"In the way of righteousness is life, and in its pathway there is no death" (Prov.12:28, NKJV).

14 February was a Roman pagan festival honouring the Queen of the Roman gods and goddesses known as Juno Fructifier, she who caused women to become impregnated through fornication. Typically, women would put their names into a ballot-type box and the men would draw a name out. These two would then become a fornicating couple for the duration of the festival and sometimes for an entire year. This was more than frolicking, however, but was a religious fertility right whose purpose was to ostensibly both promote fertility and lengthen life.

The following day, 15 February, known as the Feast of Lupercalia, honoured Faunus, the counterpart god of fertility, from which we get the English word 'fornicate', meaning to have sexual relationships outside a life-long marriage covenant. Men would go to a grotto dedicated to Lupercal, the wolf god, located at the foot of the Palatine Hill where Romans believe that the founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, were suckled by a she-wolf. The men would sacrifice a goat, put on its skin, and hit women with small whips, which was likewise also supposed to ensure fertility.

Pope Gelasius declared 14 February a holiday in 469 AD in honour of one of two or three different Catholic martyrs who went by the name of Valentius, combining a pagan festival with new tradition. By the 14th century the emphasis of the festival switched from the Catholic add-on of faith and martyrdom and back to the original pagan view of sensuality. Poets and writers combined this with spring motifs of fertility. Divination was added to this mix and the festival evolved into an occultic practice for searching for mates and inducing lust through potions, enchantments and the like. Though the Catholic Church dropped Valentines Day in 1969, it has grown in popularity as it has reverted entirely to its pagan roots, and stripped of any religious observances. Today it is highly commercialised, like Christmas even though some Protestants have tried to re-christianise it. In Kansas, for example, students have apparently sent roses accompanied by Biblical verses to high school girls, though, fortunately, this attempt at syncretisation is unlikely to catch on.

Valentine's Day was birthed in paganism and belongs to paganism. It's spirit is that of demonic gods, Juno and Faunus. I know, from my own experience in deliverance ministry, that there is a demon called Forneus who enters all those who engage in fornication. Valentine's Day beyond doubt celebrates this filthy demon and his consort.

Believers are commanded to celebrate Yahweh's festivals, not man-made ones and certainly not ones that honour demons. No believer who claims to be honouring Yahweh or following His commandments should have anything to do with the secularised, let alone the religious, version of the Lupercalia - leave Valentine's Day to the pagans! We do not need the lawless 'romance' (Rome-ance) of the Romans but the true ahavah or love of Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) in true biblical tavnith or pattern. The world is upside-down. Stay the right way up and pursue the narrow way that leads to eternal life.