Italian Snake Festival

The Festa di San Domenico Abate (or in English - The Feast of St. Domenic the Abbot) is the "Italian Snake Festival" It is a festival that begins Mid March and culminates the first Thursday in May in the village of Cocullo Italy.

Like many Christian festivals it has pre-Christian roots. What is unique about this festival is that the saint or deity being honored has changed 3 times. It was a festival to worship Apollo, at another time it was to worship the goddess Antgitia before becoming the feast of a Christian Saint.

I feel that this festival is relevant to me because the small town where it takes place is located in the Abruzzo region of Italy and is about an hour and a half drive from the two small towns in Italy where half of my family line originated.

It may be that some of my not so recent ancestors (or even more recent ones, who knows?) visited this festival, maybe under one of the prior incarnations where it was in honor of Apollo or Angitia.

It is a festival that I might call Beltane with sauce and meatballs. It speaks of fertility. One of the customs for the festival is to bless soil and then take it out and sprinkle it on the fields. The soil should act as a protector of the crops.

I can't celebrate the festival in Cocullo, but I can bring elements of it into my own seasonal celebrations. This year I plan to incorporate the symbol of the snake and some of the soil fertility elements into my Beltane ritual. 

 

I also plan on honoring Angitia.

The cakes I will make will be Ciambelli, or at least the not-so-traditional Gluten free version I will have to rig up.