Ante Diem XI Kalendas November

Modern Date : October 24th Market Day

Ante Diem XI Kalendas November
Ninth Day to the Kalends of November

This is one of the dies comitiales when committees of citizens could vote on political or criminal matters.

The emperor Domitian was born Titus Flavius Domitianus this day at Rome in 51 AD.

The second Battle of Cremona was fought this day in 69 AD. The army of Vespasian was victorius over Vitellius, and they celebrated by sacking nearby Cremona. This innocent city suffered a four day orgy of murder and destruction.

October was the eighth month of the old Roman calendar and was sacred to the goddess Astraea, daughter of Zeus and Themis. The name October comes from Octo, meaning eight (March used to be the first month).


Lilith
In ancient Mesopotamia, this was known as Lilith's Day. Lilith is the first wife of Adam in Hebrew legend. Lilith was possessed of an avid and insatiable sexual desires. Lilith is also the "screech owl" of Isaiah and is portrayed as a bird-woman deity in Sumerian art. Lilith made her home in the huluppu (willow or date palm) tree. In Zoharic texts, Lilith has dominion over all instinctual, natural beings.

Lilith's story can be viewed as the turning point of society's break from Moon Goddess worship to Solar male dominated religion. Her story has been writen out of the Bible and she is concidered a Demon in Mesopotamian and Hebrew texts. It fits in a sence that the Earth's first divorce outlines this key evolution in history and it follows that "female" spiritually has been suppressed ever since.

Lilitu is a female Mesopotamian night demon with a penchant for killing male children. Hebrew Lilith is either cognate with, or loaned from, Akkadian. In Isaiah 34:14, Lilith is a kind of night-demon or animal, translated as onokentauros, a kind of apelike demon, in the Septuagint, as lamia "witch" or vampire by Hieronymus of Cardia, and as screech owl in the KJV of the bible. In the Talmud and Midrash, Lilith appears as a night demon. The idea of Lilith as the first wife of Adam arose in the Middle Ages.

The passage in Genesis 1:27 — "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" (before describing a mate being made of Adam's rib and being called Eve in Genesis 2:22) is sometimes forwarded as an indication that Adam had a wife before Eve. This is not necessarily implied however, since there are two accounts of creation in Genesis 1 and 2, beyond the double mention of the creation of man in both Genesis 1:26 and 2:7.

A medieval reference to Lilith as the first wife of Adam is the anonymous, "The Alphabet of Ben-Sira", written sometime between the 8th and 11th centuries. Lilith is described as refusing to assume a subservient role to Adam during sexual intercourse and so deserting him ("She said, 'I will not lie below,' and he said, 'I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the superior one.'").

Lilith then went on to mate with Asmodai and various other demons she found beside the Red Sea, creating countless lilin. Adam urged God to bring Lilith back, so three angels were dispatched after her. When the angels, Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof, made threats to kill one hundred of Lilith's demonic children for each day she stayed away, she countered that she would prey eternally upon the descendants of Adam and Eve, who could be saved only by invoking the names of the three angels. She did not return to Adam. This is where the vampire legends come from.

The background and purpose of "The Alphabet of Ben-Sira" is unclear. It is a collection of stories about heroes of the Bible and Talmud, it may have been a collection of folk-tales, a refutation of Christian, Karaite, or other separatist movements; its content seems so offensive to contemporary Jews that it was even suggested that it could be an anti-Jewish satire, although, in any case, the text was accepted by the Jewish mystics of medieval Germany.

The Alphabet of Ben-Sira is the earliest surviving source of the story, and the conception that Lilith was Adam's first wife became only widely known with the 17th century Lexicon Talmudicum of Johannes Buxtorf.

In modern times Lilith has become a rallying point for women in Western cultures. In 1996, Sara McLachlan became frustrated with concert promoters and radio stations that refused to feature two female musicians in a row. Refusing to bow to sexism or conventional industry wisdom, she booked a successful tour for herself and Paula Cole. At least one of their appearances together -- in McLachlan's home town Vancouver, on September 14, 1996 -- went by the name "Lilith Fair" and included performances by McLachlan, Cole, Lisa Loeb and Michelle McAdorey, formerly of Crash Vegas. The next year, McLachlan founded the Lilith Fair tour, taking Lilith from the legend that Lilith was Adam's first wife and fair as a way to cultivate an image of beauty and equality. McLachlan modeled the tour after Lollapalooza.

