AMAZING meteor shower this week! Go outside about 20:00 hours (8 p.m.) and look up to see the Geminids ... meteors shooting out of Gemini. The Geminid meteor shower appears every year about this time and is our best shooting star display, with more than 100 meteors appearing each hour. Sadly, if you live in the Northern Hemisphere the winter weather makes viewing bad. But if you are lucky enough to live in the Southern Hemisphere, you have a perfect view on a clear summer night!
AS priests, we often receive enquiries from people asking how they can be closer to Antinous ... but the answer is that Antinous continually whispers into your ear and comes to you in dream visions.
"It can be a momentary flash or a scent or a sensation," said our spiritual leader ANTONIUS SUBIA during ceremonies in Hollywood California.
"It is easy to dismiss these messages as just a figment of our imagination," he said in the ceremonies, which originated at the Hollywood Temple of Antinous and were shared globally via Skype with adherents across North America, Latin America and in Europe.
"But if we open our hearts, we can recognize these momentary flashes for what they are: Antinous is speaking to us," Antonius added.
"And the more we become accustomed to being receptive to these messages, the more Antinous speaks to us," he told the worldwide worshipers.
Antonius issued an appeal for worshipers of Antinous to become mindfully aware of "how Antinous is part of their daily life," he said.
"You have to come to the realization that you are not imagining this, but rather, that it is HOMOTHEOSIS ... Antinous speaking to you.
We can be more intentional with our relationship with Antinous than just waiting for him to come to us. There are many ways to cultivate his presence, from writing in a dream journal to repainting the living room to visiting with a particularly interesting friend or a place.
ON December 11th the Religion of Antinous honors SAINT ALESSANDRO ALBANI, who was an Italian aristocrat and cardinal, and a collector and patron of the arts.
It is largely thanks to Cardinal Albani that Antinous experienced a resurgence of interest in the 18th Century which continues to this day.
It is also believed that Albani secretly worshiped the Beauteous Boy as a gay god.
Albani became a trend-setter and an arbiter of taste. Albani, whose sexuality was ambivalent, and the openly gay Winkelmann more or less single-handedly launched a craze throughout the European aristocracy for Classical art.
When he was 29, by special dispensation from his uncle Pope Clement XI, Alessandro Albani was made a Cardinal, although he had never been a priest or member of a lower order.
Indeed, he would have preferred to pursue a military career. But chronic eye problems, which eventually resulted in total blindness in old age, convinced him to take up his uncle's generous offer.
He is said to have been a continuing cause of great concern to his uncle, due to his worldly and irreligious obsessions, first among these his passion for art.
Cardinal Albani used his vast wealth to collect Classical art, and to patronize artists of his day, such as Anton Raphael Mengs, and the "Father of Archaeology" Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who was an open homosexual.
The art collection of Cardinal Albani contained an extraordinary number of statues of Antinous, and these were studied by Winckelmann, who had taken up residence in the sprawling and very lavish Villa Albani outside of Rome (pictured at left).
And Antinous was the pre-eminent example of male beauty in Classical art. Every aristocrat in Europe wanted a statue or Antinous. And monarchs such as Frederick the Great of Prussia (who never married and favored intimate friendships with males) sent out experts to find statues of Antinous.
Thus, the science of archaeology was born largely through a desire by aristocrats to furnish their palaces with the sort of Antinous-style Classical art which Albani had made fashionable.
By the time he died on December 11th in the year 1779, it was rumored that Cardinal Albani, along with his intimate friends Winckelmann and neo-classicist painter Anton Mengs, had been secret worshippers of Antinous and Priapus.
It was asserted that they reinstated the religion of the Beloved Boy as a kind of underground cult along with other, unnamed persons.
For this reason, though based largely on rumor, Cardinal Alessandro Albani is sanctified as a Saint of the Religion of Antinous.
Although he was a Cardinal of the Catholic Faith, he may in fact have been the first High Priest of Antinous since the extermination of the ancient religion 1,300 years before.
