Valentine’s, the Love of Life & A New Initiative

What a challenging yet opportune time to be alive!  In this short article, I’d like to highlight Valentine’s as a particular inflection point within the yearly rhythm, for reasons that feel pertinent to the unfolding 2026 year ahead, while also acknowledging an important cofounded initiative being launched this Valentine’s.

In the Northern hemisphere, mid-Feb can act as a sacred way-marker between the ‘dead-of-winter’ during the solstice/Christmas/New Year and the coming Spring Equinox in late March. This mid-Feb wintertime was historically celebrated for its ‘brightening days’.

St Valentine’s Day (14^th Feb) is a Christian appropriation of earlier pagan European ceremonies.  Today, even this Christian appropriation has been supplanted by a commercialized version of chocolates, cards and flowers. Yet one might still sense remnants of more ancient tradition if one wishes. For instance, the light-hearted joyful celebration of love can also contain a seed of soulfulness if we so choose – a way into a deep love of life that informs our ‘spring’ rebirth into the year ahead. Afterall, it’s a time when birds (in the Northern Hemisphere) begin to choose their mates.  Ancient traditions in Europe/Near East viewed the bird as a symbol of the soul. Such traditions confer how the feminine and masculine aspects of the soul seek to marry/cojoin in love – the act of sacred alchemy that lies at the heart of ancient traditions all over the world.

‘Great is the mystery of marriage, for without it the world would not exist.’  The Gospel of Philip

This sacred alchemy of feminine-masculine deep inside ourselves (also manifesting through communal human relationships and with the natural world) is a primal act of regeneration. It’s a rebirth that brings us back in-tune with life as it really is. Through this sacred alchemy, we learn to see beyond the illusion of separation. An act of great love that enables us to see the world with new eyes.  Might we permit ourselves to see the world anew this Valentine’s Day? To see beyond the surface of things and sense a deeper love?

‘We cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.’Mother Teresa

The word ‘February’ comes from the ancient Roman celebration of dies Februatus also known as Lupercalia, observed annually on 15^th February as a cleansing, purifying time for renewing health and fertility ahead of the coming springtime. Some centuries before the Romans we find the Eleusinian tradition of ancient Greece honouring mid-February as a time for the rising of fertility and the Sacred Feminine (Demeter and Persephone) as an initiatory celebration of spring’s approach, marking the beginning of Persephone’s return from the underworld – a rebirth. 

Further afield, in ancient India we find celebrations starting around mid-February that mark the transition from winter to spring (Vasant Ritu), a time of renewal and the beginning of the agricultural cycle. Mid-February in China to this day is dominated by the Lunar New Year (Spring Festival falling on Feb 17, 2026); likewise Japanese cherry blossom events in mid-Feb symbolise the coming of springtime.

In the Celtic North and British Isles, early Feb witnesses St Brigid’s Day, also known as Imbolc and Candlemas.  Once again, there’s Christian appropriation of an earlier pagan celebration of the goddess Brigid, symbolic of the feminine, fertility, threshold-crossings and rebirth. The holy wellspring bubbling up from the earth, the igniting of campfires with the eternal flame, the rhythmic cyclicality of life, the healing and regenerative potential found in attuning with the Sacred Feminine, the practical craftsmanship/artisanship of creative production infused with love, and a deep sense of interconnectedness and love of life.

‘And the world that is looked at so deeply

wants to flourish in love.

Work of the eyes is done, now

go and do heart-work’   Rainer Maria Rilke

While I appreciate that goddess Brigid’s Day is at the beginning of February, for me there’s a notable inflection point around mid-Feb/St Valentine’s in Northern Europe that feels like a moving out of the ‘dead-of-winter’ into a ‘new dawn’. The morning times are markedly different by Valentine’s, so too the bird-song and appearance of spring-buds. The daffodils have risen from the ground though yet to flower, and the crocuses, aconites and snowdrops already a distant memory.  The year is upon itself, being reborn anew, each day and hour. This is the initiation, its ‘heart-work’ for our humanity in the making, placing new steps of change amid a time of turbulence, tension and transformation. 

