From Lupercalia to Valentines

 

 

Today Valentine's Day seems to be not much more than a sales promotion event for companies that produce chocolates, flowers, greeting cards and other gimmicks like diamond jewelry, teddy bears and special pajamas. But the only gift that actually comes close to the original spirit of the times might be sexy lingerie.

Back in the days of the Roman Empire, February was the time for a holiday known as Lupercalia, a lusty holiday during which the followers of Pan would run wildly through the streets in animal skins with little scourges, the playful touch of which were said to make a woman more fertile. You can see the roots of today's bondage and discipline games in here, can't you?

February gets its name from the word for purification, and was the original month for spring cleaning. So with the spring cleaning also came the first stirrings of waking from the winter slumber and the lusty appetites of those who have awakened. Lupercalia derives from lupus the word for wolf, a reference to the myth of the origin of Rome, wherein the twins Romulus and Remus were suckled and raised by a she wolf and then went on to create Rome.

Women would bare their flesh in order to receive more playful strokes from the scourges. People would play the ancient equivalent of spin the bottle and there was a general air of lusty playfulness everywhere.

It does not take much imagination to see why such a holiday would be immensely popular. So, like they did with other holidays, the church laid a more genteel veneer over the old pagan holiday, and thus, Valentine's Day was born. According to church legend, Valentine became popular for performing marriages for Roman soldiers who were forbidden to marry. The day was first associated with romantic love by the author Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century. The first Valentine's cards were produced in 18th century Britain.

So this is the story of how a day of lusty playfulness was turned into a day of dedication to love and faithful devotion. All of this was done with the same deft touch that turned Samhain into All Saints Day, Yule into Christmas and Ostara into Easter. A little smidgen of politics and religion, and voila! the lusty antics, laughter and opportunity for people to stop working to sprout and sport their wild hairs was suddenly tamped down.

So if you are feeling a bit randy on Valentine's weekend, consider it a bit of the roots of the old holiday peeking back through the veneer of chocolates and roses. Be creative and maybe you will get some other ideas for how you might like to celebrate it this year.

Down to Earth

Here is a perspective for your consideration.

Perhaps we are on Earth for a vacation from the body-less realms. This is the only way we get an experience of this place, and the experience of living in a body. We learn to manage and do things in the dense physical reality that distinguishes us from the world of spirit, where everything is ethereal, light and airy.

What if this is our paradise? What if the most delightful place that we will ever know is right here? Maybe some of those ideas we got about paradise being up there somewhere up there are all wrong. What if our whole understanding of this process of life, death and rebirth are all wrong? What if our understanding is all upside down?

Picture this. When you are out there somewhere, no more substantial than a breeze blowing across the plains, when your sense of yourself is intangible an undefinable at best, you are finally rewarded with an opportunity to be given a body and come here to experience what it is like to eat, drink, sleep, dream, have sex, work, play, dance and sing.

So when we die we go back to this in between zone where it is just misty and cloudy and we float around without any substance. Then we get reincarnated in these bodies to experience life again, savoring the experience and learning from our past mistakes.

Maybe the goal is not to go up there, but come back here.

Interpreting Your Dreams Through email

Dream Interpretation is one of the services I have been providing to people for a long time.

Many people keep dream journals or periodically make notes of dreams that seem significant to them.

Sometimes, however, people have difficulty trying to figure out what a dream may mean to them even though they can remember it vividly.

Dreams often follow patterns, which you will discover if you keep a journal and you see similar characters or situations appearing repeatedly.

One of the values of dream interpretation is that they can reveal underlying motivations that may explain why things are happening to us or why we find ourselves in certain situations.

Dreams often are also precognitive, which means that things that appear to us first in that state later happen in real life.



A new service I am offering is this. You can email your dream or dreams to me, and I will interpret them for you and email this back you. The price for this service is the same as a half hour reading, $50.

So far, the number of dreams that seems to work is either one long one or three shorter ones. I look forward to interpreting your dreams. I will also include follow up questions by email, if you feel that further clarification or comment is needed.

Making Progress in Healing

For more than a month, my leg has been healing from a fall I took on the ice while out walking. I am thinking of it as a sprain. I twisted my legs as I fell, and the left one seemed to get the worst of it. There never was any bruising or discoloring from the fall, it just hurt a lot. I was limping when I walked, and when I sat down for a while, the knee seemed to lock up so that when I went to stand and walk again, it took a few minutes to adjust.

When I was young, I had a many surgeries on that leg to correct the way the bones were formed when I was born. I remember this. I feel a surge of powerful energy run through me when I affirm that my leg will heal. So much work was done on it to make it right that I am summoning up powerful amounts of energy to heal it so that I have the normal range of motion again.

