{"id":2878,"date":"2021-10-11T07:58:12","date_gmt":"2021-10-11T07:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.itineraridelgustotrapani.it\/uncategorized\/the-pagan-worship-of-venus-ericina\/"},"modified":"2021-10-11T07:58:12","modified_gmt":"2021-10-11T07:58:12","slug":"the-pagan-worship-of-venus-ericina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itineraridelgustotrapani.it\/en\/uncategorized\/the-pagan-worship-of-venus-ericina\/","title":{"rendered":"The pagan worship of \u201cVenus Ericina\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The historical testimonies indicate that where today stands the <strong>Norman castle<\/strong> once there was a Sican-Elymian temple on which superimposed, in Roman times, a small temple dedicated to <em><strong>Venus Ericina<\/strong><\/em>.<br \/>\nThe cult of the goddess was begun by the Sicans, who raised a small open-air \u201cara (altar)\u201d in the middle of the \u201cth\u00e8menos\u201d, namely a sacred enclosure.<\/p>\n<p>Later the Elymians, Phoenicians and Carthaginians kept the <strong>worship of the goddess<\/strong> and increased the fame of the sanctuary, which became famous among all the Mediterranean peoples.<\/p>\n<p>The Carthaginians identified the goddess with their Astarte and introduced uses and <strong>oriental rites<\/strong> such as the sacred prostitution and rearing of doves which flew around the sanctuary walls throughout the year: towards the end of August, guided by one of them with red feathers, symbolising Venus, took place the departure \u2013 <em>anagogia<\/em> \u2013 to Libia (or to Colombaia). During their absence, the sanctuary was decorated and after their return \u2013 <em>katagogia<\/em> \u2013\u00a0 the celebrations began, while the doves took a break on the wall of the sacred building.<\/p>\n<p>After the Romans the temple rapidly declined, until the advent of the Normans who made it one of the most important strongholds of Sicily.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The historical testimonies indicate that where today stands the Norman castle once there was a Sican-Elymian temple on which superimposed, in Roman times, a small temple dedicated to Venus Ericina. The cult of the goddess was begun by the Sicans, who raised a small open-air \u201cara (altar)\u201d in the middle of the \u201cth\u00e8menos\u201d, namely a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2586,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[130],"tags":[161],"class_list":["post-2878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-erice-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itineraridelgustotrapani.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itineraridelgustotrapani.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itineraridelgustotrapani.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itineraridelgustotrapani.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itineraridelgustotrapani.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itineraridelgustotrapani.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itineraridelgustotrapani.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itineraridelgustotrapani.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itineraridelgustotrapani.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itineraridelgustotrapani.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}