Valentine’s Day Origins – Lupercalia, the God Pan,

and the Werewolves

By Jo Hedesan. Published in Esoteric Coffeehouse www.esotericoffeehouse.com on 10 Feb 2009.

We’re barely out of the Chinese New Year and the next celebration is almost here:
Valentine’s Day. Since I can’t miss an opportunity to investigate a festival’s origins
and mythology, I will proceed without much further ado.

A quick search on the internet will immediately inform you that the Valentine’s Day
originates from the Roman festival of Lupercalia. But what was Lupercalia and how
did it evolve into our modern Valentine’s Day?

In its classical manifestation, Lupercalia (“The Wolf Festival”) was a bizarre ritual
where skimpily clad young men would run around whipping women with goat skin
thongs. The women were also almost naked (1). The running men were called
Luperci, the wolf people, and were divided into two “colleges” (2). The festival had
enough importance to have Julius Caesar establish a third college, the Iuliani, which
was first headed by his loyal general, Mark Anthony, of Cleopatra fame (3). The
celebration perpetuated well into Christian Rome, before an archbishop of Rome
forbade it.

Despite the fact that numerous Roman writers left testimonials about the Lupercalia,
scholars are divided about the origins and meanings of this tradition. For instance, it is
not clear what god was celebrated at the Lupercalia, if any at all. Some writers
associated the celebration with the Luperca, the she-wolf who fed the twin founders of
Rome, Romulus and Remus (4). Other times it was associated with Evander, a
legendary Greek hero who came to Rome from Arcadia (5). Most often, however, the
celebration was associated with the god Pan, or Faunus as the Romans called it (6). In
light of evidence, this is by far the most likely possibility.

In Greek mythology, the god Pan was the son of Hermes. Pan was a half-man half-
goat divinity, notoriously wearing horns on his forehead. It is considered that much of
the imagery of Satan came from his figure (7). A god of sheepherders, Pan was a
divinity of the forests, wild life, and, remarkably, fertility. He was portrayed
frequently ravishing female nymphs. His Roman counterpart, Faunus, had similar
traits and was in fact merged with Pan in later times. The sexuality of Pan would
indeed explain the young men’s lashings of women at the Lupercalia festival. The
whippings were supposed to induce fertility and can be seen as a symbolical sexual
act.

If the festival of the Lupercalia was in honor of Pan, how could we explain the name
of “Wolf Festival”, as well as the military associations the celebration had in ancient
Rome? Pan was not obviously associated with wolves, but rather with goats, and he
was not traditionally a martial god. However, the Pan celebrated in Rome was, we are
told, Pan Lykaios, the wolf-Pan. St Augustine tells us that this Pan was so named
because he held the key to the mystery of men becoming wolves (8). In other words,
Pan was the master of werewolves.
Now, the wolf if a complex symbol which I will only briefly sketch here. Today, the
wolf is associated mostly with negative traits (9), but in ancient times it was a more
ambivalent figure. The wolf is a fierce predator, whose cunning and courage would
have impressed the early Europeans. His aggressiveness made Romans associate him
with the god of war, Mars. At the same time, the wolf was also regarded as instinctive
and sexually active. Many fairy tales portray him as raping virgins (10). His famed
gluttony also probably implied sexual relations. Remarkably, scholars now consider
that the wolves of ancient Italy would have mated only in the month of February, thus
explaining the Lupercalia festival’s name (11).

In light of all this symbolism, Pan the Wolf was a god that combined fertility and
aggressiveness in one shape. He was a male god par excellence, whose sexuality was
symbolized by the young men ‘fertilizing’ women through flagellation. These
“Luperci” were more than “priests” as some scholars or popular articles portray them:
they could be seen as the embodiment of Pan Lykaios himself. It has been observed
that the young men were in fact symbolizing “werewolves” (12).

How did this rampantly sexual wolf-festival become translated in our romantic St
Valentine? As the Roman Empire evolved, the sexual connotations and animal
symbolism became subdued (13). At this stage, Pan was no longer animal-looking but
portrayed as a beautiful young man; often his cult was superseded by the god Mars
(14). The Lupercalia runs, though still performed, had degraded enough to be only
performed by the lower classes (15). Eventually they were officially abolished; yet the
Christian authorities probably thought it was wiser to maintain the festival and its
associations with love and marriage. It is a well known fact that Christianity often
superseded pagan celebrations with Christian ones. In Lupercalia’s case, a Christian
patron was found in the person of a mysterious St Valentine. A medieval Christian
legend had St Valentine uphold love and marriage in front of Emperor Claudius who
wanted to abolish it altogether (16). Today, most scholars think that the story was
probably made up. Yet under the patronage of this St Valentine, the love connotations
of the Lupercalia could be retained and survived until today.

References

(1), (4), (5), (6), (13), (14), (15) Wiseman, T. P (1995). The God of the Lupercal. The
Journal of Roman Studies, 85, pp. 1-22.
(2), (3) Wiseman, T.P. (1995). Remus: A Roman Myth. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
(7) Wikipedia. (2009). Pan (Mythology). Online. Available at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_(mythology). Accessed on 8 Feb 2009.
(8). St Augustine. City of God. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Online. Available
at: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf102.toc.html#P3325_1825420. Accessed on 9
Feb 2009.
(9) Griffith, M. (2008). The Wolf: Evil or Spiritual. Sandplay Therapists of America.
Online. Available at: http://www.sandplay.org/symbols/wolf.htm. Accessed on 8 Feb
2009.
(10) Werness, H.B. (2004). The Continuum Encyclopedia of Animal Symbolism in Art.
Continuum: New York.
(11), (12) Michels, A. K. (1953). The Topography and Interpretation of the
Lupercalia. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association,
84, pp. 35-59.
(16) Wikipedia. (2009). Saint Valentine. Online. Available at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Valentine. Accessed on 8 Feb 2009.