Albani's secret cult ... assuming it truly existed ... is the only known predecessor since ancient times to the current Religion of Antinous.
THERE are Catholic rosary beads, Eastern Orthodox beads, Swedish Lutheran Frälserkransen beads, Islamic prayer beads, Buddhist meditation beads, Hindu japa mala beads and even Wiccan prayer beads ... now several adherents of Antinous are designing prayer beads.
This photo shows Antinous Prayer Beads designed and created by Antonius Subia. Click here to read how he hand-crafted the FLAMEN ANTONIUS SUBIA PRAYER BEADS.
Priests Uendi and Hernestus also have created their own special prayer beads ... very different in design and function from Antonius Subia's beads.
Priest Hernestus calls his the "Antinous Moon Magic" beads and describes them in full detail HERE.
They consist of 52 beads symbolizing the 52 primary annual lunar phases, each of which represents a specific archetypal spirit in Antinous Moon Magic (photo at left).
In addition, there are some 30 additional beads representing various major "Saints of Antinous" and "Blessed Souls of Antinous."
There are also has beads for what Hernestus calls his "Sorgenkinder" (German for "special needs children") ... beads for persons or situations which require urgent spiritual attention.
Priest Julien's beads have a unique flavor all their own and he uses them in his daily meditations and prayers (photo below right).
Many other modern-day Antinous adherents have created their own Antinous Prayer Beads.
THE Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe (Día de la Virgen de Guadalupe) is a Catholic feast that celebrates the belief that a man encountered the Virgin Mary, Mexico's patron saint, in Mexico City on December 9 and 12, 1531.
LOOKING for a holiday gift? We can most assuredly say that, if you loved THE LOVE GOD, Martin Campbell's historical novel about the life of Antinous ... now you must read his new novel about the early life of Julius Caesar entitled "Queen Julius Caesar" ... now available in Kindle and paperback. ORDER HERE!
This meticulously researched book (with 40 pages of glossary and appendices) is a fast-paced page-turner with swashbuckling pirates, orgies and political intrigue. And it has already spawned pre-publication controversy with its provocative title and the tag-line "Rome's greatest ruler was bisexual."
But far more interestingly, Campbell shows how a cocky, privileged young Patrician, accustomed to getting his way, is forced through adversity and deprivation ... and the intervention of Eastern potentates ... to develop the qualities of character that will make him a great leader.
Along the way, he parlays physical and emotional disabilities (epilepsy, obsessive-compulsive tendencies and self-injury to allay emotional pain) into strengths which will enable him to outwit and outmaneuver his adversaries.
His lessons begin at sea on a galley loaded with gold when pirates commandeer his vessel and hold him for ransom. Cunningly, he informs his captors the ransom is too low, and he finagles and entraps the pirates.
Another man in such a hopeless and helpless situation would give up. But Campbell skillfully shows how Caesar used his wits and his obsessive-compulsive discipline and determination not only to save himself and his adjutants, but also to emerge victorious and to exact cruel vengeance which would earn Caesar a place in the history books as a man not to be trifled with.
In addition, in Campbell's brilliant historical novel, 20-year-old Caesar's education in leadership comes in the arms (literally) of Nicomedes IV, king of Bithynia, and his consort Nysa.
Prudish Victorian historians quibbled over the three-way relationship. But Julius Caesar's own troops lustily chanted: "Gallias Caesar subegit, Caesarem Nicomedes," (Caesar laid the Gauls low, Nicomedes laid Caesar low). Hence, the title of this book!
Campbell shows how young Julius Caesar observed the way Nicomedes charmed and coaxed and coerced his courtiers and his naval and land forces into doing his will ... without having to resort to blunt force in the traditional Roman way.
By the end of this at once charming and illuminating book, the reader has accompanied Julius Caesar from bumptious adolescence to manhood as a mature leader who can meet ... and defeat ... anything or anybody who gets in his way.
Through it all, the goddess Minerva provides off-stage asides to the reader in the tradition of the chorus in a Classical stage comedy.
