Saturday, February 14, 2004
Here is your Valentine.
Here is your VALENTINE.
On the positive side, not having a Valentine Sweetheart means a woman won't be breaking my heart any time soon. I've certainly proven that I'll risk the heartbreak; some people never do.
A poet ought to offer a few thoughts on this day: The cute little bow & arrow cupid is not a sexless Valentine cherub; he's a powerful Greek god, one of the oldest. In the ancient world order he represented neither sentimental romantic love nor agape, the Greek word Christianity adopted to mean a selfless, spiritual love. Cupid's true name is Eros; he's all about passion, sex, reproduction, fertility, desire - the will to possess. & being these, he also reveals impotence, jealousy, decay, loss & death. Eros set off the Trojan War, when besotted Paris kidnapped the beautiful Helen. Eros is involved, in one way or another, in all wars, because he is a primary root of violence. Dante's Francesca & Paolo, ilicit lovers condemned to ride the whirlwind for eternity, gave into Eros & were murdered by Francesca's husband (Paolo's brother, who fell to a lower lovel of Hell for his crime). The Greeks & Romans understood this. We don't understand it so well, having stepped back to the supposedly safer distances of physiology & psychology.
It is possible that St. Valentine's Day was instituted in order to appropriate Lupercalia (Feb, 15), an ancient Roman pagan fertility festival that had been reinstated by Augustus Caesar. But there is little evidence that Lupercalia was being celebrated after nearly 500 years CE. Still, Candlemas, The Purification of the Virgin Mary, is a midwinter Holy Day, falling on Groundhog Day in the Western Church & February 15 in the East; & who is Our Lady if not a tender manifestation of an Earth goddess? Paganism persisted in Christianized lands because it filled a human spiritual need that Christianity did not. It was far easier for the Church to overlay pagan festivals with Christian significance than to stamp out their practices altogether - an impossible task anyway, as it turned out. That's a lot to take out of a heart-shaped box of candy on Valentine's Day, but there it is!
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
On the positive side, not having a Valentine Sweetheart means a woman won't be breaking my heart any time soon. I've certainly proven that I'll risk the heartbreak; some people never do.
A poet ought to offer a few thoughts on this day: The cute little bow & arrow cupid is not a sexless Valentine cherub; he's a powerful Greek god, one of the oldest. In the ancient world order he represented neither sentimental romantic love nor agape, the Greek word Christianity adopted to mean a selfless, spiritual love. Cupid's true name is Eros; he's all about passion, sex, reproduction, fertility, desire - the will to possess. & being these, he also reveals impotence, jealousy, decay, loss & death. Eros set off the Trojan War, when besotted Paris kidnapped the beautiful Helen. Eros is involved, in one way or another, in all wars, because he is a primary root of violence. Dante's Francesca & Paolo, ilicit lovers condemned to ride the whirlwind for eternity, gave into Eros & were murdered by Francesca's husband (Paolo's brother, who fell to a lower lovel of Hell for his crime). The Greeks & Romans understood this. We don't understand it so well, having stepped back to the supposedly safer distances of physiology & psychology.
It is possible that St. Valentine's Day was instituted in order to appropriate Lupercalia (Feb, 15), an ancient Roman pagan fertility festival that had been reinstated by Augustus Caesar. But there is little evidence that Lupercalia was being celebrated after nearly 500 years CE. Still, Candlemas, The Purification of the Virgin Mary, is a midwinter Holy Day, falling on Groundhog Day in the Western Church & February 15 in the East; & who is Our Lady if not a tender manifestation of an Earth goddess? Paganism persisted in Christianized lands because it filled a human spiritual need that Christianity did not. It was far easier for the Church to overlay pagan festivals with Christian significance than to stamp out their practices altogether - an impossible task anyway, as it turned out. That's a lot to take out of a heart-shaped box of candy on Valentine's Day, but there it is!
