The fun never ceases in Living Church of God. If you bought a Valentines Day card for your sweetheart you were taking part in a ritual that allows for beating of women with bloody animal flesh. That ranks right up there with the other favorite of Meredithism - red ornaments on Christmas trees are bull's testicles. I have to say I have seen more "yucky" things at Armstrongite Feast of Tabernacles sites than I ever have on Valentines day.
What is with Meredithism that is is so focused on blood, guts and gore? They have went from beating women with animal skins to Meredith advocating spanking them. So what is really the difference here?
Whatever.
The origins of Valentine’s Day are very clearly pagan and pre-Christian. Research into the details of where it came from can take you all sorts of places (some very yucky places, frankly), but standing out among them is Lupercalia, a pagan fertility ritual celebrated in February that involved, among other things, animal sacrifices (goats and dogs, apparently) and whipping women with strips made from the animals’ bloody flesh. Yes, I wish I was kidding.
If you want to just dip your toes a wee bit into the origins of Valentine’s Day, the History channel website is making it easy, with an interactive graphic (I’m not sure why a graphic that doesn’t do anything but sit there is called “interactive,” but there you go) and a video that shows a painting (apparently by Jon Foster) of a fellow looking delightfully popish presiding over a sacrifice-the-critter-and-hit-the-ladies-with-carcass-straps ceremony. (Full disclosure: The History channel video also shows old “classic” paintings with naked people. What is it with “classic” artists and naked people?)
So, no pagan, hit-your-woman-with-bloody-animal-parts, Lupercalia-warmed-over, Jeremiah 10:2 (et al.)-violating Valentine’s Day for me, thanks!
Valentine’s Day: A day for beating women with bloody animal skins?
Wallace Smith
One thing I do have to hand to Wallace Smith is that he allows comments on his blog and he actually carries on a half way decent conversations with those that disagree with him, which is NOT something that would happen with Prophet Robert Thiel.
4 comments:
Wallace notes:
"The origins of Valentine’s Day are very clearly pagan and pre-Christian. Research into the details of where it came from can take you all sorts of places (some very yucky places, frankly)"
"Yucky"?? I find using yucky for public consumption journalism kinda icky.
Wallace noted:
"Full disclosure: The History channel video also shows old “classic” paintings with naked people. What is it with “classic” artists and naked people?)"
That's what artists do. They aren't as repressed as ministers and fundamentalists. Naked is normal and worth of art. If skin bothers you, try "Bones" which is a medical art display of real humans plasticised in all their anatomical beauty and design. Absolutely amazing and inspiring.
Wallace notes:
"a pagan fertility ritual celebrated in February that involved, among other things, animal sacrifices (goats and dogs, apparently)"
Ummm...ever read the Old Testament?
Had six "Valentines Pagan Couples" for massage at the spa last week. After we sacrficed a litter of chiwa..chiwhaa...puppies and fried them up for lunch, we did really good massage. I stopped at various places and beat the female with bacon strips and then recovered her with the skin of a ground hog freshly killed. (That's how it's done) Treated a few nasty trigger points, restored a bit of rotator cuff range of motion and got a nice hug , but other than that, was pretty normal except for the added Valentines perks.
PS "Luper..." means wolf and Wallace forgot the wolf stuff.
PS Wallace must preach human sacrifice and redemption by execution from time to time. Right?
Well at least we now know hoe spanking women entered into the Living Church of God. Spanky Meredith is just following a long held tradition. Why won't Thiel write about that?
I wonder if Wallace watches the Olympics every four years.
If he does, I wonder if it ever occurs to him, much less bothers him, that the custom is rooted in mythology and pagan gods, or that it began in a cradle of Greek deities. Does it bother him that they were religious in nature as well as athletic, held in honor of Zeus, and that animal sacrifices to Zeus were part of the ritual?
Is he troubled by the fact that the games were therefore viewed as sacred, or that a temple was built on the site, complete with a statue of their god on a throne? Is he outraged that participants had to swear an oath before the statue?
Is he uncomfortable with the fact that the games celebrated the human body, with athletes participating naked, their bodies oiled to make them more appealing to spectators? If the paintings of naked people that he learned about on the History Channel bother him, what about the statues of naked people that were erected (sorry) to honor the Olympics and its athletes? Is one pagan ritual less bothersome than another?
Most likely, Wallace and others who would judge today's holidays and celebrations have reveled in the story told in "Chariots of Fire," a favorite film of COG-dom.
Will Wallace now come out and reject the notion celebrated in that film -- that anyone could possibly hold to Judeo-Christian values and beliefs while participating in a custom that is so clearly and blatantly rooted in mythology and false gods?
Of course not, because the COGs pick and choose the things they would despise, all colored by a proof-texting form of theology that wanders off the rails almost from the beginning.
The origins of the Olympics are very clearly pagan and pre-Christian, too, Wallace. Be consistent or be quiet.
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