Do we need the Lupercalia?

Lupercalia, by Andrea Camassei (1602-1649)

The Satanic Temple has declared 15 February Lupercalia in honour of the ancient Roman fertility celebration, as an obvious replacement for the Christian St Valentine’s Day. Joseph Rose, on his Hail Satan! podcast (“Satanic Holidays”, 27 November 2023), criticizes some modern Satanists (the Satanic Temple in particular) for appropriating or reclaiming any old Pagan celebration and demarking it as “Satanic” just in opposition to Christianity. While I disagree with Rose regarding the Satanic reappropriation of the Sol Invictus celebration (25 December) in that I think it does have resonance for modern Satanism, claiming Lupercalia as our alternative to Valentine’s Day is superficial. There is nothing inherently Satanic or has resonance with modern Satanism in the Lupercalia, despite the Satanic Temple’s view.

Firstly, despite our Western celebration of St Valentine’s Day as pertaining to the feelings of romantic love, the “feast day” for St Valentine on the 14 February is unabashed Christianity. There were several St Valentines who were martyred by Romans who disliked Christianity, but most commentators tend to look to the third-century CE Valentine of Rome who is said to have restored the eyesight to his jailer’s daughter after performing clandestine Christian marriages to Roman soldiers who were denied the right to practice their faith by the emperors. There’s no way to view this story without it being explicitly Christian, and as such, it is not really fit for our purposes.

That being said, as we live under the yoke of Christian oppression in the West, we’ll find ourselves sleeping on the sofa if we forget some token of romantic love for our lovers on this day. Even if they are Satanists.

So, Valentine’s Day is therefore not appropriate in the Satanic year, and we should find an alternative, but one that has meaning for us as Satanists. The Satanic Temple’s answer is reviving the Lupercalia. The Lupercalia can be traced back to the ancient Greeks and was one of many celebrations the Romans plagiarized from their neighbours to the East. This celebration was, effectively, celebrating masculine sexuality (“Pagan sex magic” by any other name), celebrated in honour of Romulus and Remus, the two founders of Rome raised by a She-Wolf. The ancient Greek celebration, the Arkadian Lykaia, also honoured wolves through their priesthoods. It is unclear about the connection between this celebration and wolves, although it has been suggested that the wolf was a poignant symbol of youthful masculinity and the human fertility rites were seen as part of that culture. Wolves and dogs were sacrificed for the Lupercalia and strips of their fur/skin were used as whips the naked (or semi-naked) young men flayed each other with. It was also said that any woman who was thus whipped would likely fall pregnant in the coming year. Maybe modern Satanists want to revive this tradition by marking it with massive gay orgies, at least that would be in keeping with the Lupercalian tradition.

The Satanic Temple have a slightly alternative reading of the celebration: they view it as “a celebration of bodily autonomy, sexual liberation, and reproduction”, where the Satanist is encouraged to “hail yourself” (sexually, but maybe not necessarily sexually), and acts as a bookend opposite Sol Invictus, which celebrates the sharing of knowledge. If Sol Invictus is outwardly shared, Lupercalia (at least in the TST’s revival of it) is inwardly shared. A calendrical “treat yourself” day (if anyone remembers Parks and Rec). It was the TST’s discussion of the Lupercalia in this light that started my own thinking about Satanic holidays, and by extension, inspired this blog.

The problem is that the TST’s revival of Lupercalia and the ancient Roman (and Greek) male orgies during Lupercalia are very different. I have no ideological or religious opposition to a Satanic “treat yourself” day, but it does not tie meaningfully to the Lupercalia.

But, let me be a little more generous to the TST here: if, on 14/15 February, Satanists were encouraged to celebrate the Lupercalia by reviving the ancient Roman practice of gay orgies (and there’s no reason not to extend this fun out to the lesbian communities too), then, firstly, such a celebration is worthy of the name “Lupercalia”, and it’s a big “fuck-you” to the procreative heteronormative hegemonic inherent in Christianity. What it is not is how the TST defines the holiday as a kind of “treat yourself” day. There is nothing wrong with those two ideas, but they shouldn’t be necessarily yoked together.

Here's another idea, which I think constitutes a potential Satanic ritual in honour of the Lupercalia: if the celebrant is (for whatever reasons) uncomfortable with participating in an orgy of some description, then maybe the personal ritual is to masturbate to (what is for them) non-normative pornography (or rather pornography which depicts acts the celebrant would not normally engage in – so long as they’re legal). I’ve phrased it this way because queer Satanists should also participate in this spirit: instead of the gay, lesbian, and transgendered pornography they may engage with normally, they need, as a ritual, to “hail themselves” to heterosexual pornography, or other kinds of sexual fantasies. As a ritual, and one which perhaps entails some kind of personal sacrifice, no matter how uncomfortable it might make the celebrant (without triggering trauma obviously!), one should hail the spirit of the celebration as one sees fit.

I don’t think the “hail thyself” celebration the TST suggests is the right one for this holiday, if for no other reason than, as Satanists, aren’t we “hailing ourselves” all year round? As such, this particular inappropriate application is exactly what Rose criticizes the TST for doing in appropriating any old Pagan celebration as “Satanic” when there is little meaningful connection.

So why this watered-down understanding of the Lupercalia?  Maybe the idea of ritualized same-sex orgies (within patriarchal heteronormative thinking) isn’t an idea some Satanists are open to, for whatever reason. I’m reminded of the so-called St Paul’s epistles where he makes shit up just to get members for his new Death Cult. He lies and twists the Gospels in such a way as to sell this new religion around the world. Maybe that’s what the TST is doing with the Lupercalia.

 I have to admit, this post did not go where I intended it to when I first began thinking about the Lupercalia. Originally, I was just going to suggest dropping it from the calendar as it is only nominally Satanic. But I like this idea more, not the least of which is that it has a direct connection to ritual.

Now, if you’ll all excuse me for a few minutes …

Hail Satan

Hail Lilith

Hail te Ipsum