HISTORIC OPEN-AIR CEREMONIES FOR NEW ANTINOUS TEMPLE IN MAGICAL SALEM

WORSHIPERS around the world joined in unprecedented open-air ceremonies originating from Salem, Massachusetts, to celebrate Antinous-Belenus (Beltane, Walpurgis, May Day) along with the new Temple of Antinous in the "Witch City" of Salem.

Priest Antonius Subia of the Hollywood Temple of Antinous flew to Salem to officiate at the ceremonies at the Salem Common. Assisting him were Priest Jim Crawford from Washington DC and Novice Priest Joseph Michael d'Ascalana. Worshipers globally took part via Zoom. 

An inscription found at Hadrian's Villa equates Antinous with the Celtic god Belenus or Belenos, from which name Beltane is derived. Belenus is a god of light and the Romans equated him with Apollo.

The inscription, now located in the Vatican, says: "Antinous and Belenus are equal in age and beauty, thus why would Antinous not also be worshipped like Belenus appropriately, says Quintus the Sicilian."

STRIPEY SOCK SHOWS ANTINOOPOLITANS WERE FOOTWEAR FASHION TREND-SETTERS

MAY 8th is No Socks Day and May 9th is Lost Sock Day: We know that Antinoopolis, the city established by Hadrian at the site on the Nile where Antinous died in October of 130 AD, is famous for its colorful woven tapestries, garments and burial shrouds.

Now it turns out that residents of ANTINOOPOLIS were style-setters in stripey socks ... using innovative weaving and dying techniques to create spectacular socks that were exported throughout the Roman Empire ... even as far away as Legion outposts at Hadrian's Wall in Britannia.

Scientists at the British Museum used a new imagining technique to analyze a child’s sock, recovered from a rubbish dump in ancient Antinoupolis in Roman Egypt, and dating from 300AD.

They discovered red, blue and yellow dyes were used, along with a range of advanced dying and weaving techniques.

The sock, made for the left foot of a child with separation between the big toe and four other toes used six to seven colours of wool yarn, they found, and was radiocarbon-dated to 3rd to 4th Century AD ... the heyday of the religion of Antinous.

Many Egyptian socks found have a similar style, made them of wool, generally bright colour, with a section between the first two fingers to wear with sandals.

Such Antinoopolis-style striped socks have been found as far away as northern Britain.

The new technique, looks at the luminescence of different dyes and uses digital microscopy to examine fibres, and discovered the Egyptians used just three colors to blend the seven used in the sock.

Researchers say it could allow many more textiles to be examined and giving us an unprecedented glimpse into ancient life ... and how colourful it may have been.

The city named for Antinous became renowned around the world in 1895 when French Egyptologist Albert Gayet (Saint of Antinous) discovered thousands of mummies ... To his utter astonishment, many were gilded, many were swathed in priceless woollen wraps and others wore Byzantine jewelry and headdresses ... Antinoopolis embroidery and linens inspired Matisse, Renoir and the leading Paris fashion designers, who incorporated the rich colors and designs into their work.

Over the years, spectacular finds at Antinoopolis have shown that mummies were given a SKIN OF GOLD for burial.

The socks find was made for the Egyptian Exploration Society in 1913-1914 by English papyrologist John de Monins Johnson.

His team found two excellent examples of Egyptian socks, the child's one that has been newly analyzed and a larger adult version, with the impression of the sandal thong still visible. 

While socks have been around since the stone age, when cavemen used pelts or animal skins, the ancient Egyptians are thought to be responsible for the first knitted socks.

CHRISTINE JORGENSEN SAINT OF ANTINOUS

ON May 3rd the Religion of Antinous celebrates the life of Christine Jorgensen, the first widely-known individual to have sex reassignment surgery. She was born May 30th, 1926, and she died on May 3rd, 1989.

