Invocation to Lupercus

Viz: We are in a wooded area that is not so thick with trees that it prevents your view of the stars in the sky. We are standing within a circle of stones. It is just before dawn.

It is cold. You can still see the stars in the sky, but there is a hint that morning will soon arrive, a vague brightening in the sky, although the sun is not yet visible. That almost glow gives you hope, even while you nervously hear wolves howling in the distance.

When you see the god, he is a teenage wolf boy , Peter Pan, wearing a wolf pelt, An aspect of the sun god, in all the wildness, goofiness and cockiness of puberty

Hail to Lupercus
O Wolf God of Winter,
Protector of Flocks against Wolves.
The Son of Winter and Frost
The Great Golden Wolf
Who drives away the wolves of night

We celebrate your carrying fire
from the Underworld
to relight the Sun
and renew the Hearth of the World

And here is the core,
For any who would
Each of us holds the blazing seed of light within
It is nurtured through the Winter's dark fallow,
By pure effort and the love of all our kin
Yet, through its guiding light to greater light,
We may yet realize that each must make that Quest,
And bring New Sun forth

We celebrate your transformation
Into Golden Wolf, the King of the Wolves
You scatter the wolves of the dark winter night.
Assist us in releasing our wolf within;
That part of us which is untamed and unowned

The wolves have been tough this year
They've been out at night attacking our herds and flocks
It's been a hard 2011 for a lot of people
And we really need Winter to start ending now.

We sense the circling of the lurking wolves of climate change, peak oil, global economic shifts
We hear the howls of the wolves of our personal lives, the
wolves of business challenges, job pressures,
wolves of family issues, economic woes
We must not shrink from the violent threat
But stand our ground and defend our own
Neither as owner nor slave
And change our enemy into our brother

Give us increase and abundance of all good things,
Enough to help us through times of dearth.
Give us luck, that we may find our way
Past all the obstacles that cannot be
Surmounted by skill alone.
Let those in our care not go hungry
Nor suffer the pangs of thirst.
Ward the evil from our lives
And watch over us as your flock.
Through you,
we are freed of the constraints
of our bodies
and of this harsh winter season.

We celebrate the beneficial nature of the wolf
The perfect predator who preserves the balance of nature
Culling only the sick, weak and elderly from the herds it hunts.

Lupercus running wild and free across the sky
The young sun god in his prime
Filling the night with stars
Constellations to guide the way
Let us join now with him
And His Ancient Tribe
Run free with the Wolves
And Howl with them throughout the Night

Devocation

Lord of winter
who drives off the wolves of night
Protector of the flocks and herds
Lupercus we thank thee for thy gifts
Of carrying fire
Of finding rulership through transformation
Of preserving the balance of nature
And keeping ourselves and our animals
Healthy through the coming year
Lupercus we thank thee for thy presence here tonight.
Hail and farewell.
Hail Lupercus!

More about Lupercus

Lupercus is a god of protection and freedom, a paradoxical combination. He is sometimes considered an aspect of Faunus. The Lupercalia on February 15 is related to him.

Below, I identify sections of the invocation which were taken or rearranged from other writings found on the web. I have attempted to find them again and hopefully credit the right person for them. This is difficult because of how much copying from person to person occurs, a process which has only been hastened by the internet. Unfortunately, I was not originally planning to post this, so I did not do a good job tracking my sources while I was composing. There is at least one that I know I am missing.

Part 1 of the Invocation is about carrying fire from the Underworld. The passage "and here is the core...bring New Sun forth" is from This is our Lupercalia by Nemesis

Part 2 of the Invocation is about becoming King of the Wolves, as recounted here by AngelOfThyNight. I am particularly touched by the method of transforming into that which seems your enemy as a way to cease it from threatening you. The passage "Give us increase and abundance... watch over us as your flock" was taken from the invocation to Faunus in the Pagan Book of Hours of the Asphodel Tradition:
Pagan Book of Hours
Order of the Horae
First Kingdom Church of Asphodel
http://www.paganbookofhours.org/
(As noted in the wikipedia entry for Lupercalia, "In Roman mythology, Lupercus is a god sometimes identified with the Roman god Faunus, who is the Roman equivalent of the Greek god Pan.")

Part 3 of the Invocation is about wolf totem, and the theme of freedom. Unfortunately I cannot refind the source from which I took the lines about the young sun god in his prime. All I can say right now is that this passage is a compilation and rearrangement of phrases, rather than 100% purely original to me.

What's left was set down by my hand. While in an inspirational state... so even that should not truly be considered purely my own.

Other Resources

Raven Grimassi has a great article at his site about Lupercus - Wolf God of Winter

The Italian page Lupercus of VALENTINO in San curated by Manuela Caregnato is another excellent resource

A part of his mythos not incorporated in the Invocation: the twelve labors

It was said that the Grigori had set twelve labours for the young wolf God to complete in order to prove his worth as the new sun God. The twelve are interestingly enough connected to the western astrological/zodiac signs and are as follows

To carry the sacred ram and set him among the stars.
To purify the hide of the sacred white bull.
To tame the twin serpents of Teramo.
To carry the Great Sea Crab to the Western Horizon.
To free the sacred Lion.
To fashion a bow for the Goddess Diana.
To forge the Great Scales of Justice for the Gods.
To seal the giant scorpion back within the Earth.
To make a golden arrow for the King of the Centaurs.
To fashion two golden horns for the Great Goat Fish.
To purify the jugs of water which are bore to the Gods.
To leash the two Great Fish of the Sea and set them among the stars.