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| Luna |
"Over the mountains
Of the moon,
Down the valley of the shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"~ Edgar Allan Poe, Eldorado
January 3rd—The Wolf Moon rises again, cold and unadorned, without ceremony. A stark beacon in the winter sky, it does not illuminate—it exposes. A visceral call, it awakens the memory of my ancestors from the rugged karst and deep valleys of the mountains of Irpinia.
Blood remembers what comfort teaches us to forget. The pull of winter, the discipline of hunger, restraint before action—these things surface under the Wolf Moon. One does not become something new; one returns to something old. The modern world calls this regression. Our ancestors knew it as proper orientation long before memory learned to speak.
To the Hirpini, hirpus—wolf—was the name of the path they followed, the sign under which they moved during the ver sacrum, when the young were consecrated, expelled, and sent forward not to wander, but to found. What was left behind was comfort. What was carried forward was law.
The wolf survives winter by law, not rage. So the man who keeps faith with his inheritance learns restraint, accepts constriction, and waits in silence—ready to move without hesitation when duty calls.
This is not nostalgia. Blood-memory is not sentiment; it is obligation. To endure. To remain loyal to one’s own. To recognize that life is ordered toward sacrifice long before it is ordered toward pleasure. The ver sacrum has not ended—it has merely become interior, an ascetical discipline. We are still being asked what we are willing to relinquish in order to remain intact.
The ver sacrum was never about abandoning the past. It was about proving oneself worthy to carry it forward, even in the new world. Under the Wolf Moon, the question endures: what must be surrendered so that the line does not fail on your watch?
The answer is borne, not spoken.
~ By Giovanni di Napoli, December 2nd, Feast of San Silvestro di Troina
Also see:Blood remembers what comfort teaches us to forget. The pull of winter, the discipline of hunger, restraint before action—these things surface under the Wolf Moon. One does not become something new; one returns to something old. The modern world calls this regression. Our ancestors knew it as proper orientation long before memory learned to speak.
To the Hirpini, hirpus—wolf—was the name of the path they followed, the sign under which they moved during the ver sacrum, when the young were consecrated, expelled, and sent forward not to wander, but to found. What was left behind was comfort. What was carried forward was law.
The wolf survives winter by law, not rage. So the man who keeps faith with his inheritance learns restraint, accepts constriction, and waits in silence—ready to move without hesitation when duty calls.
This is not nostalgia. Blood-memory is not sentiment; it is obligation. To endure. To remain loyal to one’s own. To recognize that life is ordered toward sacrifice long before it is ordered toward pleasure. The ver sacrum has not ended—it has merely become interior, an ascetical discipline. We are still being asked what we are willing to relinquish in order to remain intact.
The ver sacrum was never about abandoning the past. It was about proving oneself worthy to carry it forward, even in the new world. Under the Wolf Moon, the question endures: what must be surrendered so that the line does not fail on your watch?
The answer is borne, not spoken.
~ By Giovanni di Napoli, December 2nd, Feast of San Silvestro di Troina
• A Luna Reverie
• Random Thoughts as the Wolf Moon Approaches