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.

How to approach witchcraft and not fall into the imaginary that we have about it throughout history since its demonization as an independent woman, enemy of the people through inquisitorial texts such as that written by monks in the Malleus Maleficarum through the persecution of the Church, the witch hunt, the romantic corruption, the self-serving deformation of the Victorian bourgeois society fearful of women's liberation, the morbid, the superstition and the occultism of modernity to pop culture where we find that evil witch of covens with goats eater of children.

An ancestral look returns us to the primordial tradition, esotericism and occult sciences, to the sorceress as a woman of power, free and independent, connoisseur of magical wisdom, botanical and healing knowledge, who approaches the darkness to do the well, transmitted that knowledge from generation to generation as a closed circle through the three ages of women (the young, the mature and the old).

If we have to look for references, there we have the mothers of all the witches of pagan times such as Circe, Medea and Cassandra, those visionaries or women watchmen who accompanied the hero, endowed with magical knowledge, or the mysterious women of the medieval forest as priestesses and epicenter of knowledge, or the witchcraft manifestations of the 19th century (represented in certain pre-Raphaelite paintings) as the last vestiges of a magical and sapiential society.

The history of witchcraft is stained with blood, dark rites and crimes, terrible trials, persecutions, intolerance, scapegoats... Faced with black clichés and legends, let's stay with the true origin of witchcraft, a good time to remember and recover the lessons and virtues of ancient wisdom and magical thinking.

Celtiberian warrior dancer with arms clad in large bull horns represented on ceramic found in Garray, Numancia. These ritual dances are related to the cult of the bull, those horns and those dances related to the learning and domination of the brave bull, strength and fertility.

The famous Warrior Vessel was found in Numantia and represents a combat between two Numantine warriors. In the image we see the duel with helmet, caetra, sword and spear. It is one of the few graphic representations of the 1st century Celtiberian panoplies.

The horse is a symbol of freedom, nobility, strength, courage, wealth and power. Representations of horses have been found in Numantine ceramics, fibulae, coins, funerary stelae ... Linked to Epona, the goddess of abundance and fertility. Related to the warrior elites and as a symbol of the ostentation of power, they are very present in Iberia in herding, hunting and funeral rites. Endowed with chthonic and psychopompic aspects, it is linked with divinity and the afterlife, as well as with rites of passage and initiation, with the appropriation of equine virtues, with the image of the deceased and later heroized warrior, where the horses sacrificed for accompany the warrior on his journey to the afterlife.

The horse is a symbol of freedom, nobility, strength, courage, wealth and power. Representations of horses have been found in Numantine ceramics, fibulae, coins, funerary stelae ... Linked to Epona, the goddess of abundance and fertility. Related to the warrior elites and as a symbol of the ostentation of power, they are very present in Iberia in herding, hunting and funeral rites. Endowed with chthonic and psychopompic aspects, it is linked with divinity and the afterlife, as well as with rites of passage and initiation, with the appropriation of equine virtues, with the image of the deceased and later heroized warrior, where the horses sacrificed for accompany the warrior on his journey to the afterlife.

he teseras of hospitality constitute an inviolable and sacred Celtiberian document, they referred to an institution as typically Indo-European as the hospirium, which were verbal with a Druidic ritual with witnesses and the gods as guarantors. The hospitality pacts (hospititum) were contracts, pacts sealed between people and between peoples of friendship and hospitality, even transmitted from generation to generation. These waitresses or pieces of iron or bronze had many different shapes, both geometric and zoomorphic.

The horse is a symbol of freedom, nobility, strength, courage, wealth and power. Representations of horses have been found in Numantine ceramics, fibulae, coins, funerary stelae ... Linked to Epona, the goddess of abundance and fertility. Related to the warrior elites and as a symbol of the ostentation of power, they are very present in Iberia in herding, hunting and funeral rites. Endowed with chthonic and psychopompic aspects, it is linked with divinity and the afterlife, as well as with rites of passage and initiation, with the appropriation of equine virtues, with the image of the deceased and later heroized warrior, where the horses sacrificed for accompany the warrior on his journey to the afterlife.

The wolf is a religious and social icon for the Iberians, related to the stars, both with the sun and the moon. It appears on shields, coins, sculptures, tombstones and ceramics such as those found in Alcudia in the Elche-Archena style. This Carnassier or butcher, is fierce and defiant, he is represented hunted or tamed by man or linked to the rite of his transit to the afterlife world.

Silio Italicus relates about the Celtiberians: “The Celts came united in name to the Iberians. For them it is an honor to fall in the fight, and a crime to incinerate his corpse. They believe that the dead will go to heaven with the gods if hungry vultures devour the lying body. " The vultures therefore help the soul of the Celtiberians fallen in battle in their transit to the afterlife.

It is an anthropomorphic figure, a kind of horse with human qualities.

Anthropomorphic figure with a tunic and extended wings together with small details of a vegetal type that appeared in the Iberian ceramics of La Alcudia (Elche). The feminine principle is visible in intimate union with the primal divinity, the Great Neolithic Goddess.

A psychopomp is a being that in Celtic mythology or religions led the souls of the deceased to the otherworld. These Celtiberian fish appeared on ceramic plates found in Numancia, symbolized water, and as guide animals carried souls to the afterlife.

In Céltica Hispania there were horned deities, it is possible that the image corresponds to that of the god Cernnunos with his deer horns appearing in a Numancia ceramic. Although it has also been interpreted as a zenith wolf with open jaws or as the stag beetle. What it seems is that it is a deification of the Horned Male, related to abundance and fertility.

Libero, cry of freedom !!! ... The Iberians were lovers of freedom, they did not accept a leader, only in times of war and for short periods of time. While their value and loyalty to their bosses and leaders was recorded by ancient writers. The Greeks admired their bravery and resistance, they fought without fear and did not retreat even with the lost battle.

The image of the bird with outstretched wings of the Elche ceramic from Acudía has a mystical character, linked to divinity is related to the Mediterranean goddesses and chronicles of the cycles of nature, life and death. In some contexts this image of the bird is related to the blessings of travel or as a guide in the transit journey of the soul to the underworld.

Adaptation of the war scene of an Iberian horseman on horseback that appeared in the ceramic vessels of Liria in Elche, decorated with paintings and epigraphs written in the Iberian-Levantine alphabet. At the bottom of the drawing we have incorporated the bundle of arrows. Whose text talks about Zaldi (horse in Iberian), who is wild, indomitable and brave, with a stately appearance, rebellious and ready for warlike violence.

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.