Hail Carmenta!
Hail Juturna!
Assist us now in birthing the our new year!
May we bring our solar year forth through aqueous purification
And know clearly that which we must do!
Salve Carmenta!
Salve Iuturna!

 

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The Carmentalia are dedicated to the goddess Carmenta, a divine nymph who patronizes prophecy and the ‘song’ (carmen) of the water-spring. Carmenta along with her sisters Antevorta/Porrima and Postvorta/Postverta are the three camenae, the three Carmentes. They are also goddesses of childbirth, and Antevorta may refer to a position the child could take when issuing from the womb. She is also understood to know the past. Postvorta could again be a position of the child at birth. She is the one who knows the future.

Carmenta is associated with Evander, the Arcadian hero who founded Pallantium – either as his wife or his mother (by Mercury). It was she who allegedly brought the Greek alphabet to Italy and instituted the Roman letters. In her 110th year, she was apotheosized and henceforth received divine honours.

The goddess-nymph Juturna is also linked to the first Carmentalia and is most like another indigitation of the same figure. These feriae are also known as the Juturnalia, and Juturna, goddess of springs, wells and fountains, is on occasion named as the wife of Janus. The Juturnalia/I Carmentalia are linked to the January Agonium sacred to Janus by a dies intercissus. Janus is also a deity with aquatic affinities that include those with fountains and natural sources of water. Juturna’s spring is to be located in the Roman Forum near the Temple of Castor and Pollux, the divine twins.

The January festival arrangement suggests the duality or twinship between Janus and Jupiter in connection with a water-goddess with underworld connections.