ANTINOUS WAS BORN ON THIS DAY 1,909 YEARS AGO

ANTINOUS was born on this day, November 27th in the year 111 AD — 1,909 years ago!

Festive celebrations are being held by worshipers all over the world, with special rites being conducted at the HOLLYWOOD TEMPLE OF ANTINOUS.

Antinous was born in the Bithynian city of Claudiopolis, modern-day Bolu in Turkey.

It was a major city in those days with a Hellenistic/Roman heritage dating back centuries. It was nestled among snow-capped peaks and woodlands full of wild beasts and full of mythical magic.

The portrait of the newborn baby Antinous and his mother against the backdrop of a Bithynian conifer forest is by PRIEST JULIEN, a New York artist who now lives in Hollywood.

Modern Claudiopolis/Bolu is a sleepy health resort. Not too many foreign tourists go there, but the area is a popular with Turkish vacationers because of its pine-covered mountains and its sparkling lakes and spa waters.

The altitude makes it refreshingly cooler than lower-lying regions, so Turks go there to get away from the heat and noise of places like Istanbul and Ankara.

Wikipedia says: "Local specialities include a sweet made of hazelnuts (which grow in abundance here) and an eau-de-cologne with the scent of grass. One feature of Bolu dear to the local people is the soft spring water obtained from fountains in the town."
 
Hazelnut candy? Grass-scented cologne? Amazingly soft spring water? Somehow that one little paragraph makes it sound like a place where Antinous would have to have been born.

The area where Antinous was born is a beautiful place, nestled high in piney forests and yet only a short distance from the sparkling Black Sea coast about halfway between Istanbul and Ankara.

The region is teeming with bountiful wildlife and so Hadrian and Antinous went on hunting forays while in Bithynium. As a boy, Antinous must have played in these forests and bathed in these sparkling lakes.

He would have remembered these boyhood days during his travels with Hadrian to the far corners of the Empire. We often forget that Antinous had a family who must have loved him and missed him. They were no doubt proud of him, but they missed him.

And he missed them as he also missed his lovely Bithynia with its mountains and lakes and deep forests which, in winter, are covered in deep snow.

The first snows may have already fallen "back home" at the end of October in 130 AD when Antinous stood on the banks of the Nile in Upper Egypt. Perhaps he had received a letter from home with the latest family gossip and news of the first snowfall. He would have remembered the scent of pine forests and fresh-fallen snow.

As he looked into the green waters of the Nile in far-away Egypt at the end of his brief life, perhaps he thought of "home" and lakes and dark forests and pine cones and the scent of hazelnuts being roasted and mixed with rose water and honey to make candy.

November 27th is an introspective moment ... an evaluation of things past ... and things to come. And above all, it is birthday party time. Let the Festive Season Begin with an Antinous Birthday Party!

WE ARE STRONG TOGETHER AS BROTHERS AND SISTERS OF ANTINOUS By Our Flamen Antonius Subia

TO To the People of Antinous,

My fellow Antinoans, I know that many of you are feeling isolated and afraid, and many are suffering and out of work with little assurance that life will ever return to normal.

Many of you have friends and family members who have fallen sick and perhaps have died, and my heart goes out to you in love and sympathy. 

Many of our Antinous people are considered to be vulnerable and the potential danger is very real and present at every moment for them. 

We have not yet made it through to the end and yet so many people around us are easing off and going about life as if everything is returning to normal, I ask you in the name of Antinous to hold on as best you can for as long as you can and resist the urge to consider that the virus has passed us over and that we are now safe.

Antinous is a god of healing and an image of health and immortality ... but he is also a god of wisdom, prudence and truth.

For your own sake and for the sake of those around you, as a responsible member of human civilization, I ask that you continue in quarantine and practice strict social distancing for as long as we must until we are told that it is safe to come outside.

This is a time for introspection and realignment, to examine our lives so far and address the changes that we have for so long wanted to manifest in who we are and how we want to live the rest of our lives, and also what we want the world to be like when at last we are able to return to the sun.

We can do this together, we must stay strong together as a brother and sisterhood of Antinous believers and create a new world for ourselves in the image that we want it to be, and not let others create the world image for us.

We can do this if we stay together and trust in Antinous and the Clockwork of the Cosmos.

For myself having only just returned from Egypt and witnessing the sunrise event at Abu Simbel, and so many sunrises and their corresponding sunsets and seeing the Clockwork of the Cosmos right before my eyes and touching the sacred sand of Antinoopolis and bringing back relics of our fallen city and Nile water and so many sacred things and then suddenly being confined to solitude as the world around us fell apart and so many people died, who did not have to die ... it has made the event even that much more significant and glaringly clear that the Clockwork of the Cosmos mystery is all too true.

But above it all is the ever-present hope of the Star of Antinous, that all this pain and suffering and misery has been for a purpose that we will understand in due time.

We must hold on to one another, reach out to one another and be there for our brothers and sisters in their time of need. 

This is what the Religion of Antinous has come back from obscurity for, to bring us all together, and this is the time in which we can and must bring his cause into reality.