‘Each new hour holds new chances, for a new beginning. The horizon leans forward, offering you space to place new steps of change.’ Maya Angelou

For the Southern hemisphere mid-Feb is also celebratory across various traditions, though as a coming-out of the height of summer rather than the Northern hemisphere’s coming-out of the dead of winter.   For instance, in Peru mid-Feb is dominated by the massive Fiesta de la Candelaria celebration honouring the ancient Earth goddess Pachamama and the Virgin Mary as a Christian symbol of the Sacred Feminine.

These days Valentine’s Day tends to revolve around cards, flowers, chocolates, and romantic gestures which is all-fine, though the recognition of deep creative ‘Eros’ currents flowing through nature’s inner-outer fecundity has been largely lost.

As I write this, I notice a ladybird crawling over my lap and on to my hand, inviting me to pause and ponder.  It’s not lost on me that the ladybird is coming out of her winter hibernation. In many traditions, the ladybird is a symbol of shedding the past and welcoming-in new beginnings (a rebirth no less), also of spiritual growth, and a symbol of good luck.

Might we permit ourselves a moment to pause, root down and in, to feel an innate love of life’s regenerative potential?  Perhaps also to acknowledge our own bodymind’s innate regenerative potential, and also that of the communities, organisations and ecologies we play a part in? How might these systems be attempting to renew themselves? How might we hold-space for their regeneration? Might we permit mythic and archetypal currents to flow into our awareness so as to see with a deeper lens? To sense the sacredness and interconnectedness of this oh sweet life, no matter how bitter it might taste at times?

‘We must be still and still moving

Into another intensity

For a further union, a deeper communion.’  T.S. Eliot

The deeper communion poet Eliot speaks of is a radical act of love. Let’s apply three of the ancient Greek qualities of love – Agape, Eros, Philia – with respect to Valentine’s as a sacred moment for acknowledging a deeper communion with Life:

Agape has an intensity in the form of an unbounded expansive spirit-love of life as a sacred adventure, a soul-making poiesis learning-process of becoming more attuned to the Wisdom of Life and the Sacred Feminine, full of open-hearted surrendering. Its this spiritual love that grounds and informs the creative alchemic intensity of Eros. 

Eros as a creative energy gives us passion, purposefulness and enthusiasm. Yet, Eros without Agape becomes uprooted from a sense of interconnectedness and soul-surrender. This ungrounded Eroic-energy can all-too-easily get caught up in egoic-lust, desire, greed, envy, impatience, anxiety, vanity – the very vices that plague modernity’s ego-mentality. This uprooted erotic-egoic energy whips Valentine’s into a profane affair.  Without the creative energetics of a grounded soulful Eros our relationships superficialize.

Philia as relational love informs reciprocity, good neighbourliness, camaraderie, trust and friendship. This Philia flows with Eros and Agape. When we’re ungrounded from a deep sense of love of life and its innate interconnectedness, its all-too-easy for the ego self-as-separate and its unbalanced erotic-egoic energy unplugged from Agape to warp Philia into superficial transactionality. The reciprocity is lost, as is the sense of respect and trust. So too the art of soul-craft, infusing what we create and deliver with love and care. With this deeper current of love lost, we start to grasp, project, judge, blame and ‘other’.

In other words, love flows through our passions, relationships, cultures and daily activities as long as we remind ourselves to re-root into the rhizomatic ground-of-all-being – a deep Love of Life (Agape) beneath, behind and beyond the illusion of separation. This radical act of love welcomes-in a ‘brightening of days’, a seeing with new eyes, that welcomes-in the Feminine right where it’s needed – in the heart of things as an attentiveness to ourselves, to others, to the more-than-human.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’
Doesn’t make any sense.”  Rumi

Within this context of celebrating life’s interconnectedness and regenerative potential, I am heartened to joyfully celebrate a cofounded initiative between the leadership coach, philanthropist, impact investor and social entrepreneur Hayley Morris and myself.

We’ve decided to pool our decades of experience in leadership, organisational development and systems-change to cofound the Keys for Future-fit Leadership Academy.  The intention here is a simple one: to provide pragmatic hope, insights and energy for purpose-based leaders and practitioners to thrive amid the metacrisis. This international Academy offers mentoring, coaching and immersive experiences for Future-Fitness amid rising complexity.

It feels timely to bring this co-initiative into the world at this time of immense challenge, turbulence and opportunity for change.

For more on the Keys for Future-fit Leadership Academy visit kffla.co 

For more information and downloadable content feel free to contact us here: https://kffla.co/contact