use of these cards as a lewd and pagan custom. The Church tried to substitute the exchange of prayer and sermon cards at this time of year, but the people reverted to hand-made love notes. The commercialization of the Valentine card occurred in recent history at the end of the Victorian Era.
The Heart: Venus was the Roman name for the Greek goddess of beauty, Aphrodite. Aphrodite was beautiful all over but was unique in that her buttocks were especially beautiful. Her shapely rounded apple bottom was so appreciated by the Greeks that they built a special temple to Aphrodite Kallipygos, which literally meant “Goddess with Beautiful Buttocks”.
It was the only religious building in the world that was dedicated to the worship of a woman’s buttock. Greek legends and the origin of their deities indicated all were modeled after Africans, thus the apple bottom goddess. The month of April (Aphrilis) is named after Aphrodite, and of course on April Fools’ Day people become the butt of jokes.Desmond Morris (in his 1985, Body Watching: A Field Guide to the Human Species) states that the origin of the heart symbol with its deep cleft, was the shape of human female buttocks seen from the rear, and not an actual heart.
Turn the heart upside down, with the point up and you can see it clearly. Any student of anatomy will tell you that real hearts are amorphously fist-shaped and colored bluish-brown with fatty streaks of yellow-white. Real hearts are not red and shaped like a Valentine.Today we have some females admitting that they too can appreciate a shapely set of male buttocks.
Cupid: Cupid was the name given by the Romans to the Greek god Eros (who was called Kama by the Hindus in India). He was the god of Love, Desire and Lust. Just as Venus was the mother of Cupid, Aphrodite was the mother of Eros in ancient Greek religious mythology. We see here that the goddess of Beauty gives birth to the little god of Love, Desire, and Lust. It is from Cupid’s Greek name, Eros, from which we get the words erotic and erotica. Erotic means “of, or concerning, or tending to arouse, sexual love or desire;” and “dominated by sexual love or desire.” Which means literally “to desire greedily or avariciously.” This is synonymous with lust and lusting after someone. Erotica is a sexual turn-on.
This Cupid was the god of desire and lust, not romantic love. Cupid’s relationship with his mother Venus seems to antedate Freud’s notion of the Oedipus complex. Several paintings from the Renaissance, from artists more familiar with Greek and Roman religious mythology than are we, show a rather incestuous relationship existing between Cupid and Venus.
In Bronzino’s (1545) famous painting, Cupid kisses his mother on the lips, fondles both of her breasts and one nipple, while she caresses-no kidding-his arrow. Incidentally, his buttocks are prominently displayed. Michaelangelo did a similar painting of Venus and Cupid, as we see in copies. The original was lost. An art critic possibly burned it offended by the painting’s perverse eroticism. Most of this is in art historian Edward Lucie-Smith’s 1991 book Sexuality in Western Art.

Cupid’s Arrow: There is and obvious symbolism inherent in Cupid’s arrow and an historical background on Cupid’s archery. In India Cupid represented passionate, lustful sexual desire. The famous sex manual of India the Kama Sutra was named after him.In Hinduism, Shiva is one of the three manifestations of Brahma. Kama (a.k.a. Cupid and Eros), was induced by lesser Hindu gods-who were jealous of Shiva’s dominance-to distract Shiva with love and desire.
Kama was about to shoot his “flowery” arrow of lustful fire and passion energy into Shiva when Shiva saw him and incinerated Kama with a white-hot blast of yogic energy from his third eye. The light was so brilliant that it greatly diminished the brightness of the sun. Of course, in Hinduism there is reincarnation. Kama returned as a tree. Arrows are made from straight tree saplings. The arrows aren’t “flowery” any more, but are rigid and deadly effective. And since then, Cupid prefers to do his mischief by candlelight, moonlight, or even total darkness.
The Color Red: Red is the color of life, of blood, of menstruation and of sexual excitement. In China red is joy. Chinese brides wear red! Lips of the mouth have historically been reddened, as opposed to other colors, by cosmetics, pinching or biting.The “sex flush” described by Masters and Johnson in their 1966 book, occurs during high levels of sexual excitement just before orgasm in fair-skinned people, and is a reddening blush on the face, lips, neck and chest, and genitalia of the lover. Passion is red, anger is red, and so is the Valentine heart. We also know the implications of the terms “scarlet woman,” and “red-light district.”
Chocolates:Valentine’s Day we traditionally offer chocolates to our intended valentine and not any other confection. Why? Chocolate is presumed to contain the “love drug” phenyethyamine (PEA) in sufficient amounts to inflame and excite the intended lover. Your own brain normally produces this chemical when you are in love, and when you are in the presence of your beloved. PEA intoxicates you. It feels great to be in this state. The Aztecs used chocolate as an aphrodisiac. When we present chocolates we are saying, “These chocolates are a love philter intended to excite you in my presence so that you will fall in love with me as I have already fallen for you.”However some people decide to cut to the chase as they saying… “Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.”
The Box: The chocolates are in a heart-shaped box of course. In Freudian dream symbolism (as Freud says in The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900) any type of container or vessel, such as a box, is symbolic of the female genitalia-essentially the vulva and vagina.
Flowers: There is no escaping the reality that flowers are the genitalia of plants. Flowers are sexed as male or female. Flowers emerge during the plant’s reproductive phase and they are the site of reproduction. The male pollen joins with the female element of the flower and fertilization occurs, just as the similar process occurs in the genitalia of humans. The female flower then produces the new embryonic plant seed for the next generation.So, what are we saying when we present our intended beloved with a dozen beautiful, red, long-stemmed, genitalia?
White Lace: Traditionally we see white lace on the candy box and on the heart shaped card. Ask any Victoria’s Secret catalog subscriber about the significance of lace. It is the predominant feature of expensive lingerie. Of course, lacy lingerie is worn for its practicality, ease of care, and pure comfort-and is not intended to be seen.But there is a more intense and deeper meaning behind the lacy white, especially when contrasted to the color red which symbolized the principles of woman, and this is the white which symbolizes the male’s essence, the Hindu Soma, or semen.
Traditional Hindu wedding colors are red for the woman, cream-white for the man, and gold for the fire of creation.Thus we see the presence of Anglo-Saxon and some Aryan cultural perspective in a seemingly innocuous celebration as Valentines Day.
Enjoy your Day!
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