I'm down to be whipped.

"Be my bloody Valentine's," we say. What is the origin of Valentine's Day? It's the worship of wolves and purification by whipping called Lupercalia.

(TDS) Valentine's Day marks the "season of love" and courtship, but its ancient roots in the Roman festival of Lupercalia reveal a bloodier and wilder history.

It is no coincidence that across different cultures and religions there are festivals and holy days (or "holidays" as we now call them) that fall around similar dates.

Valentine's Day spanking? No, thanks.

Whether it be Samhain (pronounced \sao-win\) and Halloween, Yule and Christmas, or Lupercalia and St. Valentine's Day, a lineage of tradition can be traced back to these specific times of year.

Taking a look at the festivities of our ancient human ancestors tends to reveal the cultural twists and turns we have taken over the years and allows us to inspect our own modern traditions to see their irrationalities and idiosyncrasies more clearly. More

This was a pastoral festival that Ancient Rome observed annually on February 15th to purify the city, promoting health and fertility [1].

Lupercalia was also known as dies Februatus, after the "purification instruments" called februa, the reason for calling this month Februarius.

Name

Ovid connects februare to an Etruscan word for "purging" [4]. The name Lupercalia was believed in antiquity to evince some connection with the Ancient Greek festival of the Arcadian Lykaia, or wolf [and wolfman] festival (Greek λύκος, lýkos, Latin lupus), and the worship of Lycaean Pan, assumed to be a Greek equivalent to Faunus, as instituted by Evander [5].

Justin describes a cult image of "the Lycaean god, whom the Greeks call Pan and the Romans Lupercus," as nude except for a modest goatskin girdle [6].

Rome founded thanks to a she-wolf

Spank, OK, but whips and chains? I ain't Rihanna

The statue stood in the Lupercal, the cave where tradition held that Romulus and Remus were suckled by the she-wolf (Lupa). The cave lay at the foot of the Palatine Hill, on which Romulus was thought to have founded Rome [7].

The name of the festival most likely derives from lupus, "wolf," though both the etymology (the study of a word's origins) and its significance are obscure.

Despite Justin's assertion, no deity named "Lupercus" has ever been identified [8]. But the whipping of women in the public square is still on. Line up, ladies. More