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Valentine’s Day Origins – Lupercalia, the God Pan,and the Werewolves
 By Jo Hedesan. Published in Esoteric Coffeehousewww.esotericoffeehouse.com on 10 Feb 2009.
We’re barely out of the Chinese New Year and the next celebration is almost here:Valentine’s Day. Since I can’t miss an opportunity to investigate a festival’s originsand mythology, I will proceed without much further ado. A quick search on the internet will immediately inform you that the Valentine’s Dayoriginates from the Roman festival of Lupercalia. But what was Lupercalia and howdid it evolve into our modern Valentine’s Day?In its classical manifestation, Lupercalia (“The Wolf Festival”) was a bizarre ritualwhere skimpily clad young men would run around whipping women with goat skinthongs. The women were also almost naked (1). The running men were calledLuperci, the wolf people, and were divided into two “colleges” (2). The festival hadenough importance to have Julius Caesar establish a third college, the Iuliani, whichwas first headed by his loyal general, Mark Anthony, of Cleopatra fame (3). Thecelebration perpetuated well into Christian Rome, before an archbishop of Romeforbade it.Despite the fact that numerous Roman writers left testimonials about the Lupercalia,scholars are divided about the origins and meanings of this tradition. For instance, it isnot clear what god was celebrated at the Lupercalia, if any at all. Some writersassociated the celebration with the Luperca, the she-wolf who fed the twin founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus (4). Other times it was associated with Evander, alegendary Greek hero who came to Rome from Arcadia (5). Most often, however, thecelebration was associated with the god Pan, or Faunus as the Romans called it (6). Inlight of evidence, this is by far the most likely possibility.In Greek mythology, the god Pan was the son of Hermes. Pan was a half-man half-goat divinity, notoriously wearing horns on his forehead. It is considered that much of the imagery of Satan came from his figure (7). A god of sheepherders, Pan was adivinity of the forests, wild life, and, remarkably, fertility. He was portrayedfrequently ravishing female nymphs. His Roman counterpart, Faunus, had similar traits and was in fact merged with Pan in later times. The sexuality of Pan wouldindeed explain the young men’s lashings of women at the Lupercalia festival. Thewhippings were supposed to induce fertility and can be seen as a symbolical sexualact.If the festival of the Lupercalia was in honor of Pan, how could we explain the nameof “Wolf Festival”, as well as the military associations the celebration had in ancientRome? Pan was not obviously associated with wolves, but rather with goats, and hewas not traditionally a martial god. However, the Pan celebrated in Rome was, we aretold, Pan Lykaios, the wolf-Pan. St Augustine tells us that this Pan was so named because he held the key to the mystery of men becoming wolves (8). In other words,Pan was the master of werewolves.
 
 Now, the wolf if a complex symbol which I will only briefly sketch here. Today, thewolf is associated mostly with negative traits (9), but in ancient times it was a moreambivalent figure. The wolf is a fierce predator, whose cunning and courage wouldhave impressed the early Europeans. His aggressiveness made Romans associate himwith the god of war, Mars. At the same time, the wolf was also regarded as instinctiveand sexually active. Many fairy tales portray him as raping virgins (10). His famedgluttony also probably implied sexual relations. Remarkably, scholars now consider that the wolves of ancient Italy would have mated only in the month of February, thusexplaining the Lupercalia festival’s name (11).In light of all this symbolism, Pan the Wolf was a god that combined fertility andaggressiveness in one shape. He was a male god par excellence, whose sexuality wassymbolized by the young men ‘fertilizing’ women through flagellation. These“Luperci” were more than “priests” as some scholars or popular articles portray them:they could be seen as the embodiment of Pan Lykaios himself. It has been observedthat the young men were in fact symbolizing “werewolves” (12).How did this rampantly sexual wolf-festival become translated in our romantic StValentine? As the Roman Empire evolved, the sexual connotations and animalsymbolism became subdued (13). At this stage, Pan was no longer animal-looking but portrayed as a beautiful young man; often his cult was superseded by the god Mars(14). The Lupercalia runs, though still performed, had degraded enough to be only performed by the lower classes (15). Eventually they were officially abolished; yet theChristian authorities probably thought it was wiser to maintain the festival and itsassociations with love and marriage. It is a well known fact that Christianity oftensuperseded pagan celebrations with Christian ones. In Lupercalia’s case, a Christian patron was found in the person of a mysterious St Valentine. A medieval Christianlegend had St Valentine uphold love and marriage in front of Emperor Claudius whowanted to abolish it altogether (16). Today, most scholars think that the story was probably made up. Yet under the patronage of this St Valentine, the love connotationsof the Lupercalia could be retained and survived until today.
References
(1), (4), (5), (6), (13), (14), (15) Wiseman, T. P (1995). The God of the Lupercal.
The Journal of Roman Studies
, 85, pp. 1-22.(2), (3) Wiseman, T.P. (1995).
 Remus: A Roman Myth
. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.(7)
Wikipedia.
(2009). Pan (Mythology). Online. Available at:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_(mythology). Accessed on 8 Feb 2009.(8). St Augustine. City of God.
Christian Classics Ethereal Library
. Online. Availableat:http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf102.toc.html#P3325_1825420. Accessed on 9Feb 2009.(9) Griffith, M. (2008). The Wolf: Evil or Spiritual.
Sandplay Therapists of America
.Online. Available at:http://www.sandplay.org/symbols/wolf.htm. Accessed on 8 Feb2009.(10) Werness, H.B. (2004).
The Continuum Encyclopedia of Animal Symbolism in Art 
.Continuum: New York.
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