Happy Lupercalia!

Tomorrow is the day for the annual Ancient Roman wolf’s festival, a wild, loud, free-spirited romp to remember, and if this is new to you, you can thank the remarkable skill of the Church when it came to appropriating pagan rituals and heathen holidays. Apparently, random sex lotteries, blood sacrifices, and naked men running in the fields and streets, whipping the women with strips of goat’s hide, wasn’t quite to their taste, so they pushed the less sinful Valentine’s instead. Their loss.

Lupercalia was connected to the cult of the god Faunus, and believed to purify the city and protect the cattle. They even had their own priesthood: the Luperci («brothers of the wolf» and I’m totally stealing that!) along with Netflix-worthy rituals like sacrificing dogs and goats, and anointing their foreheads with blood from the knife, whilst laughing. Because why not. As they ran, women often got in their way on purpose to be whipped, as it would render them more fertile.

The Christian church forbid participation in the festival in In 494 CE, but reportedly, not everyone cared …

Any resemblance between Lupercalia and Yrarennet in Iron Wolf is entirely coincidental, I have never taken part in a naked whipping fest, and if I did, I can’t remember 😬

Image: Lupercalia, Andrea Camassei, ca 1635, currently at Museo del Prado, Madrid. Public domain.