Another Visit to the Calendar: February

I have a Latin calendar - from the Middle Ages - on my bulletin board dotted by quotes from Virgil. It has caused me to wonder about various names and three years ago, I posted about TGIF - how Friday got its name. I have also mused about how the months got their names. Most are pretty clear, but my birth month of February remained a mystery.

Like Friday, the name February turns out to also have been female-centric. The Latin word februa translates as "means of purification." Februa were goat skin thongs used during Lupcalia, a Roman festival that took place in a grotto called the Lupercal. Goats were sacrificed to the Roman gods named Lupercus and Faunus where the priest were dressed in goatskins. Then the priests took the blood from the sacrifice, dipped thongs of goat skin in the blood and ran around hitting women with the thongs - supposedly assuring easy fertility and delivery.

I guess I understand why none of my elementary teachers discussed the origins of February.

Associative Powers: Generating an Environment

While I was working on my Latin translation of Spinoza's Ethics this morning, I found myself paying extra attention to getting the right phrasing and suddenly I was transported from Los Angeles to the Carolina Coffee Shop in Chapel Hill, NC. I wondered, "what is going on here?"

We have all had the urge to go to a certain place to work on a specific topic. For me, the study of Latin and Greek is associated with the Harry Potteresque nature of my boarding high school. The atmosphere was adequately still (or boring to most) to allow me to wander around in my head until I found the right word or phrase. 

When I went to UNC for college, I found a few places that created the same atmosphere - the Rare Books Room of the library and the Carolina Coffee Shop. It was irritating that I was unable to find more places on and around campus and caused some negative feelings towards the school - unnecessarily as it turns out.

In my morning study, I discovered that my mind will simply supply the atmosphere if I will settle down into my task - a process that evokes Spinoza's emphasis of the associative powers of the imagination in Book 3 of the Ethics.