Be My Valentine

Good morning on the day after the infamous extraction. My mouth is very sore today, but no swelling or severe pain.  Thank goodness!!! Looks like a bright and sunny day out there, but looks can be deceiving.  A storm is on its way.  This time we're not going to get off so lucky.  We're already under a warning, and they are forecasting anywhere's from 8 to 15 inches.  I most likely will take a sick day tomorrow.  If it was an 8:30 to 4:30 day I might try it, but it's an 11 to 7 day which means I will be trying to make it home in almost a foot of snow. 

Well, Saturday is Valentine's Day, a day of love and romance, which is celebrated with the giving of candy, flowers, and other gifts, but it actually originated in the 5th century BC in Rome as a tribute to St. Valentine, a Catholic bishop.

Before Valentine's Day was established, the Romans practiced a pagan celebration in mid-February to commemorate the young men's rite of passage to the Roman god,Lupercus. Additionally, during Lupercus, but in honor of the goddess Juno Februata, the names of young women were put into an urn.   The celebration itself featured a lottery in which each young man would draw the name of a maiden from the urn.  Then, the  boys and girls who were matched would be considered partners for the year which, in those days, began in March. In later times, Pope Gelasius, hoping to do away with the pagan festival,  ordered a slight change in this lottery.  Instead of the names of the maidens, the urn would contain the names of saints, and both men and women were allowed to draw from the box...after which they were to emulate the ways of the saint during the coming year.

And, instead of honoring the pagan god Lupercus, the church looked for a suitable saint of love to take his place and found him in Valentine, a saint who had been beheaded by Claudius in 270 AD.  The story goes that the emperor, feeling that married men made poor soldiers, banned marriage in his empire, but Valentine was secretly marrying the young men who came to him.  Eventually, he was caught an imprisoned, falling in love with the blind daughter of his jailer.  It is said that his faith and his love for her healed her of her blindness befor his death. And, before he was taken to his death, he signed a message for her, "From your Valentine."  This phrase has been used ever since.

This year Valentine's Day falls on the day of the New Moon, making it a day to perform powerful rituals and spells.  Utilize this day to:

Heal heartache from a past love.
Restore passion into your life.
Reconnect with a long, lost lover.
Bring a new love into your life.
Bring a new start in your relationship.