👉 WINTER SOLSTICE, SATURNALIA AND SOL INVICTUS

‼️Happy New Year!

✅ In Roman times the most important feast of the year were the Saturnalia, celebrated on the Winter Solstice, when it seemed that the Sun was not going to rise again; the apparent death of Nature had to be exorcised with special rituals, so that the Sun could resume its course.

✅ The Saturnalia were a rite of passage from the Old to the New Year, similar to our Christmas and New Year’s Eve celebrations. People exchanged gifts, a great banquet was prepared to cheer up the long night spent awake, waiting for the new Sun to rise. A game similar to today's Bingo was played: the numbers also had oracular functions, and were used to predict the future.

✅ Originally the Saturnalia were dedicated to the god Saturn, who was later replaced by Dionysus: the wild feasts and abundant libations typical of his cult were added to the old rituals. Shops, schools and courts were closed, wars were suspended.

✅ In the third century AD to the Saturnalia was added the cult of the Sol Invictus, a solar deity of oriental origin, imported by the emperor Elagabalus and later by Aurelian.

✅ We know, however, that Nero had previously identified himself with the Sun by the name of Neos Helios. Also emperor Hadrian was portrayed as Sol Invictus on the Quadriga of the Sun, a bronze sculpture which seems to have been on top of his Mausoleum, the current Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome.

✅ Many Roman buildings were oriented in order to create luminous «special effects» in the days of Winter Solstice, such as those we discovered in Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli, in the buildings of Roccabruna and Accademia.

👉 If you wish to know more about these Illuminations and Archaeoastronomy , we explain it in detail in our book «Villa Adriana. Architettura Celeste. I Segreti dei Solstizi», published by Rirella Editrice (rirella-editrice.ch).

👉 Direct link to the Book: https://tinyurl.com/pk674zun