Valentine’s Day was named after a priest who disobeyed his King’s dictate not to marry soldiers going off to war. The King felt that single men were better fit for an army. However Valentine disobeyed and continued to marry young lovers and for this he was thrown into prison. The jailors daughter visited and they become close. When she left he wrote her a note and said -
“From your Valentine.” The rest is history. However Valentine’s Day fell during a very important festival - the festival of Lupercalia or Faunus the fertility God. These were woodland gods, much loved by the shepherds and are akin to Pan. Now we are getting somewhere! Pan represented the God or good in all things. This is where we get the word Pantheist - meaning one, all or one God. Panacea, panoply (all the ceremonial dress and decorations) are words that are derived from Pan.

Around the ides of February 15th and Lent the Christian Church had a difficult time repressing the wild revelries and parties celebrating the God Pan or Faunus. Pan was loved by Dionysus and a wild Bacchanalian festival followed at this time of year. Great joy, love and fun, an energy the Church wanted to subdue, could not be contained. By the way, this energy is what creates manifestation. Today we see the celebration as Carnival. Carnival deriving from the eating of meat (carne) after Lent. The wild decorations, masks, food, drink and music were Pan’s domain. Pan is symbolically represented in paintings as a Hare - hence Lupus - or Lupercalia. Pan in the Tarot deck is the Devil card, perhaps now you know why! The revelry was a celebration of Spirit that had entered matter. A seed is dead unless spirit has entered it. Pan had horns - so the designation by the church of the devil, but the horns mean intelligence and logic and once the young horns grow to adulthood we get the ‘horn of plenty’ or the cornucopia. Remember Leonardo Da Vinci’s statue of Moses with the horns? This all comes under the sign of Capricorn the Goat (with horns and cloven hoofs ), so now you can understand these symbols a little better.
The Devil card reminds us that to be successful materially, Spirit must enter matter. We are all a materialization of an idea! But we can be un-done in our pursuit of too many material things and forget the values of the return to the Spirit of All. The church valued the pursuit of spirit over material indulgences, however the two must exist simultaneously balancing the both sides of Nature. On Palm Sunday Jesus rode into town on a cloven hoofed animal, representing Spirit superior to matter and the control of the animal nature.

I wish you a joyful Valentine’s day and a frisky, fun-filled Spring. We are entering grand and wonderful times.