Lawrence Durdin-Robertson, "Juno Covella" has this entry for Valentine's Day: "Roman: LUPA (Whistler, English Festivals, p. 90) “St. Valentine’s Day, February 14th … Like the candles of Candlemas, recently gone by, it comes to us by direct descent from the Lupercalia of pagan Rome ... It was about the middle of the month that the names of willing young ladies were put in a box and well shaken up,... so that each young blood could draw out one at random; the girl thus won to remain his companion while the gaieties lasted ... centuries passed and still the lottery for girls continued ... ‘It is a ceremony never omitted among the Vulgar’, wrote Bourne in 1725, ‘to draw lots which they term Valentines. The names of a select number of one sex are by an equal number of the other put into some vessel; and after that, everyone draws a name, which for the present is called their Valentine, and is also look’d upon as a good omen of their being man and wife afterwards’.
Text and Photo © The Circle of Isis Advisory Board, Fellowship of Isis Central Global Website.
