Roman Festivals

The festival of Juno begins on June 1st and continues through June 2nd.

  • Themes: Femininity; Love; Relationships; Romance; Kinship; Time; Protection (Women and Children); Leadership.
  • Symbols: Cypress; Peacocks; Cuckoo; Luxurious Clothing; Figs; Moon (or Silver Items)
About Juno:

The supreme goddess of the Roman pantheon, Juno offers a helping hand in every aspect of our relationships, especially the safety and happiness of women and children in those settings. Juno is also a very modern minded goddess, taking an active role in public life and finances. Beyond this, she rules women’s cycles, giving her connections with the moon. Art depicts Juno always wearing majestic clothing befitting the “Queen of Heaven.”

To do today:

According to Roman folklore, marrying during the Festival of Juno (June 1st or 2nd) ensures a long, happy relationship. So, if you’re planning a wedding or an engagement, or even moving in together, Juno can bless that commitment if you time the big step for today! As part of your devotion ritual, don’t forget to wear special clothing (perhaps something your partner especially likes) to invoke Juno’s attention and loving energy.

If you’d like to connect with Juno’s feminine force, her leadership skills, or her sense of timing within yourself, eat some fig-filled cookies today (or just some figs), saying:

Juno, bring _______ to my spirit, my wish fulfill.
By your power, through my will.

Fill in the blank with whatever aspect of Juno you most need to develop.

Found in: 365 Goddess

  • Themes: Health; Kinship; Change; Opportunity
  • Symbols: Beans; Pork
  • Presiding Goddess: Carna
About Carna:

Goddess of protection, and of health and well-being of humans, especially small children. She presided over the intestines, heart, and other human organs. Some scholars have described Carna as being a Goddess of good digestion.

When parents appealed to Carna, this Goddess would enter the home and perform certain rites to bar a strix from entering the house. The strix was sort of a supernatural screech owl. If this evil creature could, it would fly in at night and eat a sleeping child’s intestines so the child would not get good nourishment and waste away.

To do today:

Romans traditionally gathered with their family on this day, offering Carna beans and pork to thank her for continued good health. This translates into a meal of pork, beans, and bacon to internalize her well-being! If you’re a vegetarian, just stick with the beans.

To get Carna’s assistance in getting an opportunity to open up, try this bit of sympathetic magic: Take any bean and go to your door. Stand before the door and say:

Carna, help this magic begin;
my future turns on your hinge.
Open the way, starting today!

Open the door as you say “open the way” and put the bean outside in a safe place to draw Carna’s opportunities to you.

To permanently close a chapter in your life, just alter the spell a bit. This time begin with the door open, saying:

Carna, help me leave the past behind;
by this spell this situation bind.
Away it goes, the door is closed!

Put the bean outside the door and close it as you say “the door is closed,” leaving the problem outside your life.

From: 365 Goddess
and The Goddess Dictionary

May 29 is the date given for the Roman festival of Ambarvalia, or the Corn Mother Festival. The Goddess Ceres, the food giver, now has her corn festival, which was the cause of a great deal of festivity. At these festivals they sacrificed a bull, a sow, and a sheep, which, before the sacrifice, were led in procession thrice around the fields. It is from this practice that the name Ambarvalia comes Ambio meaning I go round and Arvum meaning field.

These feasts were of two kinds, public and private. The private were solemnized by the masters of families, accompanied by their children and servants, in the villages and farms out of Rome. Celebrants gathered to walk around the freshly plowed fields in joyous processions, wearing crowns of oak leaves and singing hymns to the Earth.The public festivals were celebrated in the boundaries of the city, and in which twelve fratres arvales walked at the head of a procession of the citizens, who had lands and vineyards at Rome. During the procession, prayers would be made to the goddess.

Gods of our fathers, we purify the fields, we purify the farming folk. 
O gods, drive evil outside our boundaries. 
Let the crop not mock the harvest with deceiving grasses 
nor the swift wolves scare the slower lamb.

~Tibullus

The ancient Romans celebrated the Lemuria on May 9, 11, and 13. During these times they honored the wandering ancestral and family spirits. Many modern people still make the trip to the cemetery during the Memorial Day weekend for the purpose of putting flowers on graves, a way of acknowledging and remembering deceased family members.

However, it is not necessary to go to cemeteries to honor your ancestors. In your long lineage, most of your ancestors will not have been buried near you, and some will have been cremated and their ashes scattered or their physical bodies lost. This day of remembrance is not to honor a decayed physical body, but to honor the bloodlines that led to your existence.

Set up a spot within your home as a temporary ancestor altar; choose a setting that will not be disturbed for at least a week. On this altar place what pictures you have of deceased family members. If you have no pictures, print out their names on a nice piece of paper. Arrange a small vase of fresh flowers near the pictures. Burn lavender or rose incense daily near this area.

