Seven days past the beginning of the year (actually the original ancient calculation was a little bit different) is remembered the slaying of the Lord of the Night and the world being reborn.

The ancient ritual of celebration is a re-enactment, with a symbolic sacrifice, where all the participants focus the negative energy of all the things they want to get rid of for the following year (bad luck, poor health, etc.) in the center of the circle of the dance of the 13 Priestesses, where it will be "slayed" and banished never to return in the year to come. In some areas though there is still used a real deer that will be the center of focusing and is actually slayed and it's head thrown on the running water.

The Day of Tia-Ranta, the Sacred Dance of the Priestesses of the Sun, has become in time Tantaroi, and even, under the Christian influence, due to the fact that it's celebration coincides with John's the Baptist's Day, is mostly known and celebrated nowadays on the Romanian territory as "The Iordan of the Women".

During this day, the women gather together in big groups, they eat and drink (and get drunk)and dance, they roam around the village dancing, singing and shouting, in some areas they go from house to house and request offerings of food and drink. Then men stay in the houses, careful not to set foot aside, for what man is caught by the women will be surrounded and taken to the closest running water and threatened to be dunked in the water if he doesn't give them what they want (more food or drink).

Note: The CUUPS Circle in Norman was kind enough to be part of a Tia-Ranta ritual that I led in January 2005. Thanks and blessings to them, for lots of the bad things going on in my life went away that year.