Perhaps the most recognizable transsexual in the world even today, Saint Christine Jorgensen underwent male-to-female sex reassignment surgery in 1952. She went from obscurity to an onslaught of media attention, enduring many bad jokes at her expense.

But entertaining and educating, Saint Christine was a class act. Susan Stryker noted that, "Given a very narrow path to walk through life, she found a way to walk it with style."

She was banned in Boston and named Woman of The Year in New York. Interviewed later in life if she had any regrets, she replied without hesitation, "None at all."

LEONARDO DA VINCI SAINT OF ANTINOUS

ON May 2nd, we honor Leonardo da Vinci, who died on this day in 1519, who was one of the greatest painters and most versatile geniuses in history.

He was one of the key figures of the Renaissance, a great cultural movement that had begun in Italy in the 1300s.

Leonardo, as he is almost always called, was trained to be a painter. But his interests and achievements spread into an astonishing variety of fields that are now considered scientific specialties. Leonardo studied anatomy, astronomy, botany, geology, geometry, and optics, and he designed machines and drew plans for hundreds of inventions.

Because Leonardo excelled in such an amazing number of areas of human knowledge, he is often called a universal genius. However, he had little interest in literature, history, or religion.

He formulated a few scientific laws, but he never developed his ideas systematically. Leonardo was most of all an excellent observer. He concerned himself with what the eye could see, rather than with purely abstract concepts.

When he was 24 years old, Leonardo was arrested, along with several young companions, on the charge of sodomy.  

No witnesses appeared against them and eventually the charges were dropped, probably due to pressure brought to bear by Leonardo's wealthy supporters.

Leonardo had no relationships with women, never married, had no children, but raised many young protégés, including one nicknamed "Salai" which means "offspring of Satan."

Salai stole things, broke things, lied, and was generally a, well, devil; if he were a mere student or servant he would have been fired. It's not hard to see how this imp would be attractive to Leonardo. He stayed with Leonardo for over 20 years, and appears many times in Leonardo's works ... including the painting of Bacchus above.

LOUVERNIOS THE GAY DRUID PRIEST IS AN INNOCENT MARTYR SAINT OF ANTINOUS

ONE of the more obscure Innocent Gay Martyr Saints of Antinous is Louvernios of Lindow ... a 2,000-year-old bog mummy in England who was a homosexual Druid who most likely offered himself as a human sacrifice against invading Romans to keep them (successfully) out of Ireland.

Also called the Lovernios the Lindow Bog Man, his mummified body was found in 1984. 

That was when a peat cutter in Lindow Moss, on the Mersey River of western England, found the well-preserved body of a man, believed by some scholars to be the sacrificed body of a Celtic Druid from Ireland who had probably come to England to be ritually prepared and sacrificed on May Day, 60 AD to keep the advancing Roman army away from Ireland.

Indeed, the Roman legions stopped just five miles short of Lindow Moss, and never invaded Ireland. The exact date ... 1 May 60 AD ... was ascertained by contents of his stomach which included "scorched bread" of the sort used in Druidic Beltane or May Day festivities.

And historian CONNELL O'DONOVAN presents compelling evidence to prove that this Druid was also a homosexual. the Lindow Bog Man had suffered a quadruple execution of garroting, bludgeoning, slit throat, and drowning in the bog, naked except for an armband of arctic fox fur on his left arm.

Some Celtic historians interpret the fox arm band as meaning "My name is Fox" or Louvernios, an attested ancient Celtic name meaning fox.

However, others suggest the fox armband of Lindow Man (reconstructed face left) signifies not 'My name is Fox', but 'I am a sacrifice', and in particular, a communal scapegoat.

The fox is regarded in many societies, including the Celtic, as an outlaw animal.

The fox lives on the periphery of human society, neither domesticated nor fully wild.

On one hand it is despised by farmers for its depredations on their livestock...while on the other hand it is grudgingly admired for its wiliness ... hence its role as a Trickster figure, such as Reynard the Fox. 

O'Donnell says: "This peripheral and outlaw existence of the fox in the Celtic imagination fits nicely with the probability of Lindow Man's cultic-based homosexuality."

Scholars tend to agree that Tollund Man’s killing was some kind of ritual sacrifice to the gods ... perhaps a fertility offering. To the people who put him there, a bog was a special place. While most of Northern Europe lay under a thick canopy of forest, bogs did not. Half earth, half water and open to the heavens, they were borderlands to the beyond.

To these people, will-o’-the-wisps ... flickering ghostly lights that recede when approached ... weren't the effects of swamp gas caused by rotting vegetation. They were fairies. The thinking goes that Lindow Man's tomb may have been meant to ensure a kind of soggy immortality for the sacrificial object.

Louvernios is the best-looking and best-known member of an elite club of preserved cadavers that have come to be known as "bog bodies."

These are men and women (also some adolescents and a few children) who were laid down long ago in the raised peat bogs of Northern Europe ... mostly Denmark, Germany, England, Ireland and the Netherlands.

They can keep speaking to us from beyond the grave because of the environment’s singular chemistry. A body placed here decomposes extremely slowly. Soon after burial, the acid starts tanning the body’s skin, hair and nails.

As the sphagnum moss dies, it releases a carbohydrate polymer called sphagnan. It binds nitrogen, halting growth of bacteria and further mummifying the corpse. But sphagnan also extracts calcium, leached out of the body’s bones.

This helps to explain why, after a thousand or so years of this treatment, a corpse ends up looking like a squished rubber doll.

Nobody can say for sure whether the people who buried the body in the bog knew that the sphagnum moss would keep him intact. It appears highly unlikely ... how would they? Still, it is tempting to think so, since it fits so perfectly the ritualistic function of Louvernios, perhaps regarded as an emissary to the afterworld.

AT WALPURGIS/BELTANE WE PRAY TO ANTINOUS AS BELENUS

TONIGHT is Walpurgisnacht also known as Beltane … which we designate as Belenus Night for the Cisalpine Celtic god Belenus, to whom Antinous was compared in an inscription.

I recommend that everyone use this night to cleanse themselves of all negative energy that infiltrates all our lives.

Light two white candles, place them on the floor far enough apart so that you can pass between them without lighting yourself on fire.

Sprinkle a line of salt between the two candles.

Say the prayer:

Antinous of the Underworld 

Open your way of mystery before me

Antinous of the lotus flower 

Spread your love within my heart

Antinous of the heavens 

Shine your starlight upon me

Then say:

May the fire of Belenus 

cleanse and protect me

Then walk between the two candles

Stepping over the line of salt

Conclude with:

 

Ave Antinous Belenus

~FLAMEN ANTONIUS SUBIA

THE MYSTERIOUS EGYPTIAN MUU AND THE DANCE THAT THEY DO

APRIL 29th is International Dance Day so let us muse on the mysterious MUU and that high-stepping dance that they do. 

The MUU were professional male dancers who showed up at funerals to cavort and frolic amongst the bereaved whilst wearing tall conical headdresses constructed of papyrus stalks. 

Were they comic relief? Were they personifications of afterlife spirits? 

The best analysis of the mysterious MUU dancers comes from Gregory Reeder, who writes: 

"One gets the feeling that the muu ... based on their surviving representations ... were likable characters in the ancient Egyptian funerary drama.Their high-stepping 'dance' and accompanying gestures evoke a smile in the present-day viewer. Clearly they were characters patterned after the common folk on the Nile Delta, people who lived along and worked on the canals of the north, surrounded by lush flora and diverse fauna. Marsh life and people were favorite themes of tomb decoration of the pharaonic period, and their treatment by the tomb artisans often show an affection and humorous sympathy. Who better to call upon to lead one through the winding waterways of Paradise than the boatmen of the Nile Delta?" 

Read Gregory Reeder's full article HERE.