Sometime during each day of this week, go to your remembrance altar and talk with your ancestors. Don’t forget to call upon the ones so far back in your lineage that you never met them. burn a white candle there for at least an hour each day.

Perhaps you have a few immediately deceased family members with whom you didn’t get along. Most people do. If you find their spirit energies causing problems (and some will do this), simply remove their pictures until they can behave themselves. This may sound silly, but it works on most spirits. They want to be remembered and acknowledged not put out of mind and sight.

Often those family members with whom there was the most friction will be of most help because they may want to make up for bad karma. Occasionally, a very few will be incorrigible and will have to be denied admittance to your home.

Each day, ask your ancestors for advice and help. If you meditate near this shrine, you may well find yourself visiting with loved ones. And remember to think about and call upon them throughout the rest of the year, especially at important occasions. You can light candles, or set extra places at the table for them during seasonal festivities such as birthdays, thanksgiving and Christmas.

From: Moon Magick

On April 15th, every year, the Ancient Romans held the festival of Fordicia, also called Hordicidia. This festival was in honor of Tellus, or Terra Mater, the Roman personification of the earth.

Terra Mater or Tellus Mater was a goddess personifying the Earth in Roman mythology, with both names meaning “Mother Earth” (a common metaphorical expression for the Earth and its biosphere as the giver and sustainer of life) in Latin. She was associated with Ceres in respect to growing crops, was responsible for the productivity of farmland, and was also associated with marriage, motherhood, pregnant women, and pregnant animals. Her Greek counterpart is Gaia.

During the festivities, a pregnant cow was sacrificed, the calf fetus burned and the ashes saved for the Parilia festival (an agricultural festival performed annually on April 21). The whole event was governed by the Vestal Virgins and the Pontifex Maximus.

The purpose of the sacrifice was to assure the fertility of the planted grain already growing in the womb of Mother Earth in the guise of Tellus, to whom the sacrifice was offered. As with certain other rituals over which the Vestals presided, the unborn calf is a liminal or mediating being: not yet born, but living; not a full-fledged victim, but sacrificed. The role of the Vestals emphasizes their importance in linking through the ritual reuse of elements the Earth’s fertility, the health and safety of the flocks, and the security of the city, including and especially its military security against invasion.

A similar spring festival in China was witnessed in 1804 by the British ambassador to China, John Barrow. At the temple of Earth, a large porcelain cow was carried in procession then shattered to reveal several small cow-images inside. These were distributed among the people as tokens of a good growing season. Fowler speculated that the Chinese rite was in origin an animal sacrifice similar to that of the Fordicidia.

A Ritual For Tellus Mater

  • Color: Green
  • Element: Earth
  • Offering: Go outside the community and find land to clean up.
  • Daily Meal: Vegetarian

Altar: Upon a green cloth place several large stones of different sorts, some in a clay bowl of water; a clay bowl of salt, a loaf of thick, nourishing black bread with herbs and vegetable gratings in it, a chalice of herbal tea, boughs of greenery, and four green candles.

Invocation to Tellus Mater

Our Mother lies beneath our feet
And holds up our every step.

There is nowhere that we can walk
Where She does not lie beneath us.

There is nothing that we can eat
That will nourish our bodies,
Those bodies that are made from Her clay,
That does not come from Her
And Her other children.

We are born of Her
As we are born of woman,
Each and every one of us.

No matter who we are,
No matter where we walk,
No matter what we think,
We are still Her children.

Hail, Mother of All Things!
Hail, bounteous one, giver of life,
And taker of life back into your breast.

From you we all proceed
And to you we shall all return.

Chant:

The Earth is our mother, we must take care of her,
The Earth is our mother, we must take care of her,

Hey and a ho and a ho na na
Hey and a ho and a ho na na

(All join hands while chanting and move in a spiral dance around the room, four times in and out. Then the bread and tea is passed around. It is important that much work be done on the Earth today, both in and out of the community’s land.)

Sources:

M066333

The month of March was the traditional start of the campaign season, and the Tubilustrium was a ceremony to make the army fit for war. It was held on March 23, the last day of the Greater Quinquatrus (the festival of Mars and Minerva), and it occurred again on May 23.

The sacred trumpets (tubae) were originally war trumpets, but later they were used for ceremonial occasions. It is not clear if the army was involved, or if it was merely a ceremony to purify the trumpets used in summoning the assembly on the following day.

The ceremony was held in Rome in a building called the Hall of the Shoemakers (atrium sutorium) and involved the sacrifice of a ewe lamb. Romans who did not attend the ceremony would be reminded of the occasion by seeing the Salii dancing through the streets of the city.

