ANTINOUS WORSHIPERS WORLDWIDE TAKE PART IN LION HUNT CEREMONIES

ANTINOUS worshipers worldwide participated live online tonight in ceremonies commemorating the SACRED LION HUNT, the final recorded event in the brief life of Antinous ... when he and Hadrian slew a man-eating lion in Egypt in August of the year 130 AD.

Worshipers on both coasts of North America as well as worshipers in South America, Europe and Africa took part in the ceremonies originating at the Hollywood Temple of Antinous.

The skin art image shows Antinous subduing the man-eating Marousian lion in the Egyptian desert in the year 130 AD.

The SACRED LION HUNT was immortalized in poetry and in stone, showing Antinous brashly attacking the lion with his adamantine-tipped spear and wounding it ... so that Hadrian had to gallop to his rescue and dispatch the beast.

Hadrian added medallions to the Arch of Constantine showing him and Antinous with feet on the lion's neck and also making sacrifice to the great lion-killer Hercules.

Soon legend would have it that scarlet-red lotus blossoms had sprung forth from the pool of the lion's blood ... which we honor as the LOTUS MOON, the Pisces Third Quarter Moon in June.

Within a few short weeks after the Sacred Lion Hunt, Antinous himself would be dead. The Sacred Lion Hunt is the last recorded event in His short life.

Flamen ANTONIUS SUBIA celebrated the liturgical ritual in Hollywood.

Antonius noted that the brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all. Tonight's rituals and meditations were aimed at enabling participants to traverse the road between who they think they are and who they can be. The key is to set forth on the journey ... with adamantine-tipped spear in hand ... galloping forward.

THE ANCIENT PRIESTS OF ANTINOUS KNEW HOW THE LEOPARD GOT ITS SPOTS

ANCIENT PRIESTS of Antinous at the Great Temple at ANTINOOPOLIS in Egypt were familiar with leopard-skin priestly robes. 

Whether they actually wore leopard skins in the Egyptian priestly manner is unknown, but it is certainly possible.

The Ancient Egyptian magical SEM priests always wore a leopard skin ... as do many African shamans even today.

Indeed, it is highly likely that the Ancient Egyptians got the idea from their southern neighbors — where else could they have got the idea, after all? 

The Egyptians were accustomed to lions and we know that lions were a menace even in the 2nd Century AD when Hadrian and Antinous conducted the SACRED LION HUNT. But it is safe to say that leopards were very rare and highly prized species even in Ancient times — which made them even more magical.

The Egyptians said the leopard started out as a variety of sacred lion, the lion being associated with the sun god Ra and of pharaoh's power and rulership as an incarnation of the sun god. 

The leopard lived in the desert like the lion and was indistinguishable from the lion because the leopard originally had no spots.

This is the cue for Anubis and Seth to enter the scene!

Anubis had a very odd love/hate relationship with Seth. Some said that Anubis was the son of Seth by Seth's consort Nephthys. Others said Anubis was the son of Osiris and Seth's consort Nephthys and that Nephthys placed the baby in the care of her sister Isis to avoid Seth's wrath. 

At any rate, little Anubis was raised by the Osiris side of the divine family, not the Seth side. Anubis and Seth had a very strained relationship, to say the least, full of doubt and suspicion on both sides.

Not surprisingly, Anubis took sides with Isis (as his foster mother) and her son Horus (perhaps his biological half-brother? ) in seeking to avenge the death of Osiris (his own true father?) after Seth murdered Osiris by drowning and mutilating his body.

The struggle between Horus and Seth continues to this day, of course. Seth has the advantage of being able to transform himself into any creature, thus eluding his pursuers. Sometimes he is a hippo. Sometimes he is a crocodile. Sometimes he is a giant serpent. Often, he is a graceful antelope. He can be deceptively beautiful and entrancing.  

The Lie takes many deceptive forms,

always posing as the Truth. 

But Anubis was able, by means of his keen canine senses, to sniff out Seth in whatever form he takes. 

Once, Seth assumed the form of a leopard and blended into the desert sand so well that Horus was unable to spot him from the air as he circled high in the sky upon his falcon wings, using his sharp falcon eyes to scan the Earth.

But Anubis sniffed out Seth and decided to brand him so that everyone would be able to see him. Anubis trotted over to the banks of the Nile and dunked his paws in rich black Nile mud. Then he leapt onto the leopard and left indelible muddy paw prints all over Seth's hide.

That is how the leopard got its spots, according to the Ancient Egyptians.

The highest caste of Egyptian magician/priests wore leopard skins to symbolize the never-ending struggle between the Truth and the Lie. The Lie persists. Seth the Deceiver was not killed by Anubis. But Anubis revealed Seth for the Lie that he is.

And that is why the Priests at the Great Temple of Antinoopolis may have worn leopard skins ... to demonstrate that it is possible to see through the Lie to uncover the Truth that lies underneath.

JUAN GABRIEL IS A SAINT OF ANTINOUS GAY ICON TO MILLIONS IN MEXICO

WE honour Juan Gabriel, a superstar Mexican songwriter and singer who was an icon for millions of LGBT people in the Latin music world. He is a saint of Antinous.

Born 7 January 1950, he dropped dead 28 August 2016 at his home in California only hours after performing a standing-room-only crowd. He performed for two hours at the Los Angeles Forum on Friday, clad in one of his typical brightly colored outfits. In its review of the concert, Billboard called him "the ultimate showman." He was 66.

Juan Gabriel was Mexico's leading singer-songwriter and top-selling artist. 

