Lemuralia

From FB:

“Celebrated May 9, 11, and 13, Lemuralia (or Lemuria) was a Roman festival dedicated to appeasing evil spirits. During Lemuralia, Romans performed rites to exorcise the malevolent and fearful ghosts of the dead from their homes. The unwholesome spectres of the restless dead, the lemures or larvae were propitiated with offerings of beans.

According to Ovid, the Lemuralia was originally called Remuria and began with Romulus, who was looking for a way to appease the spirit of his murdered brother Remus.

Within each home, the head of the household was to rise at midnight, wash his hands three times, and while walking barefooted around the house throw black beans behind his back and recite the following nine times: “Haec ego mitto; his redimo meque meosque fabis” meaning “I send these; with these beans I redeem me and mine”.

The Vestal Virgins performed two rituals in association with the festival. The first was to prepare a sacred mola salsa (salted flour) made from the first ears of wheat of the season, This was sprinkled on the altar, on animal victims prior to their sacrifice, and in the sacred fire throughout the year. The second ritual, performed on May 13th was to throw images of thirty old men into the Tiber river from the Pons Sublicius.

Because this exorcism of evil spirits occurred annually in May, the entire month was deemed unlucky for marriages, giving birth to the proverb “Mense Maio malae nubent” or “They wed ill who wed in May”.