Origins of Valentine's Day

Reconnecting with an ancient holyday and coming back to the roots of celebrating Love (without buying into the culture of commercialism).

What is Valentine’s Day?

It can be a day to make singles feel bad, a day to spend unnecessary money on commercial goods, a day of pressure for folks in a relationship to show how much they care, and even a day of disappointment when gifts and shows of affection don’t live up to expectations.

Personally, I haven’t celebrated Valentine’s Day since I was a kid.

I used to love filling out cards for everyone in my class. This is Valentine’s Day in North American at it’s finest—picking out store-bought cards in whatever theme or character I was into that year… getting that list of names of everyone in my grade-school class… and spending hours practicing penmanship and agonizing over which message to give to which kid.

Yet beyond the ways our current culture commodifies every ancient holyday…

Valentine’s Day has a very real message for our lives.

Despite popular belief, Hallmark did NOT create Valentine’s day.

This time of year has been holding the space for romantic love for over a thousand years!

Like anything in history, it's hard to trace the precise origins of Valentine’s Day because so many influences led to our modern celebrations, but if we look beyond the surface appearances, we find a holyday that runs so much deeper than boxed chocolate and store-bought cards.

The Story of Saint Valentine(s)

In the early middle ages, there really was a Saint Valentine… or more accurately—three St. Valentines are said to have died on February 14th.

Their stories read like so many other Christian martyrs. They took risks, converted people, and ultimately met a tragic end.

But they weren’t associated with romantic love until Geoffrey Chaucer—and later Shakespeare—popularized the idea.

The story of St. Valentine’s Day has morphed through the ages, from someone who helped people get married when marriage was banned to someone who delivered letters between imprisoned Christians.

The stories are vague and the truth behind the legends is obscured by history, but St. Valentine has gone down in history as a hero who stands for love and romance against all odds.

The Roman Feast of Lupercalia

Meanwhile in ancient Rome, the Feast of Lupercalia—a pagan holiday promoting health and fertility—was celebrated on the ides of February (Feb 15th)!

Lupercalia rites included a great cave, the cult of breastfeeding, animal sacrifice, laughing priests, running down the street naked, and of course, whipping your woman with a thong of animal skin so she’ll become more fertile.

Names of singles were drawn from a jar for couples to be paired together for the duration of the festival, or even longer if it worked out.

The tone was one of general drunken revelry with an an overarching them of love, fertility, and sex.

It may seem a far cry from our current celebrations of Valentine’s Day, but when Christianity became the official religion of Rome, a new narrative was given to the ancient festivals honoring nature and the pagan gods to officially Christianize them.

The wild fertility celebrations of Lupercalia were definitely not church-friendly, and as with so many other celebrations—Christmas and Easter come immediately to mind—the ancient rites were often renamed and repurposed.

The Christians immediately abolished all nakedness and animal sacrifice from the public celebrations.

From there, it was a short distance for these celebrations of love and fertility to become fixated on the one romantic relationship the Church sanctioned—courtship that leads to marriage.

Mystery, Magic & Mayhem explores ancient and modern magic, connecting us with the long history of what it means to be human on Planet Earth. Join the community and join the exploration!

Now, I love to geek out on history...

But here's what I think really matters—

If we look beneath the surface of all these legends, we see the true roots of Valentine’s Day.

• The first buds of Spring are coming to life.

• Birds are ready to begin their twittering.

• Animals everywhere are beginning to rut.

• THE SEEDS OF ROMANCE ARE STIRRING IN THE NATURAL WORLD.

All of life honors this season… and has from time immemorial!

As humans it’s important to celebrate.

It’s necessary for our sanity to take a breath to break up the horror and monotony of daily travail.

And this time of year, we’re called upon to celebrate the Love that exists in our lives.

While our modern holidays have become so commercialized it can be hard to see past the Hallmark nonsense, there is something here worth celebrating.

Valentine’s Day has been marketed for that special someone, but real Love isn’t reserved for romantic connections.

Love is present all around us, when we’re awake and alive enough to be present to Love.

What if this season was simply a time to celebrate Love?

My invitation to you this year is to be open and present to Love for myself in as many ways as you can.

A smile…

A kind word…

A deep breath…

A soft heart…

How much Love can you experience?

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This Valentine’s Day…

We’re exploring the theme of EMPOWERED EMBODIMENT with a special Community Energy Magic event:

♥️ Embrace the power of Love, inviting your Soul to rekindle deep relationship with this body, this life.

♥️ Connect with the Light and clear out old patterns and energies that no longer serve your Highest Good.

♥️ Make space for Presence in your natural state, allowing the wholeness and Beauty of who you are to quietly arise.

Are you ready to fall in love with yourself all over again?

Community Energy Magic

Friday, Februrary 14 @ 9:30am PST / 12:30pm EST / 6:30pm CET / 4:30am AEDT (+1 Day)

A Divinely-guided transmission where you’ll learn to bring your consciousness down into your body and infuse every cell of your being with Love. Healing old wounds, clearing out not-self energies, and inviting your Soul into deep relationship with the physical world, you’ll practice Divinely-empowered embodiment.

→ Event recording will be available to Inner Sanctum members.

Google Meet Link for Paid Subscribers: