THE BIRTH OF ALEXANDER

IT IS SAID that on the night before the mother of Alexander, Olympias, was to be married to King Phillip of Macedonia, she dreamt that a thunderbolt struck her body and filled it with power.

After the marriage, it is said that Phillip peeked into her chamber, and found her lying with a serpent, and that he afterward dreamt that her womb was sealed and that a lion dwelled within her. 

And on the night that he was born, 20th of July, 356 BC, the great Temple at Ephesus was burned to the ground by a vandal, because the goddess Artemis was away, assisting with the birth of Alexander the Great.

He was considered to be the son of Zeus, and this divine origin was  what was given as an explanation for the unprecedented conquests that he accomplished. In his youth Aristotle, a student of Plato, educated him along with his following of young princes, who were later serve as his generals, and the founders of great dynastic monarchies of the Hellenistic world.

Foremost of these was his ever loyal and devoted Hepheistion, whose reciprocated love for Alexander was homosexual in nature.

In one of their first battles, while Phillip was still king, the young Alexander proved himself by defeating the Sacred Band of Thebes, the army of homosexual lovers who were the most famous and courageous warriors of their time.

Alexander is said to have wept at their destruction, and buried them with honor, erecting a statue of a Lion over their graves.

He would later go one to conquer the entire Eastern world, Asia Minor, Syria, Judea, Egypt, and all of Persia, as far East as India. The Empire of Alexander spread Greek culture throughout the world, and made the communication of far-distant ideas possible so that the new Hellenistic culture that he created, was a combination of classical Greece and of the exotic cultures that were imported from every corner.

After the death of Alexander, at only 33 years of age, he was deified by his generals who divided his great Empire among themselves. We praise the glorious warrior Alexander of Macedonia, and elevate him, and worship him as a God, an example of the greatness of homosexuality, and a heroic protector of the Divine Antinous.

ALEXANDRIA ALIGNED TO SUN ON ALEXANDER THE GREAT'S BIRTHDAY

ALEXANDRIA, home to one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, may have been built to align with the rising sun on the day of Alexander the Great's birth.

The Macedonian king, who commanded an empire that stretched from Greece to Egypt to the Indus River in what is now India, founded the city of Alexandria in 331 B.C. 

It would later become hugely prosperous, home to Cleopatra, the magnificent Royal Library of Alexandria and the 450-foot-tall (140  meters) Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the SEVEN WONDERS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD.

Hadrian and Antinous visited Alexandria in the summer and early autumn of 130 AD.

Ancient Alexandria was planned around a main east-west thoroughfare called the Canopic Road, points out Giulio Magli, an archaeo-astronomer at the Politecnico of Milan. 

A study of the ancient route reveals it is not laid out according to topography; for example, it doesn't run quite parallel to the coastline. 

But on July 20th, the birthday of Alexander the Great, the rising sun of the 4th Century BC rose "in almost perfect alignment with the road," Magli was quoted as saying.

July 20th, 356 BC, is the date which has always been accepted as the birthday of Alexander the Great. Whether it was his actual birthday or only the official royal observance of his birth is unknown.

It is said that on the night before the mother of Alexander, Olympias, was to be married to King Phillip of Macedonia, she dreamt that a thunderbolt struck her body and filled it with power.

After the marriage, it is said that Phillip peeked into her chamber, and found her lying with a serpent, and that he afterward dreamt that her womb was sealed and that a lion dwelled within her. 

And on the night that he was born, 20th of July, 356 BC, the great Temple at Ephesus was burned to the ground by a vandal, because the goddess Artemis was away, assisting with the birth of Alexander the Great.

He was considered to be the son of Zeus, and this divine origin was what was given as an explanation for the unprecedented conquests that he accomplished. In his youth Aristotle, a student of Plato, educated him along with his following of young princes, who were later serve as his generals, and the founders of great dynastic monarchies of the Hellenistic world.

Foremost of these was his ever loyal and devoted Hepheistion, whose reciprocated love for Alexander was homosexual in nature.

In one of their first battles, while Phillip was still king, the young Alexander proved himself by defeating the SACRED BAND OF THEBES, the army of homosexual lovers who were the most famous and courageous warriors of their time.

Alexander is said to have wept at their destruction, and buried them with honor, erecting a statue of a Lion over their graves.

He would later go one to conquer the entire Eastern world, Asia Minor, Syria, Judea, Egypt, and all of Persia, as far East as India.

The Empire of Alexander spread Greek culture throughout the world, and made the communication of far-distant ideas possible so that the new Hellenistic culture that he created, was a combination of classical Greece and of the exotic cultures that were imported from every corner.

After the death of Alexander, at only 33 years of age, he was deified by his generals who divided his great Empire among themselves. We praise the glorious warrior Alexander of Macedonia, and elevate him, and worship him as a God, an example of the greatness of homosexuality, and a heroic protector of the Divine Antinous.

CARAVAGGIO, SAINT OF ANTINOUS

ON JULY 18th the Religion of Antinous honors Saint Caravaggio.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, who died under suspicious circumstances on this day in 1610, was an extraordinary painter whose homoerotic images of young men have caused art historians to call him the first modern painter.

St. Caravaggio is the Patron of Gifted Bad Boys — Gay Boys who are blessed with incredible talents but who are too impatient and too rebellious to abide by the rules of society.

St. Caravaggio was always in trouble. In 1592, when he was not yet 20 years old, he fled Milan after a series of brawls and the wounding of a police officer. He went to Rome and was there, for the most part, until 1606, when he again had to flee. His life in Rome was of growing financial and professional success, but it was also punctuated with crime.

In the years 1600-1606 alone, he was brought to trial no less than eleven times. The charges covered a variety of offenses, most involved violence. It is significant that, despite his reputation for homosexuality, and his endless brushes with the police, he was never charged with sodomy, then a capital offense.

But he was charged with murder. On 29 May 1606 he killed one Tommasoni in a brawl after a disputed game of royal tennis, and had to flee to escape execution. He went first to Naples, then to Malta, where he was feted and made a Knight of St John.

Then, after "an ill considered quarrel" with a senior knight, he was on the run once more, all around Sicily, then on to Naples again.

But this time there was no hiding place. The knights, known for their relentlessness, pursued him, and Caravaggio, now 39 nine, in an attempt to seek forgiveness and refuge in Rome, tried to get there, but died at Porto Ercole, apparently of a fever, though the circumstances are highly suspicious.

Despite his hunted and, in the end, desperate life, he always managed to go on painting, often without a proper workshop of any kind. He was variously described, even by admirers, as a man of "stravaganze" as "uno cervello stravagantissimo" (exceptionally odd) and a "cervello stravolto".

His father died when he was six, his mother when he was 18, which may help to explain his anger at the world. His paintings show that he was a man of the most profound religious convictions, of a humble and contrite heart, and with a fanatical devotion to his art.

 His fundamental ideas were always absolutely clear, though he continually changed and improved his techniques. He believed in total realism, and he always painted from life, dragging poor people in from the street if need be.

He became a great realist by painting flowers and fruit, in a variety  of lights, sometimes pure still lifes, sometimes with street boys, such as the model for Bacchus (above).

To achieve realism, he liked to pull his subject out of surrounding darkness into strong lateral or overhead light, as close to the viewer  as possible.

This was a new kind of art, which was to have momentous consequences. It has led some modern writers to speculate that, born into the 20th or 21st Century, Caravaggio would have been a photographer or a filmmaker.

But that is nonsense. Caravaggio, it is clear, adored the feel and line of a brush on a slightly springy surface, prepared with grey (as a rule), and the sheer creative excitement of using the brush to bring the real world out of the darkness of the canvas.

For the first time in the history of art, Caravaggio eliminated the space between the event in the painting and the people looking at it. He created a kind of virtual reality to give you a feeling as though you are right there inside the painting.

Even we, whose vision and sense of reality has been blunted and distorted by television and the cinema, still get tremendous impressions of participating when we see his great canvases close up. What then must it have been like in the early seventeenth century, for people who had never come across anything approaching this blast of actuality, to be brought face-to-face with a reenactment of sacred events in two dimensions, such as St. Francis of Asisi in Ecstasy?

Artists were particularly struck, or perhaps shocked is a better word, but horribly stimulated too, and stirred to find out exactly how the man did it.

Caravaggio, despite all his difficulties, always finished each piece of work if he possibly could, then went directly on to another, with  fresh ideas and new experiments.

He was a Bad Boy. But he was a gifted genius. The Religion of Antinous honors this Patron of Gifted Bad Gay Boys as an exemplar and saint. Let us lift our glasses to St. Caravaggio.

SKIN ART MAKES ANTINOUS AN INDELIBLE PART OF YOUR LIFE

ANTINOUS skin art is popular among many modern-day worshipers of the Most Great and God God.

Thousands of people want a relationship with Antinous which ... literally ... goes under the skin.

The most famous celebrity with an Antinous tattoo is ADAM LAMBERT, who has called on all of his fans to learn all they can about Antinous. 

The tattoo, which reaches from nipple to hips down the left flank of his torso, features a bust similar to ones he saw on a trip to Greece.

Adam Lambert says he is "obsessed" with Antinous.

He told an interviewer recently: "I have a tattoo of Antinous, Emperor Hadrian’s lover, on my ribs. It was a very public relationship and they travelled around together until Antinous died. They were like the early gay power couple!"

Below are several more skin art designs proudly worn by adherents of Antinous:

ANTINOUS SHOOTS HIS ARROWS INTO YOUR HEART

THE PERSEID meteors streak across the heavens from late July to reach their peak in mid-August. Go outside on a clear night and you will see dozens of meteors.

They appear to originate in the Constellation of Antinous right in the middle of the July and August night sky — as though Antinous is shooting arrows at you.

The CONSTELLATION OF ANTINOUS is directly right overhead in mid-heaven at this time of year. Go outside about 10 p.m. when it is good and dark and look up. You will see the Milky Way bisecting the sky from north to south. Look for the "Summer Triangle" formed by the stars Vega, Deneb and Altair — they seem to straddle the brightest part of the Milky Way.

Altair is the head of Aquila the Eagle — and Antinous is directly under the Eagle. 

The PERSEIDS are a great opportunity for ANTINOUS STAR MAGIC. 

How you cast the wish is up to you. If you re a Druid, Wiccan or even just a lapsed Catholic, you know some simple rituals. You can write a wish on a piece of paper and then go outside and look up and, as you repeat the wish aloud while tearing up the piece of paper, a shooting star will catch your eye — and you hold the palm of your hand in front of your mouth and blow away the bits of paper.

The Shooting Star does the rest.

There are many, many other ways of working ANTINOUS STAR MAGIC. As always with such things, the "magic" is within your heart and soul. So there are no firm-and-fast rules ... it all depends on you. 

If you are an ARIES, you probably don't believe in such foolishness as "wishing on a star" — but you love to gamble, and so you'll make a wish. And when it comes true, you'll be all the happier.

If you are a TAURUS, you know precisely what you want to wish for, something you've wanted for a long, long time. A leatherette recliner, for example. You love the romance and beauty of a summer evening. You've brought along a lawn chair and a hamper full of food and drink. 

If you are a GEMINI, you will be out with friends and you will be talking, laughing or else texting and twittering so much that you may forget to look up and make a wish.

If you are a CANCER you will be overwhelmed by the sheer romantic beauty of it all. You love the cosy setting and being with close friends or family. When you look up, you will make a special wish upon a star in hopes of finding that certain someone. You may stop pouting about how that other special someone broke your heart.

If you are a LEO, you will be convinced that Antinous is indeed shooting these love arrows your way — just for your own personal benefit, of course! And you will make a very grand wish, and you can't wait to show off and brag when it comes true.

If you are a VIRGO, you don't believe in luck, only in thankless hard work, and so you doubt that any wishes ever come true. You are wary of lying back on the grass because you are worried that a tick might bite you and you would contract Lyme Disease. It would be just your luck — Besides, you know it's selfish to wish for things for yourself. And anyway, you think you don't deserve to have a wish come true. But you DO deserve it!

If you are a LIBRAN, you can't decide on just one wish. So you make two wishes (at least). You secretly know you deserve to have your wishes come true more than anybody else, but you are far too diplomatic and tactful ever to say so openly. Your wishes involve matters of love and grace and beauty. You publicly wish good luck to all the others and they all thank you and think you're so nice. Everyone thinks you're their friend and you encourage them in that. Of course, secretly you think they're all morons, and if their lame wishes come true and your lovely wish doesn't come true — then there's no justice in this world.

If you are a SCORPIO, then you will also wish for love — but skip the grace and beauty and get down to the hot and heavy. Something with gleaming black leather and chrome steel chains. That wish better come true, too. You demand obedience.

If you are a SAGITTARIUS, your wish comes true instantaneously — or perhaps has already come true before you actually made the wish. Sagittarians have a direct hotline to the stars, so you always get your wishes -- and don't mind letting others know about it, either.