During this time, I have been treating it with liniment and salve, sometimes massaging it with a vibrator and then getting up and exercising some every day. I am also getting massages about once a week. Walking, swimming and dancing help to keep it flexible and rebuild muscles. Now I can walk without limping. Dancing was the most challenging activity to resume and each week it has gotten a little better. So now it is definitely healing although not back to normal yet, but I can feel the range of motion getting closer to normal every day. It still hurts and will lock up a bit, but not as bad as it was.

One of the most interesting developments is to notice how extra surges of healing energy shoot through my leg when I reaffirm that I will heal, with a very strong sense of will and intent connected to it.

How much of our healing can we effect in this way? The answer to that question is unknown, but it is certainly worth a try.

Quiet and Gathering Strength

Often when we are set back physically, the best medicine is to just relax and let the body restore and regenerate itself. First it was the knee I sprained falling on the ice. Now it is the return of the winter cough.

So I get the medicines for the cough. I rub linaments on my knee a few times a day. First was a commercially prepared arnica, then the last of aan arnica ointment made by a friend. Next, and currently, one is the Muscle Recovery made by Anita Boehm and other is my Reiki Comfrey Healing Salve. Arnica was appplied . A few ibuprofen helps. I get up periodically to keep the knee from locking up. Then going to the rec center to use the steam room and the pool. The movement of the knee is coming back to normal. Some think that I should not have danced on it last Friday, but I think it helped strengthen it and keep it limber. Hob bath with Epsom salts and hydrogen pyroxide with a bit of eucalyptus drops to open up the lungs and myrrh to heal the body. I am definitely feeling ready to dance again.

The antibiotics and cough medicine are chasing the cough away and breathing is easier now. So have a little chicken noodle soup, sit back and enjoy a good book, or a movie. Then sleep under some nice warm blankets. Healing is happening. Sometimes we just have to allow time for it do work. Meds, movement, sleep, sweat. Stay relaxed in your pace. By Friday night, I will be dancing again. And to think that two weeks ago, I could barely walk.

It is warm. I am resting deeply. Soon I will be up and eager to get going again. Dancing inspired me to keep going.

The healing is almost effortless. I feel that the healing is coming through me and other than apply the linaments, baths, drinking tea and soup, the strength is returning. I am not anxious, just allowing time. It is good. It is what is needed now.

A Better Way to Make Resolutions Work

Often people get ambitious at New Year's and make a long list of changes they want to make this year, only to get frustrated and give up on it part way into the year.

Here is a simpler, more powerful way to go about making real changes.

Start by knowing that you cannot have several different number one priorities. For example, once you identify the single most important goal you would like to take action on. Then choose two more important goals. Order these three by priority.

Now your top goal may take longer to achieve, but the second and third might be accomplished in a lot less time. So as you accomplish goals, you can take them off your list of three and replace them with others.

In this way, you get more of a feeling of accomplishment. A list of three is a lot less daunting than a list of 12, but in the course of the year, you may be able to do all 12, by taking them 3 at a time. Accomplish something, feel good about it and then feel energized to accomplish more. If you make significant progress on a list of 3 you feel like a winner, but if you only make progress on 3 out of a list of 12, you feel like you haven't done much.

So if you just change your system of setting goals, you will feel and act like a winner.

The Number 13

We have a whole year of the number 13 ahead of us. Some people feel that 13 is an unlucky number, but taken from another perspective, it is rather a great catalyst. 13 represents an organizing principle in nature. A major catalyst attracts powerful elements around it.

Before the church created the Gregorian calender, which is what we have today, there were 13 months, with 3 weeks in each month, which reflected a moon cycle. The word month comes from moon.

Christ and the 12 apostles.

In the legend of Camelot, there was King Arthur and 12 Knights of the Round Table.Noble purposes and spiritual bonds are primary lessons to come from these knights.

Another famous group of knights, the Knights Templar, were assassinated on a Friday the 13th. The stories associated with these groups still influence many people. Today, who are the greater subjects of interest, Pope Clement and King Phillip of France who orchestrated the assassinations, or the Knights Templar?

There are 13 major joints in our bodies.

Card 13 in the tarot is Death. But death does not always refer to someone leaving their physical body. It usually signifies a rebirth or renewal, the end of an old cycle and the beginning of a new one.

In the playing card deck, there are 4 suits, each containing 13 cards.

There are 12 major constellations around the sun and the 12 signs of the zodiac.

The USA began with 13 colonies.

So look at the 13 all year as a sign of an auspicious new beginning. In what areas of your life would you like a new beginning?