The Romans were very good at spreading their Empire; part of their efficacy was in allowing their new occupied territories to retain their own cultural and spiritual heritages. Pax Romana, the peace that Rome brought, required nothing more of their conquered peoples than giving to Caesar his due – money. The end result is that many of the Pagan gods survived, even through the era of Christianization. You might my question my claim – but then, you might want to look at the calendar.

Let’s start with the first day after the original Jewish Sabbath; Sunday.

This one is self explanatory; it’s the day of the sun, or as the Romans would call him, Sol Invictus, a concept that historically would be incorporated into early Christian art – which is a rabbit hole unto itself. Let’s just say Sunday is for the Sun.

Monday goes to the Moon. It’s also the etymological ancestor of where we get the word month from. Look it up.

Now Tuesday is a little bit trickier, because it goes back to the Norse God Tyr, less known as Tiw, a mostly forgotten deity who the Romans equated with their God of War, Mars. Tyr is primarily remembered for losing his arm to the Fenrir Wolf, the son of the Trickster God Loki. It’s going to be Norse for the next few days, quite literally.

Wednesday refers to the Germanic name for Odin; Wotan, or Wedna. Odin is the all father of the Norse pantheon; he is the giver of language, through the Runes, like Thoth in the Egyptian mythos, or Ganesha in the Hindu and other South East and South Asian traditions. He is a trickster, a magician, and despite right wing attempts to appropriate him, feminine enough the Loki at one point (in the Loki Sena) taunts him for being a sorceress, with a stress on the ‘ess’.

Thursday goes to Odin’s son, Thor, the Storm Bringer. While the Marvel Cinematic Universe has turned him into a hero, if you go back to the source material, Thor is often outwitted by Loki (who is a companion to Thor, but definitely not his brother. Stan Lee took many many poetic licenses in his depictions of the Norse pantheon).

Friday is a source of slight contention amongst academics. For the Romans, it was Veneris dies, the day of Venus, Aphrodite for the Greeks; for the Norse, the Goddess of Love was Freya, Odin’s wife. Her Germanic name is Frigga; either way, we get Friday. We also get a great track by the British emo-synth pop legends the Cure, “Friday I’m in Love”.

Now we arrive at the Sabbath day for people of the Jewish Faith (and it should be noted that Christians intentionally moved their Sabbath day to Sunday to differentiate themselves from the established Jewish practice). Here we get the one truly Roman remnant; Saturday goes to Saturn, the God of Time and the God of the Harvest. Known as Chronos to the Greeks, he was famously dispatched by his son Zeus (Jupiter to the Romans) in a great war known as the Titanomachy (which, to be fair, was started because Saturn kept eating his own children to prevent them from usurping his throne).

Despite being vanquished by his son Jupiter, it’s noteworthy that Saturn’s day has survived into the modern era, while there is no day of remembrance for the King of the Gods; perhaps that’s Saturn’s pyrrhic victory over his rebellious son. It might also reflect a deep seated longing for the so-called ‘Age of Saturn’, a golden period of total peace and harmony between all living beings.

We should be so lucky today.

Then again, if we respect the archetypes of the days, we might find ourselves that lucky, everyday.

Pax Romana, indeed.