Campbell is working on two more novels ... and we can't wait!
THE most brilliant novel about Antinous to appear in over half a century ... THE LOVE GOD ... is authored by our own MARTINUS CAMPBELL, priest of Antinous.
While that sounds like biased praise, we Antinomaniacs are hard to please and would not hesitate to pick apart a poorly researched book or one that denigrated Antinous, even if it were written by one of our best friends ... perhaps especially if it were.
At the same time, a sycophantic book that presented Antinous as being cloyingly sweet and angelic would be unbearable and not believable.
So we are gratified (and greatly relieved) to report that this book truly is a remarkable work of historical fiction right up there with Marguerite Yourcenar's landmark MEMOIRS OF HADRIAN 60 years ago.
Martin traces the life of Antinous from the moment his tousle-haired head emerges from his mother's womb under auspicious stars in Asia Minor to the moment his head sinks beneath the swirling waters of the Nile on a starry evening in Egypt.
Antinous comes to life as a young man of breath-taking beauty who is filled with conflicting passions and loyalties. He is a young man who at times is naive, yet at other times worldly wise with an ability to see the world as it is ... and to describe it with at times brutal honesty to the most powerful man in the world.
Above all, this is a gentle love story between Antinous and Emperor Hadrian, himself a man of contradictory passions and priorities.
Martin himself is a man shares these passions. He has rebounded from a series of debilitating strokes to resume a daunting array of political activism for LGBTIU health and rights issues ... while working on this novel.
Based in a hilltop home overlooking the sea in Brighton England, he spent the best part of a decade researching this novel, retracing the footsteps of Antinous across Greece and Italy, as far north as Hadrian's Wall and as far south as the Nile in Upper Egypt.
Historical facts are excruciatingly accurate ... even the positions of the stars and planets at the moment of the birth of Antinous have been calculated to precision.
An academic scholar can read this book with satisfaction, noting obscure and arcane references which only the experts in the field of Antinology fully appreciate.
At the same time, however, this is a fun book to read even for those who have never heard of Antinous in their lives and who have no firm grasp of Roman civilization in the 2nd Century AD.
There is intrigue, skulduggery, near-death by lightning, getting lost in a subterranean labyrinth, a storm at sea, earthquakes ... and some fairly hot man sex as well, albeit tastefully brought to the page.
The narrator is the Classical Love God himself: Eros. He shoots his amorous arrows and ensures that Antinous and Hadrian fulfill the destiny which the Fates have in store for them ... despite efforts by certain people in the Imperial Court to thwart the Fates.
But the genius of this book is that there are no black-and-white villains or heroes. Antinous is a young man with all the problems and drives of late adolescence. Hadrian is a man with a mid-life crisis of doubt and regret.
Others such as Empress Sabina and her constant companion Julia Balbilla and their coterie of fawning courtiers and freedmen are not really hateful towards Antinous so much as they are simply perplexed by him.
They view him the way some members of the Royal Household might look at the favorite Corgi of the Queen, unable to comprehend her affection for it, her grief when it dies.
They whisper amongst themselves: What hold does Antinous have over Hadrian?
Just who does he think he is? And is he a threat to them?
What is so different about Antinous that Hadrian doesn't grow weary of him ... as he always has with previous toy boys?
Because they cannot understand how he fits in the scheme of Imperial court life, some really rather wish he would just disappear ... voluntarily or otherwise.
And through it all is the boyhood friend of Antinous who has accompanied him on this long journey with mixed feelings and with growing envy and jealousy.
The boiling emotions all stem from Eros, who winks knowingly at the reader as he shoots one arrow after another with unerring accuracy to ensure that Antinous fulfills his destiny ... to take his place alongside Eros as a God of Love.
The result is a richly entertaining and beautifully written novel which appeals to those seeking authoritative scholarly accuracy as well as readers who just want a riveting and memorable adventure yarn.
The Love God is available as Kindle and as a paperback ... CLICK HERE to order.