Found at: Wikipedia

The Quinquatrus (March 19 through March 23) was named for the fact that it was the fifth day after the Ides (by the Roman method of inclusive counting), but popularly it came to be regarded as a five-day holiday in honor of Mars.

It marked the start of the traditional campaign season for the army. The day also became a feast day for Minerva, despite any clear link between the two deities. (The reason probably was that Minerva’s temple on the Aventine was dedicated on that day.) It seems that women were accustomed to consult fortune-tellers and diviners upon this day.

This primary festival of Minerva was mainly celebrated by artisans but also by students. Minerva, was the virgin goddess of poetry, medicine, wisdom, commerce, weaving, crafts, the arts, dyeing, magic, science, and the inventor of music. She is often depicted with her sacred creature, an owl, which symbolizes her ties to wisdom. March 23, Day of Artisans, is specifically dedicated to her.

As Minerva Medica she is the patroness of physicians. Minerva is believed to be the inventor of numbers and musical instruments. She is thought to be of Etruscan origin, as the goddess Menrva or Menerva. Later she was equated with the Greek Athena and as such is also sometimes associated as a Goddess of war.

She is the daughter of Jupiter. In the temple on the Capitoline Hill she was worshiped together with Jupiter and Juno, with whom she formed a powerful triad of gods. Another temple of her was located on the Aventine Hill. The church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva is built on one of her temples.

Source: Pantheon.org

image_thumb31

The Ides of March is the name of the 15th day of March in the Roman calendar.

The word Ides comes from the Latin word “idus“, a word that was used widely in the Roman calendar indicating the approximate day that was the middle of the month. The term ides was used for the 15th day of the months of March, May, July, and October, and the 13th day of the other months. The Ides of March was a festive day dedicated to the god Mars and a military parade was usually held.

In modern times, the term Ides of March is best known as the date on which Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 B.C. Caesar was stabbed to death in the Roman Senate by a group of conspirators led by Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus.

Another point which arises is Shakespeare’s use of the Ides of March and (the lack of doubt in) Marcus Brutus’ decision to assassinate Caesar to portray an atmosphere of madness, pleasure, and pandemonium. It is said that on ides of March the sea succumbs to chaos and the full moon brings high tides. All these points give the Ides of March a very mysterious quality.

The ides were originally meant to mark the full Moon (the “halfway point” of a lunar month), but because the Roman calendar months and actual lunar months were of different lengths, they quickly got out of step. The ancient Romans considered the day after the calends (first of the month), nones (ninth day before the ides, inclusive), or ides of any month as unfavorable. These were called dies atri.

According to Plutarch, a seer had foreseen that Caesar would be harmed not later than the Ides of March; and on his way to the Theatre of Pompey (where he would be assassinated), Caesar met the seer and joked, “The ides of March have come”, meaning to say that the prophecy had not been fulfilled, to which the seer replied “Aye, Caesar; but not gone.” This meeting is famously dramatized in William Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, when Caesar is warned by the soothsayer to “beware the Ides of March.” Furthermore, Suetonius writes that the haruspex Spurinna warns Caesar of his death which will come “not beyond the Ides of March” as he is crossing the river Rubicon.

In Canada, the Ides of March is celebrated with the drinking of Bloody Caesars.
Here’s a recipe:

  • 6 oz. Clamato Juice
  • 1–1½ oz. Vodka
  • 2 Dashes hot sauce
  • 4 Dashes Worcestershire sauce
  • Celery salt
  • Freshly ground pepper
  • Lime wedge
  • 1 Crisp celery stalk

Rim the glass (usually a high ball glass) with celery salt, and a lime wedge.

Found at Wikipedia

lupercalia

Lupercalia is uniquely Roman, but even the Romans of the first century were at a loss to explain exactly which deity or deities were being exalted. It hearkens back to the days when Rome was nothing more than a few shepherds living on a hill known as Palantine and was surrounded by wilderness teeming with wolves.

Lupercus, protector of flocks against wolves, is a likely candidate; the word lupus is Latin for wolf, or perhaps Faunus, the god of agriculture and shepherds. Others suggest it was Rumina, the goddess whose temple stood near the fig tree under which the she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus. There is no question about Lupercalia’s importance. Records indicate that Mark Antony was master of the Luperci College of Priests. He chose the Lupercalia festival of the year 44BC as the proper time to offer the crown to Julius Caesar.

February occurred later on the ancient Roman calendar than it does today so Lupercalia was held in the spring and regarded as a festival of purification and fertility. Each year on February 15, the Luperci priests gathered on Palantine Hill at the cave of Lupercal. Vestal virgins brought sacred cakes made from the first ears of last year’s grain harvest to the fig tree. Two naked young men (called Lupercii) asisted by the Vestals, sacrificed a dog and a goat at the site. The blood was smeared on the foreheads of the young men and then wiped away with wool dipped in milk.

