Grabado de Gustave Doré llamado "Apocalipsis: Visión de la muerte".

“Y miré, y vi un caballo amarillo (pálido); y el que lo montaba tenía por nombre Muerte, y el Hades lo seguía; y les fue dada potestad sobre la cuarta parte de la tierra, para matar con espada, con hambre, con mortandad y con las fieras de la tierra.”

(Apocalipsis 6:8)

Engraving by Bernardino Genga, which is included in his work on anatomy: "Anatomia per Uso et Intelligenza del Disegno" (1691)

Work by  Cornelis Anthonisz. 1537

Work by Albrecht Dürer entitled "Death and the Landsknecht" (1510)

Series of engravings made by Hans Holbein around 1523 and collected in his famous work "The Dance of Death" where he shows the conquering and equalizing power of death before all human beings.

Series of engravings made by Hans Holbein around 1523 and collected in his famous work "The Dance of Death" where he shows the conquering and equalizing power of death before all human beings.

Series of engravings made by Hans Holbein around 1523 and collected in his famous work "The Dance of Death" where he shows the conquering and equalizing power of death before all human beings.

Series of engravings made by Hans Holbein around 1523 and collected in his famous work "The Dance of Death" where he shows the conquering and equalizing power of death before all human beings.

Series of engravings made by Hans Holbein around 1523 and collected in his famous work "The Dance of Death" where he shows the conquering and equalizing power of death before all human beings.

Here is a vulgar but "honorable" gesture of defiance in the face of the barbarism of our time, obviously it is not an oath pose but without a doubt if our good gentleman with his hand on his chest from the Golden Age raised his head he would certainly raise his middle finger with a clenched fist.

Formerly the use of the comb simulated and was linked to the male phallus and its magical power to ward off the evil eye, a kind of phallic amulet against curses.

However, its practice as an obscene gesture comes from Roman times when Caligula offered his hand to his effeminate tribune to be kissed, the delirious and depraved emperor threw his finger in that position to humiliate his subjects.

As a direct insult we must go back to the Hundred Years War that faced the kingdoms of England and France when the French cut off the middle finger of all British archers, who, demoralized, were prevented from using their powerful bow. As the war favored the English, they showed them their middle finger to challenge and mock them.

We leave it to your imagination who to direct such an effective and ancient posture ...

If you have seen women running through the streets from one place to another being chased by some half naked guys in wolf skins who whipped and whipped them with bloody strips of ram, do not be alarmed! they are just remembering an old pagan festival, something lewd that yes, but it was a sacred rite of purification and fecundity celebrated in Ancient Rome every February 15 called the lupercales or Lupercalia.

The word comes from lupus, that is, wolf and its Roman god of fertility and male sexuality Fauno Luperco (Greek mythological deity Pan, the one who protected the wolf), a strange, hairy being, with legs and horns of a goat and large, pointed ears with a voracious and infinite sexual appetite.

One of the legends tells that in the ancient city of Alba Longa, the evil Amulio after deposing his brother Numitor from the throne, ordered to kill all his first-born, turning his daughter Rea Silvia into a virgin so that she would not have successors, but The god of war Mars was enraptured by the girl and they procreated the brothers Romulus and Remus, who managed to escape from the clutches of their uncle Amulio, managing to survive in the forests thanks to the woodpecker and the she-wolf Luperca who nursed and raised them. Years later they would return to their homeland to take revenge and kill him.

Due to the shortage of fertility and women in Rome, the oracle of the goddess Juno announced that the mothers of Lazio would be fertilized by a male goat. For this purpose, a ritual was held every February 15 in the Lupercal cave - there where Romulus and Remus were suckled by the she-wolf - where the most virile young men were selected - those ephebos who, on their initiation path, had lived in the forests as human wolves—, called loberos or luperci (friends of the wolf), and their faces were marked with the blood of a dog and a sacrificed male goat.

To make the rite more fun and interesting, virile members were created in the form of strips with the skin of the goat ... The libido to the surface, the lustful participants launched themselves in the carnal search for women eager to be impregnated, who agreed in a Shameless sexual play, whipping and spanking included, in a depurifying act that increased fertility.

Christianity erased with a stroke of the pen this fun bacchanal, so beneficial to health and to the women of Ancient Rome, moving it to February 14, Valentine's Day.

