Valentine's Day... and werewolves???

As I was bemoaning the sad lack of werewolf news over the past few weeks, I suddenly remembered The Fortean Times, a site with breaking news on all things wild and wooly. Eff Yahoo News! That's where I found this interesting article explaining the true origins of Valentine's day.

As it explains, and as I've heard before, most people believe Valentine's day started with St. Valentine. The Romans didn't want their soldiers to get married, blah blah blah, St. Valentine performed secret marriages cause you can't stop love, blah blah blah, he died and the Christians got another holiday that would slowly succumb to the Hallmark commercialism of the present day.

Well, just as with other Christian holidays like Christmas, Easter, and that one where Father Strzelec always forgot his heavy shiny robe and had to send an altar boy to get it, Valentine's day was rooted in pagan holidays. Specifically, one involving, wait for it...WEREWOLF!


From Werewolves with Love: The History of Valentine's Day by Brad Steiger

February Is for Mating

Actually, there is no proof that the good priest Valentine even existed.

Some scholars trace the period of mid-February as a time for mating back to ancient Egypt. On those same days of the year that contemporary lovers devote to St. Valentine, men and women of the Egyptian lower classes determined their marital partners by the drawing of lots.

But the time of coupling that comes with the cold nights in February before the spring thaw likely had its true origin very near where Valentine supposedly met his demise.

Among the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Wolf Charmer was called the Lupicinus. Perhaps hearkening back to prehistoric times, the Lupicinus may well have been an individual tribesman who had a particular affinity for communicating with wolves. As the tribes developed agriculture and small villages, it was necessary to have a person skilled in singing with the wolves and convincing them not to attack their domesticated animals. The Lupicinus had the ability to howl with the wolves and lead them away from the livestock pens. In some views, because he also wore the pelt of a wolf, the Lupicinus also had the power to transform himself into a wolf if he so desired.

Rites of the Lupercalia

The annual Lupercali festival of the Romans on February 15 was a perpetuation of the ancient blooding rites of the hunter in which the novice is smeared with the blood of his first kill. The sacrificial slaying of a goat—representing the flocks that nourished early humans in their efforts to establish permanent dwelling places—was followed by the sacrifice of a dog, the watchful protector of a flock that would be the first to be killed by attacking wolves.

The blood of the she-goat and the dog were mixed, and a bloodstained knife was dipped into the fluid and drawn slowly across the foreheads of two noble-born children. Once the children had been “blooded,” the gore was wiped off their foreheads with wool that had been dipped in goat milk. As the children were being cleansed, they were expected to laugh, thereby demonstrating their lack of fear of blood and their acknowledgment that they had received the magic of protection against wolves and wolfmen.

The god Lupercus, represented by a wolf, would next inspire and command men to behave as wolves, to act as werewolves during the festival.

Lupus (wolf) itself is not an authentic or original Latin word, but was borrowed from the Sabine dialect. Luperca, the she-wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus, may have given rise to secret fraternities known as the Luperci, who sacrificed she-goats at the entrances to their “wolves’ dens.” For centuries, the Luperci observed an annual ritual of chasing women through the streets of Roman cities and beating them with leather thongs.

Scholars generally agree that such a violent expression of eroticism celebrated the ancient behavior of primitive hunting tribes corraling captive women. Once a wolfman had ensnared a woman with his whip or thong, he would lead her away to be his wife or lover for as long as the “romance” lasted. Perhaps, as some scholars theorize, this yearly rite of lashing at women and lassoing them with leather thongs became a more acceptable substitute for the bloodlust of the Luperci’s latent werewolfism that in days past had seen them tearing the flesh of innocent victims with their teeth.

As the Romans grew ever more sophisticated, the Lupercali would be celebrated by a man binding the lady of his choice wrist to wrist, and later by passing a billet to his object of desire, suggesting a romantic rendezvous in some secluded place.

Later of course, the Christians, unable to stop the merriment, transformed the holiday, ridding it of its sexual and violent werewolf overtones. That combined with the needs of the budding aristocracy to use marriage as a tool of social class gave us the prototype for the modern holiday of Valentine's Day.

Which is better? Buying roses and getting the silent treatment from your girlfriend cause you didn't do enough to make the day special, or smearing blood on kids and dressing up like a werewolf to rape women? The world may never know.