The Lupercii them skinned the sacrificed goat and ripped the hide into strips which they tied around their naked waists and led groups of priests around the pomarium, the sacred boundary of the ancient city, and around the base of the hills of Rome. The occasion was happy and festive.

They then got drunk, and ran around Rome striking everyone they met with strips of the goat hide. This act supposedly provided purification from curses, bad luck, and infertility. Young women who were touched in this manner were thought to be specially blessed, especially in regards to fertility and procreation.

It is from these implements of purification, or februa, that the month of February gets its name.

Long after Palentine Hill became the seat of the powerful city, state and empire of Rome, the Lupercalia festival lived on. Roman armies took the Lupercalia customs with them as they invaded France and Britain. One of these was a lottery where the names of available maidens were placed in a box and drawn out by the young men. Each man accepted the girl whose name he drew as his love – for the duration of the festival, or sometimes longer.

Lupercalia, with its lover lottery, had no place in the new Christian order. In the year 496 AD, Pope Gelasius did away with the festival of Lupercalia, citing that it was pagan and immoral. He chose Valentine as the patron saint of lovers, who would be honored at the new festival on the fourteenth of every February. The church decided to come up with its own lottery and so the feast of St. Valentine featured a lottery of Saints. One would pull the name of a saint out of a box, and for the following year, study and attempt to emulate that saint.

If you are interested, you can read more about Valentine’s Day (and how it came to be what it is today) on it’s own separate page.

A modern approach to the Lupercalia is as follows:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

  • Themes: Love; Passion; Romance; Sexuality
  • Symbols: Doves; Flowers; Berries; Trees; Pine Cones
  • Presiding Goddess: Venus
About Venus:

Venus was originally an Italic goddess of blossoms; hearts and flowers have slowly become attributed to her loving, passionate energies. In fact, her name became the root for the word venerate – to lift up, worship, or esteem. So it is that Venus greets pre-spring efforts for uplifting our hearts with positive relationships.

To Do Today:

During Lupercalia, an ancient predecessor of Valentine’s Day, single girls put their names in a box, and unmarried men drew lots to see with whom they would be paired off for the coming year. To the more modern minded, try pinning five bay leaves to your pillow instead to dream of future loves. If you’re married or otherwise involved, steep the bay leaves in water and drink the resulting tea to strengthen the love in your relationship.

To encourage balance in a relationship, bind together Venus’s symbols, a pine cone and a flower, and put them somewhere in your home. Or, to spice up a passionate moment, feed fresh berries to each other and drink a berry beverage from one cup (symbolizing united goals and destinies).

In Roman tradition, anywhere there’s a large stone adjacent to a tall tree, Venus is also there. Should you know of such a place, go there today and commune with her warm lusty energy.

Sources:

The Kalends of January (Jan 2nd, the 9th day of Christmas) was a significant part of the Roman Midwinter celebrations, and has lent its name to Midwinter festivals all over the Western world. For example, in Provence in France the festival is known as Calendas, in Poland it is called Kolenda, and in Russia, Kolyada. In the Czech Republic it is called Koteda, in Lithuania, Kalledos, and in Wales and Scotland, Calenig and Calluinn respectively – all these names derived from the Latin Kalendae, and all referring to the festival of midwinter.

juno1

Initially the Kalends followed Saturnalia, beginning a few days of rest to allow aching heads and stomachs to recover! At this time new consuls were inducted into office, and for at least three days a high festival took place.

Houses were decorated with lights and greenery and gifts were exchanged. It was also the custom to give special presents to the emperor. These, called Votae, were left in the porch of the imperial palace, and it is recorded that the Emperor Calligula not only demanded these gifts from everyone, but also stood in the porch to collect them personally!

It may have been the memory of this that prompted the 4th century writer Libanius to describe the festival in terms that might be easily applied to the modern celebration of Christmas as to the celebrations in ancient Rome:

The impulse to spend seizes everyone..

People are not only generous themselves,
but also towards their fellow men.
A stream of presents pours itself out on all sides.

The Kalends festival banishes all that is 
connected with toil, and allows men to give
themselves up to undisturbed enjoyment.

From the minds of young people it
removes two kinds of dread:
the dread of the schoolmaster and 
the dread of the pedagogue.

The slave also it allows, as far as possible,
to breathe the air of freedom…

Another great quality of the festival
is that it teaches men not to hold too fast
to their money, but to part with it
and let it pass into other hands.

Source: The Winter Solstice

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