If you have seen women running through the streets from one place to another being chased by some half naked guys in wolf skins who whipped and whipped them with bloody strips of ram, do not be alarmed! they are just remembering an old pagan festival, something lewd that yes, but it was a sacred rite of purification and fecundity celebrated in Ancient Rome every February 15 called the lupercales or Lupercalia.

The word comes from lupus, that is, wolf and its Roman god of fertility and male sexuality Fauno Luperco (Greek mythological deity Pan, the one who protected the wolf), a strange, hairy being, with legs and horns of a goat and large, pointed ears with a voracious and infinite sexual appetite.

One of the legends tells that in the ancient city of Alba Longa, the evil Amulio after deposing his brother Numitor from the throne, ordered to kill all his first-born, turning his daughter Rea Silvia into a virgin so that she would not have successors, but The god of war Mars was enraptured by the girl and they procreated the brothers Romulus and Remus, who managed to escape from the clutches of their uncle Amulio, managing to survive in the forests thanks to the woodpecker and the she-wolf Luperca who nursed and raised them. Years later they would return to their homeland to take revenge and kill him.

Due to the shortage of fertility and women in Rome, the oracle of the goddess Juno announced that the mothers of Lazio would be fertilized by a male goat. For this purpose, a ritual was held every February 15 in the Lupercal cave - there where Romulus and Remus were suckled by the she-wolf - where the most virile young men were selected - those ephebos who, on their initiation path, had lived in the forests as human wolves—, called loberos or luperci (friends of the wolf), and their faces were marked with the blood of a dog and a sacrificed male goat.

To make the rite more fun and interesting, virile members were created in the form of strips with the skin of the goat ... The libido to the surface, the lustful participants launched themselves in the carnal search for women eager to be impregnated, who agreed in a Shameless sexual play, whipping and spanking included, in a depurifying act that increased fertility.

Christianity erased with a stroke of the pen this fun bacchanal, so beneficial to health and to the women of Ancient Rome, moving it to February 14, Valentine's Day.

If you have seen women running through the streets from one place to another being chased by some half naked guys in wolf skins who whipped and whipped them with bloody strips of ram, do not be alarmed! they are just remembering an old pagan festival, something lewd that yes, but it was a sacred rite of purification and fecundity celebrated in Ancient Rome every February 15 called the lupercales or Lupercalia.

The word comes from lupus, that is, wolf and its Roman god of fertility and male sexuality Fauno Luperco (Greek mythological deity Pan, the one who protected the wolf), a strange, hairy being, with legs and horns of a goat and large, pointed ears with a voracious and infinite sexual appetite.

One of the legends tells that in the ancient city of Alba Longa, the evil Amulio after deposing his brother Numitor from the throne, ordered to kill all his first-born, turning his daughter Rea Silvia into a virgin so that she would not have successors, but The god of war Mars was enraptured by the girl and they procreated the brothers Romulus and Remus, who managed to escape from the clutches of their uncle Amulio, managing to survive in the forests thanks to the woodpecker and the she-wolf Luperca who nursed and raised them. Years later they would return to their homeland to take revenge and kill him.

Due to the shortage of fertility and women in Rome, the oracle of the goddess Juno announced that the mothers of Lazio would be fertilized by a male goat. For this purpose, a ritual was held every February 15 in the Lupercal cave - there where Romulus and Remus were suckled by the she-wolf - where the most virile young men were selected - those ephebos who, on their initiation path, had lived in the forests as human wolves—, called loberos or luperci (friends of the wolf), and their faces were marked with the blood of a dog and a sacrificed male goat.

To make the rite more fun and interesting, virile members were created in the form of strips with the skin of the goat ... The libido to the surface, the lustful participants launched themselves in the carnal search for women eager to be impregnated, who agreed in a Shameless sexual play, whipping and spanking included, in a depurifying act that increased fertility.

Christianity erased with a stroke of the pen this fun bacchanal, so beneficial to health and to the women of Ancient Rome, moving it to February 14, Valentine's Day.

Ashes of Classical Culture that take us to beautiful legends and mythological stories of Antiquity. In the distance the mysterious lands of the west that the Greeks called Hesperia, the Hesperides, that wonderful garden that the Melides or nymphs of fruit trees looked after and that Hercules, the hero of mythology, came to do two of his works on the edge of the earth, perhaps in the lost Tartessos or Atlantis, who knows, in any case they spoke and thought then of the cradle of our ancestors, the one that the historian Strabo baptized as “Iberia.” Many were the classic texts that placed places fabulous like Hades or the flowery Champs-Elysées on our peninsula, the end of the world, where the sun didn't set...