I was inspired to write these words by listening to an old song by Patrick Wolf (video below), who always seem to have the power to speak to my heart in time of need.

May Antinous bless us and guide us to his light.

~Antonius N. Subia
Flamen Antinoalis

THIS IS THE DAY THE ORION NEBULA WAS DISCOVERED AND NAMED

ON 25 November 1610 French astronomer Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (Peiresc) discovered the Orion Nebula and coined the term "nebula". 

The Ancient Egyptians equated Orion with Osiris ... the rise of the Orion Constellation and dog star Sirius coincided with the Nile Inundation ... symbolized by Osiris rising from the dead.

Like Osiris, Antinous died in the Nile and rose to divinity. The first miracle of Antinous was the bountiful Nile Inundation in 131 AD which ended a long drought ... bringing life from death.

FREDDIE MERCURY SAINT OF ANTINOUS

ON November 24th the Religion of Antinous celebrates the outrageous life of St. Freddie Mercury.

St. Freddie Mercury whose death from AIDS on this date in 1991 shocked the world, was a courageous performer whose gayness, while not always stated, was a visible part of his persona. He served as an inspiration for millions of gay men, particularly those who, like him, fight ethnic prejudice every day of their lives.

St. Freddie, who was of Indian Parsi descent, and who was born on the island of Zanzibar and grew up in India, has been referred to as "Britain's first Asian rock star."

Like all great showbiz artists, St. Freddie was acutely aware of his public image and went to great lengths to cultivate the persona of Freddie Mercury -- and to hide any trace of the little Parsi boy named Farrokh Bulsara. Freddie Mercury -- or rather the showbiz image called Freddie Mercury -- was beyond all definitions of ethnic origin, or sexual orientation or political affiliation. Not surprisingly, many people were confused and sometimes irritated by the image.

People criticized him for "hiding" his ethnic background. But as a friend told an interviewer after Freddie's death, "[Farrokh] Bulsara was a name he had buried. 

He never wanted to talk about any period in his life before he became Freddie Mercury, and everything about Freddie Mercury was a self-constructed thing."

People also criticized him for not "coming out" publicly. But again, Freddie Mercury (the showbiz image) was beyond gender limitations. 

In fact, Mercury referred to himself as "gay" in a 1974 interview with NME magazine. He was frequently spotted at the cruisiest gay bars across Europe, the UK and America. On the other hand, he would often distance himself from partner Jim Hutton during public events in the 1980s.

Freddie Mercury (the rock icon) was too big to be contained in one gender mold.

He was diagnosed with HIV in 1987. Everyone knew he was sick and everyone surmised the reason. But Freddie Mercury (the image) could never die.

And so it was, that Freddie Mercury never acknowledged his illness until November 23, 1991, when a tersely worded statement was issued announcing that he had AIDS.

A few hours later, he was dead. At the age of 45.

Although he cultivated a very flamboyant stage personality, several sources (including people of my own acquaintance who knew him "intimately") refer to Mercury as having been very shy in person. He also granted very few interviews. Mercury once said of himself: "When I'm performing I'm an extrovert, yet inside I'm a completely different man."

One man was an Indian Parsi kid called Farrokh Bulsara who had been born in Zanzibar.

The other man was FREDDIE MERCURY:

Farrokh Bulsara died on November 24, 1991.

Freddie Mercury will live forever.

The Religion of Antinous honors Freddie Mercury as a Saint of Antinous because he embodies the artistic genius and the flamboyant courage that inspires each of us to strive to be a "star". St. Freddie Mercury admonishes us to strip off the guise of conventionality and the put on our "star" outfits and to take the stage of life. He teaches us to live each day as if it is forever.

YOU DON'T NEED A TEMPLE OF STONE TO CELEBRATE THE BIRTHDAY OF ANTINOUS

THE birthday of Antinous is November 27 and worshipers all over the world are planning celebrations.

But some people are unable to celebrate as expansively and as joyously as they would like. 

We received the following succinct smart phone message yesterday from a very dear adherent of Antinous in the American Bible Belt who said:

"I am a bit envious that you get to celebrate his birthday openly. I've got two straight housemates. Oh well ... maybe some day ...."

And like many people, he also has to work on that day ... and others have to work perhaps at two jobs to make ends meet. And then there are the people who just don't have the money or the facilities for a formal celebration.

There is a common misconception that you need to have a large and elaborate ALTAR OR SHRINE in your home. But the truest shrine is in your heart. You can download a photo of Antinous and put it in your wallet ... and it truly becomes Antinous the Gay God if you see HIM in it.

A shrine or sacred image of Antinous can be very SMALL AND MODEST.

The Ancient Priests of Antinous were experts in such things ... though 1,800 years of Christianity has resulted in that knowledge having become lost for the vast majority of people in Western civilization.

For the Ancient Priests of Antinous, what existed on the physical level drew to itself the specific spiritual energies of which the physical form was a type.

For the Magical Consciousness, every ritual action done on the physical level, every form created, every word spoken or written, acted as the magnet to which its spiritual counterpart irresistably was pulled.

Thus, a consecrated image of Antinous is not an "idol" and his worshippers are not "idolators."

Why not?