At each Lilith Fair venue, one dollar for each ticket sold was given to a women’s charity in that community. Christian groups criticized the concert series, saying it ran afoul of their religious beliefs by glorifying a figure they considered pagan


Raphael the Archangel
Patron of travellers, because he accompanies Tobias on a journey to collect a debt from his father's kinsman. His name means God has Healed and in one legend, he cures Tobias of his blindness. He is the Angel of the West.

Raphael (Heb. רפאל) is a Hebrew word that means "God is healing," thus Raphael is originally an archangel known in ancient Judaism, who performs all manner of healing. The Hebrew word for a doctor of medicine is Rophe connected to the same root word as Raphael. The angels mentioned in the older books of the Hebrew Bible are without names. Rabbi Simeon ben Lakish of Tiberias (230-270 CE), asserted that all the specific names for the angels were brought back by the Jews from Babylon, and modern commentators tend to agree.

Of seven archangels in the angelology of post-Exilic Judaism, only three, Gabriel, Michael and Raphael, are mentioned by name in the scriptures that gradually became accepted as canonical. The four others, however, are named in the 2nd century BCE Book of Enoch; Uriel, Raguel, Sariel, and Jarahmeel.

The name of the archangel Raphael appears only in the Book of Tobit (Tobias)in the Christian Bible. There he first appears disguised in human form as the travelling companion of the younger Tobias, calling himself "Azarias the son of the great Ananias". During the adventurous course of the journey the archangel's protective influence is shown in many ways including the binding of the demon in the desert of upper Egypt. After the return and the healing of the blindness of the elder Tobias, Azarias makes himself known as "the angel Raphael, one of the seven, who stand before the Lord" (Tobit, xii, 15). Compared to the unnamed angels in John's Apocalypse viii, 2.

Regarding the healing powers attributed to Raphael, we have little more than his declaration to Tobias (Tobit, 12) that he was sent by the Lord to heal him of his blindness and to deliver Sarah, his daughter-in-law, from the devil that was the serial killer of her husbands. He is the main character in the Book of Tobit, which is included in the Septuagint and in the Vulgate (except for II Esdras) but omitted in Jewish and Protestant versions of the Bible; eastern Christian churches including the Russian Orthodox church (except the Coptic church) accept all these books as canonical.

Modern occultists sometimes associate Raphael with the color Yellow, the direction East, the element Air, and the Suit of Swords of the Tarot in traditions loosely derived from reports of Kabbalism. In Stregheria, Raphael's Grigori counterpart is Aldebaran.

According to Patricia Banker, of Saints Preserved, Raphael is the patron of healers, druggists, nurses, counselors and therapists, happy meetings and young people leaving home for the first time.


Erinle
And in another, the Yoruba people of Africa and the Santeria communities of the Americas, celebrate this day in honor of Erinle, the Orisha who ministers to the sick and injured. Erinle is closly associated with the Archangel Raphael.

Better known among devotees as the “divine doctor,” Erinle is the patron Orisha of fishermen, although highly venerated for his knowledge of traditional medicine and herb lore, an art that he shares with his brother Osayín. It is primarily for this knowledge that he is considered a “doctor” or “healer.” Like his brother Oshosi, he is also a patron of hunters. It is said that Oshosi hunts on land, and Erinle hunts in the rivers.

Erinle was a powerful and rich king, highly respected for his mastery of the art of divination. Lukumí oral traditions emphasize that he may have possessed telepathic abilities. Erinle may be found in the river or in the sea, but particularly where these two bodies of water meet. In Cuba, Erinle’s devotees are initiated through Yemaja in a ceremony usually referred to as oro - Yemaja oro Erinle, and his cowries serve as the communicating medium for this orisha, for although he possesses his own cowries, Erinle does not “speak” through his dilogun.

Interesting to note is that Erinle has no "roads" in Santeria/Lumuki but is seen as a "road" or manifestation of the Orisha Oshosi in the Candomble tradition of Brazil.

Erinle is accompanied by Abatan - the swamp marsh which precedes the river, in contract to Erinle/Inle who is seen as the Hippo who roles in the swamp. Companion and wife of Erinle, she is also a hunter deity who has a pact with Erinle and Oshosi. In Cuba, Abatán is received and propitiated together with Erinle and has no direct cult of her own. Many priests consider Erinle to be the doctor and Abatán a species of “nurse” or aid.