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Nuremberg Chronicle - Felicitas
Identifier
010680
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Felicitas’s primary attributes are the caduceus and cornucopia. So she is the symbol of being able to convert sexual energy into spiritual input – inspiration or wisdom for example. The ability to ‘perform felicitas’ became proof of one's excellence and divine favour. Felicitas could bestow a sort of "charismatic authority” to leaders.
The name Felicitas derives from the Latin adjective felix. In its spiritual sense, felix means "blessed, under the protection or favour of the gods; happy." That which is felix has achieved the ‘pax divom’, a state of harmony or peace with the divine world. The word derives from Indo-European *dhe(i)l, meaning "happy, fruitful, productive, full of nourishment." Enlightened.
The key to understanding Felicitas is in knowing that related Latin words include fello, fellare, "to perform fellatio", with an originally non-sexual meaning of "to suck" and to nourish. “The continued magical association of sexual potency, increase, and general good fortune in productivity is indicated by the inscription Hic habitat Felicitas ("Felicitas dwells here") on an apotropaic relief of a phallus at a bakery in Pompeii.”
By extension any woman capable of helping men perform this conversion of energy [and who by extension had achieved the same themselves] were also called Felicitas. About the nearest symbol is the High Priestess in the Tarot, or the Vestal Virgin