During the Janite month of Flora, Floralia the flower festival is celebrated on 10 Flora/May 25.
This festival honors God the Daughter, the blooming Queen of the World, whose step does not even bruise the rose petals strewn before Her in the scripture. It is named after Floralia, the ancient Sabini festival of Flora. This Goddess of Flowering and Blooming predates the Roman Empire, and her festival was celebrated with a week of games, feasting, and religious rites.
Treat the day as the holiday it is! Offer a Rite to the Daughter as the Gardener of our rose souls. Decorate with fresh flowers, make dandelion or daisy crowns, eat edible flowers and drink flower teas. Make a trip to your local arboretum, flower gardens, or the park if you’d rather admire wild flowers growing unshaped by human hands. On this day these mundane, happy acts are transfigured into Divine gifts, ones that should be enjoyed with sincerity and reverence. After all, flowers are holy; a symbol of the Divine. Delicate, ephmereal and mysterious.
In Aradia by Leland, one of the legends tells of the children of a once wealthy family who are still pious to ‘the old ways’, of faith in the Goddess and Her magic. The great thinker Virgil watches them pick fresh flowers, and after they offer them to the statue of the Goddess nearby, he instructs them in prayer.
“The beautiful lady with the bow ought to have some of these!”
Saying this, they laid flowers before the stature and made a wreath which the boy placed on her head.
Just then the great poet and magician Virgil, who knew everything about the gods and fairies, entered the garden and said, smiling:
“You have made the offering of flowers to the goddess quite correctly, as they did of old; all that remains is to pronounce the prayer properly, and it is this:”
So he repeated the Invocation to Diana.
Bella dea dell’arco!
Bella dea delle freccie!
Della caccia e dei cani!
Tu vegli colle stelle,
Quando il sole va dormir
Tu colla luna in fronte
Cacci la notte meglio del di.
Colle tue Ninfe, al suono
Di trombe–Sei la regina
Dei cacciatori–regina delle notte,
Tu che sei la cacciatrice
Più potente di ogni,
Cacciator–ti prego
Pensa un poco a noi!
To Diana.
Lovely Goddess of the bow! Lovely Goddess of the arrows! Of all hounds and of all hunting!
Thou who wakest in starry heaven, when the sun is sunk in slumber
Thou with moon upon they forehead,
Who the chase by night preferrest
Unto hunting in the daylight,
With thy nymphs unto the music
Of the horn–thyself the huntress,
And most powerful: I pray thee
Think, although but for an instant, upon us who pray unto thee!
ARADIA, C. Leland
The prayer is evocative and lovely, calling on the ancient Estrucan Diana by a variety of epithets. In the continuing legend, Virgil then gives the children a spell to increase their family’s wealth and help repair their reputation.
We should all strive to be more like those little children, if only just for a moment, and as many moments as we can. Offering a flower to Dea on our altars, while giving thanks to Her in words and rites.
Kore Di-Jana, The Janite Ekklesia 