Where it is celebrated:
Focus of celebration:
When it happens:
How it’s celebrated:
What is unique about its aesthetic/look?
- Ancient Rome
Focus of celebration:
- The Lemuralia or Lemuria was a feast in the religion of ancient Rome during which the Romans performed rites to exorcise the malevolent and fearful ghosts of the dead from their homes.
When it happens:
- In the Julian calendar the three days of the feast were 9, 11, and 13 May.
How it’s celebrated:
- The unwholesome spectres of the restless dead, the lemures or larvae were propitiated with offerings of beans. On those days, the Vestals would prepare sacred mola salsa, a salted flour cake, from the first ears of wheat of the season.
- The Vestal Virgins performed two rituals in association with the festival. The first was to prepare a sacred mola salsa (salted flour) made from the first ears of wheat of the season, This was sprinkled on the altar, on animal victims prior to their sacrifice, and in the sacred fire throughout the year. The second ritual, performed on May 13th was to throw images of thirty old men into the Tiber river from the Pons Sublicius.
- Publicly there were games held in the Circus Maximus in honor of Mars on the 11th, and on the 13th in commemoration of dedication of the Temple of Mercury (in 495 BC) the merchants offered up incense and used laurel branches to sprinkle water from the well of Mercury at the Porta Capena over themselves and their goods in order to obtain Mercury’s aid in making their businesses prosper.
What is unique about its aesthetic/look?
- Ovid notes that at this festival it was the custom to appease or expel the evil spirits by walking barefoot and throwing black beans over the shoulder at night. It was the head of the household who was responsible for getting up at midnight and walking around the house with bare feet throwing out black beans and repeating the incantation, "I send these; with these beans I redeem me and mine" (Haec ego mitto; his redimo meque meosque fabis.) nine times. The household would then clash bronze pots while repeating, "Ghosts of my fathers and ancestors, be gone!" nine times.
Note: All text has been copied from the "Ghost Festival" article on Wikipedia.