Because an idol is a physical object and nothing more than a physical object. The statues of Antinous were not "idols" because the Ancient Priests of Antinous could  never have conceived of such a notion. It is important that we remember that the Ancient Priests of Antinous conceived of a world which was ... unlike our own ... an ANIMATED world from the beginning. Everything in their physical world was alive with spiritual dimensions.

They didn't PROJECT a spiritual entity into a hunk of carved marble. Instead, they APPREHENDED the spiritual entity that was already inside the stone.

Anybody who has been around our own FLAMEN ANTONIUS SUBIA has seem him use his Inner Eye to do the same thing. He will look at a statue of a "Greek Ephebe" and will look inward for a moment and then will say, "It's Antinous!"

Some have criticized him for doing this, saying he can't possibly know the provenance of the statue and whether it was perhaps actually supposed to be Hermes or someone else. Antonyus uses his Inner Eye and "sees" the spiritual Blessed Boy in the stone ... or says it is not Antinous, as the case may be.

The Ancient Priests of Antinous did the same thing in carrying out religio-magical services for the faithful. Not only could a physical image (whether two-dimensional or three-dimensional) provide a "body" for an already existent spiritual entity, but images could also become the spiritual base for "thought forms" that were called into existence through their being represented in miniature on the physical plane.

The Ancient Priests of Antinous were deeply aware of the interdependence between the Divine World and the Human World. In the times in which they lived, these two spheres were not experienced as separate from each other in the way that they have come to be experienced today.

"As Above, So Below" was not just a catch-phrase for them, but instead it was a way of life.

It is our goal in this distant, soulless, post-modern age, to rediscover this ability to live in relationship to, and act as a conduit for, Antinous the Gay God.

We cannot recreate the ancient religion of Antinous. It is dead and we human beings have developed in other directions. We are not attempting to "reconstruct" the Religion of Antinous. Our goal is to fashion a Religion of Antinous which meets the spiritual needs of post-modern, post-Christian and post-pagan gay men.

But we can learn from the Ancient Priests of Antinous. The cosmos of which they were aware was primarily spiritual and only secondarily material. In their physical world, everything was spiritually alive ... even soft-toys, coins and bronze (or maybe brass) statuettes bought on eBay ... even a downloaded photo in a hip wallet.

The main task of the Ancient Priests of Antinous was to build a magical bridge between physical and spiritual reality, momentarily bringing them into conjunction.

So the answer to the question "Is that image really Antinous?" would be answered this way by an Ancient Priest of Antinous: "It is so if you MAKE it so. Open your eyes to the 'Antinous Within'. Apprehend HIS presence which is already inside the earthly reproduction. Through you, then, it IS Antinous!"

HOMOTHEOSIS ... Gay-Man-Godliness-Becoming-the-Same.

You don't need to build a temple of steel, stone and glass. You ARE the temple.

WE PRAY TO ANTINOUS/DIANA TO GUIDE US IN OUR HUNT BY MOONBEAMS

TONIGHT, November 22,  is one of the festivals of Diana goddess of the Moon and hunting. 

She is goddess of wild places and wild animals and the protector of young women, pregnant women and those giving birth. 

Diana is the twin sister of Apollo. 

As Antinous is often assimilated to Apollo, he therefore substitutes as the twin of Diana, though he can often be viewed as her male double, so that Antinous is Diana. 

Antinous and Diana are both hunters, and moon deities, and they are also gods of magic and darkness. 

Diana is often compared to Hecate, the supreme goddess of Theurgian magicians, who rose to prominence during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. 

Antinous therefore is the male equivalent of Hecate.

ANTONIUS SUBIA says: "We pray to Diana to guide us in our hunt and to illuminate our nights with the silver light of her sublime power. We recognize that the Moon of Diana is the Moon of Antinous."

YOUR ONLINE ANTINOUS SHOP

LOOKING for that perfect holiday season gift? One-stop shopping is just one click away at the online TEMPLE OF ANTINOUS SHOP

This shop features official Antinous articles selected and designed by FLAMEN ANTONIUS SUBIA personally.

If you admire the artwork of Antonyus, then order your own posters of his hand-picked favorite paintings and photographs.

A wide range of T-shirts is available, including classic "T", fitted "T", ringer "T", sleeveless, long-sleeve and baseball jersey — in up to nine colors, depending on the style and design you prefer.

The handy Antinous Tote Bag is a must-have as is a wide array of Antinous lapel buttons and refrigerator magnets in various sizes and designs.

Naturally, there are coffee mugs — and even an official Antinous beer stein appropriately adorned with the well-known Subian portrait of Antinous/Dionysus.

One of our favorites is the Antinous Keepsake Box, available in red-mahogany or black, with a tile cover portrait of the Louvre's breath-taking Ecouen Antinous. This roomy box is perfect for any home shrine or altar and is the perfect jewelry box.

And of course the ever-popular Antinous bumper sticker (at the top of this entry) provides the Beauteous Boy's blessings on any vehicle.

All items are ordered with safety and guaranteed efficiency through cafepress, which has a sound reputation for speedy delivery around the world, with secure payment in all major currencies.