Hail Angerona!
Hail to the silent goddess
And to Ceres and Hercules!
Hail to the protectors of those who travel the seas!
Hail to Joy!
May we now move forward with the rebirth of our sun!
May we set aside all concern and rejoice with the solar return!
May we delight in the joy of these festive times!
Salve Diva Angerona!
Salve Ceres!
Salve Hercules!
Salve Lares Permarina!
Salve Volupia!
Salve Sol!

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The Divalia, also known as the Angeronalia by Varro and Verrius Flaccus, are essentially, if not originally, the date of the winter solstice. This is the moment around which the Latin yuletide is centred. It is virtually the key focus of the Roman festival year. Diva Angerona is for us a shadowy figure, though I once had darshan of the goddess through the sparkling reflected light of the sun on the Seine in Paris. She is the mistress of the dead (the dea tacita) whose mouth on her statue, as described for us by Masurius and Pliny, was bound and sealed. Macrobius informs that her idol was placed on the altar of Volupia, the goddess of delight and happiness – indicating that Angerona and Volupia (from voluptas ‘joy’) are ultimately one and the same and suggesting the happy response involved with the ‘death’ of darkness (an obscuritas condere) and the return of the divine sun. The place of the sacrifice to the goddess is the Acculeian Curia – presumably in the Velabrum near the Via Nova and the Porta Romanula. Though the deity is known as Angerona, her title as Diva as well as the name of her festival derive from the Indo-European root *dei- that signifies ‘light, brillance’. From this same root, we derive our words deity, divine and the name of Jupiter/Iovis. Within the Diva Angerona we are to find the chthonian origins of solar luminescence and the joy of the yuletide season. And with the rebirth of the sun, time resumes and the Saturnalian epagomenae end.

Sacrifices to both Ceres and Hercules came also to be added to this day. The Fasti Antiates Maiores and Ostienses additionally mention the lares permarina, the protector of sea-travellers. These last may have come to be associated with the winter solstice through imported ideas of the Egyptian solar barque. Ceres is of course a terrestrial goddess albeit with underworld chthonian connections as well, and Hercules suggests the hypostasis behind Saturnus and Consus.  As we find with the next feriae, the Larentalia that conclude the Latin yuletide, the solstitial moment is a time in which several gods and goddesses come to be honoured.