Iberians, Celts, Celtiberians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Visigoths ... ancestral civilizations, ancient peoples that left their trail, their substrate scattered on the Iberian skin, on the island where metals were forged. From Tartessos to Hesperia, "Hiberia", Celtiberia, Hispania, Hispania Gothorum, Al-Andalus, Sepharad... melting pot of cultures that watered this fertile land of knowledge and wisdom. On these ashes of legendary kings such as Hispalo and his son Hispan, descendants of Hercules, villages, towns, cities, kingdoms and Empires were raised. Too much blood, between shadows and darkness, a glance towards the light, towards the light of the Ashes of Hesperia that germinates on wasteland and rises, under its ruins, a not alien world that feeds our horizon...

[In the image the representation of the Iberian warrior from Porcuna or warrior with double armor, from the 5th century BC, whose sculptural remains come from the Cerrillo Blanco site in Jaén].

Ashes of Classical Culture that take us to beautiful legends and mythological stories of Antiquity. In the distance the mysterious lands of the west that the Greeks called Hesperia, the Hesperides, that wonderful garden that the Melides or nymphs of fruit trees looked after and that Hercules, the hero of mythology, came to do two of his works on the edge of the earth, perhaps in the lost Tartessos or Atlantis, who knows, in any case they spoke and thought then of the cradle of our ancestors, the one that the historian Strabo baptized as “Iberia.” Many were the classic texts that placed places fabulous like Hades or the flowery Champs-Elysées on our peninsula, the end of the world, where the sun didn't set...

Iberians, Celts, Celtiberians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Visigoths ... ancestral civilizations, ancient peoples that left their trail, their substrate scattered on the Iberian skin, on the island where metals were forged. From Tartessos to Hesperia, "Hiberia", Celtiberia, Hispania, Hispania Gothorum, Al-Andalus, Sepharad... melting pot of cultures that watered this fertile land of knowledge and wisdom. On these ashes of legendary kings such as Hispalo and his son Hispan, descendants of Hercules, villages, towns, cities, kingdoms and Empires were raised. Too much blood, between shadows and darkness, a glance towards the light, towards the light of the Ashes of Hesperia that germinates on wasteland and rises, under its ruins, a not alien world that feeds our horizon...

[In the image the representation of the Iberian warrior from Porcuna or warrior with double armor, from the 5th century BC, whose sculptural remains come from the Cerrillo Blanco site in Jaén].

Naked, in front of oneself, next to the oak, the sun awaits us, it plays night vigil.

Let the log burn, let us burn the old,

and with its ashes we purify our soul,

their fertile sowing give us an abundance of heart and wisdom.

May the ancestors join us in the great banquet until dawn.

The life that sleeps under the earth will be reborn after darkness.

Yule.

February 27, 380, the emperor Theodosius abolished the religion and festival of the Sun Invictus by the famous edict of Thessalonica. Until then the Romans worshiped the Sun god during the Republic, and with greater prominence in the Imperial era, since the gradual entry of different religions of salvation of monotheistic tendency, such as Christianity and Mithrism, was giving greater weight to the power of the star king, the one who conquered the darkness ...

Emperor Aurelian made it official on December 25 as the day of the birth of the Undefeated Sun (the main divinity of the Roman pantheon at that time) back in the year 274 and later Juliano the Apostate would declare Helios (Greek equivalent) as the only divinity, and would try to prevent the spread of growing Christianity.

Finally, during a long process of syncretism, both the Festival of the Birth of the Invincible Sun "Dies Natalis Solis Invicti" held after the Winter Solstice, when daylight increased, as well as many other acts and celebrations were gradually reconverted. Paganism would come to an end, a new stage would begin with a victorious sun reborn in the arms of a Galilean.

An ancient Persian myth told us of the coming of an envoy from the Sun, Mithras, who, dressed with Phrygian, torch and dagger, will be worshiped by shepherds, and in a primordial cave he will redeem men through the sacrifice of a primeval bull. According to legend after being captured, he will carry it on his shoulders and kill him. The new world will be reborn after its ascension to heaven together with its resurrected dead beyond the stars ...

As often happens, the myth was lost in time until Rome rescued it back in the 1st century BC. assimilating him to the God Invictus, where after the Saturnalia every December 25, Mitra would be reborn victorious "natalis solis invicti" (death, resurrection and growth of the crops).