If you are a CAPRICORN, you don't believe in such frivolous nonsense as wishing on a star. But you have a list of very practical things you would like to wish for. Good dividends on investments, for example. So there's no harm in making a wish. If it comes true, it was "coincidence".

If you are an AQUARIUS, you will be counting the shooting stars ("Wow, 60 in just one hour, that's one a minute!") and you will be estimating what speed they must be traveling to reach the burn-out temperature. You're indoors, of course, watching the spectacle on NASA's streaming video website. You wrote down a wish for a new iPhone on a slip of paper, but you forgot where you put it, maybe it's stuck to the cheese under the Domino's Pizza next to your keyboard. Who cares? There are so many shooting stars to count.

If you are a PISCES, you have made elaborate plans to position yourself on a hilltop where your friends the UFO space aliens will be sure to spot you in your glow-in-the-dark jump suit. Your wish is for the aliens to abduct you ... again.

Make a wish!

HERNESTUS  

ANTINOUS IN PHAETHON'S CHARIOT

WE CELEBRATE July 15th as the date of the triumphal arrival of Hadrian and Antinous at Tarsus in what was the biggest "celebrity arrival" in that city since Cleopatra had landed with her barge two centuries earlier.

Passing through the Cilician Gate, the famous mountain road used by Alexander to cross the Taurus Mountains, the Imperial court arrived at the city of Tarsus, the guardian of Asia Minor.

It was outside of Tarsus that Alexander battled against the Persian Army and defeated Darius, after which he soon took control of the vast Empire of the Persians, the traditional enemies of Greece. Tarsus was the crossroad between the Hellenic west and the Persian-Phoenician East.

The people of Tarsus were rapturous and espcially adored Antinous, according to Antinous authority Royston Lambert, who writes:

"Tarsus added Adriana to its name, provided a splendid festival and seems to have taken very special note of Antinous."

It was here that Hadrian and Antinous first encountered the devotion that the Phoenicians and Canaanites held for the Sun God, whom they called El, Baal, or Elagabal.

The Greeks called the deity who was the orb, heat and light of the Sun, Helios, and he was pictured riding a chariot pulled by burning horses, who made their way across the sky.

Phaethon was the son of Helios, and he one day tried to drive his father's chariot but lost control, so that the sun moved erratically out of its course and scorched Ethiopia. Zeus struck Phaethon down before he could do further damage.

Flamen Antonius Subia explains the parallels:

"So it is that Antinous, on his journey towards Ethiopia, would find himself unable to control the mighty horses that pulled Hadrian's chariot, and would be struck down by the jealous Sun. We pray to Father Helios of Tarsus on this day."

KARL HEINRICH ULRICHS SAINT OF ANTINOUS

ON JULY 14 the Religion of Antinous honors Saint Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, the world's first gay activist, who lobbied governments 100 years before Stonewall for repeal of anti-gay laws, and who was also Chief Priest of Antinous worldwide in the latter half of the 19th Century.

Even before the term "homosexuality" had been coined, Ulrichs came out to his friends and families and proclaimed in 1864 that he was a "Uranian" — or "Urning" in his native German — and thenceforth waged a one-man campaign for gay rights in Germany.

Sanctus Carolus Henricus Ulrichs, Chief Priest of Antinous in the 2nd half of the 19th Century (worldwide!) wrote incredibly long poems — nearly in epic form — about Hadrian and Antinous.

He wrote a manuscript for a mammoth scientific work on Antinous in history, art, coins and his influence on ancient and modern culture. The manuscript was confiscated and destroyed in a police raid.

As part of his gay-rights lobbying effort, he wrote dozens of pamphlets with titles such as "Researches on the Riddle of Man-Manly Love" aimed at dispelling homophobic myths about same-sex love.

Late in life Ulrichs wrote: "Until my dying day I will look back with pride that I found the courage to come face to face in battle against the spectre which for time immemorial has been injecting poison into me and into men of my nature. Many have been driven to suicide because all their happiness in life was tainted. Indeed, I am proud that I found the courage to deal the initial blow to the hydra of public contempt."

Forgotten for many years, Ulrichs is now becoming something of a cult figure in Europe. There are streets named for him in the German cities of Munich, Bremen and Hanover. His birthday (August 28th, 1825) is marked each year by a lively street party and poetry reading at Karl Heinrich Ulrichs Square in Munich.

The International Lesbian and Gay Law Association presents an annual Karl Heinrich Ulrichs Award in his memory. He died on July 14th, 1895, in L'Aquila, Italy.