His ballads about love and heartbreak and bouncy mariachi tunes became hymns throughout Latin America and Spain and with Spanish speakers in the United States.

He brought many adoring fans to tears as they sang along when he crooned his songs about love and heartbreak, including his top hits, "Hasta Que Te Conoci" ("Until I Met You") and "Amor Eterno" ("Eternal Love").

His hit "Querida" ("Dear") topped Mexico's charts for a whole year.

The adjectives "flamboyant" and "eccentric" followed him all his career, and he was imitated by drag queens in gay clubs throughout Mexico.

He skirted rumors of gayness his whole life. 

He liked to wear jackets covered in sequins or dress in shiny silk outfits in hot pink, turquoise blue or canary yellow, and he was known for tossing his head before dancing or jumping around the stage.

He was once famously asked by a television interviewer: "People look at you and say you are homosexual. What do you say?" His answer became part of his enduring myth.

"Lo que se ve no se pregunta," he answered … "Don't ask about something that is obvious."

Then Juan asked the interview what he saw when he looked at him.

The journalist said: "I see a singer before me, I see a winner" and Juan Gabriel replied: "That is the most important thing, because it is what you do that counts in life."

Juan started out as a waif ... having been sent to an orphanage after his father went insane with grief over the loss of Juan's mother and burned down their village and had to be carried off in a straitjacket.

Little Juan fled abuse at the orphanage by hiding in a rubbish bin and being transported to freedom in a garbage truck. 

Arriving in Juarez, he sang for tips and tricks in seedy clubs, where he caught the eye of a "talent scout" ... and the rest is showbiz history.

In 2015 artist Arturo Damasco painted a 40-square-meter mural of Juan Gabriel on a building in Juarez.

Juan Gabriel never married. According to The Associated Press, a former secretary of his, Joaquín Muñoz, claimed that the two men had a sexual relationship in a tell-all book, "Juan Gabriel and I." 

It confirmed what most fans already believed, but his fans were surprised when years later it became known that he had fathered four children with a friend, Laura Salas.

Juan Gabriel performed to packed auditoriums, including New York's Madison Square Garden and the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles. 

A six-time Grammy nominee, Juan Gabriel was inducted into the Billboard Latin Music Hall of Fame in 1996 and received countless industry awards.

He also garnered ASCAP Songwriter of the Year in 1995, Latin Recording Academy's Person of the Year 2009, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame that same year.

The singer, who was born 7 January 1950, wrote his first song at age 13 and went on to compose more than 1,500 songs. He died 28 August 2016 at age 66 … a homeless orphan who came to be loved by millions.

WE WEEP FOR JOHN J JOHNSTON

WE weep for our dear British Egyptologist friend John J Johnston, a cultural historian and one of the world's leading authorities on Antinous, who died suddenly and wholly unexpectedly on August 28, 2025.

John was a professional lecturer, writer, and editor. An eloquent speaker and raconteur with an engaging manner and dapper style, his research interests encompassed Egyptian mortuary belief and practice, gender and sexuality in the ancient world, Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, the history of Egyptology, and the reception of the ancient world in modern popular culture.

A former Vice-Chair of the Egypt Exploration Society (2009-2015), he lectured extensively at major academic and cultural institutions in Britain and other countries.

In addition to contributing numerous articles to both academic and general publications, he co-edited the volumes "Narratives of Egypt and the Ancient Near East: Literary Linguistic Approaches" (Peeters, 2011), "A Good Scribe and an Exceedingly Wise Man" (Golden House, 2014), and an anthology of classic mummy fiction, "Unearthed" (Jurassic London, 2013). 

Formerly, a member of the Editorial Board of the journal "Egyptian Archaeology" (2011-2020), he was a Trustee of By Jove Theatre Company (2020-25), and Editor-at-Large for "Horrified Magazine" (2020-25). 

He made onscreen contributions for major documentaries on the Blu-Ray releases of more than twenty, gloriously restored, Hammer Films, originally produced between 1958 and 1976, in addition to making onscreen contributions to the television documentaries "Egypt's Unexplained Files" (360 Productions Ltd, 2019), a ten-episode series, "Tutankhamun in Colour" (BBC, 2020), and "The Curse of Tutankhamun" (Viacom International, 2020).

NINE MILLION MUMMIFIED DOGS FOUND AT EGYPTIAN TEMPLE OF ANUBIS

AS Antinous and Hadrian journeyed up the Nile in August and September of 130 AD, they must have seen the mighty monuments at Memphis ... and the sprawling cliffside ANUBIEION, the mystery-shrouded Temple of the jackal-headed Egyptian deity Anubis at Saqqara south of modern Cairo.

But was Antinous aware that nine million dog mummies were entombed there?

The unique, terraced temple compound was built into the face of the cliffs overlooking the ancient Egyptian capital city of Memphis-Mennefer. Beyond the Anubieion lay the necropolis city of the dead. In front of it lay the teeming city nestled in the Nile Valley.

For decades, experts were unsure what purpose the Anubieion served. No where else in Egypt is there a temple dedicated solely to Anubis. Some temples to other deities had niche shrines to the jackal-headed deity who conveyed the souls of the dead to everlasting life.

But the discovery of myriads of mummified dogs in the Anubieion's catacombs makes it clear that the Anubieion was indeed a temple whose goal was to assist people in making the transition from earthly life to eternal life.

The dog mummies were sold to serve as "guide dogs" for souls of the departed.

As Christianity spread in Egypt, Anubis morphed into St. Christopher ... and many early Coptic images of Saint Christopher depict him with the head of a dog (image at left).

The discovery came during routine excavations at the dog catacomb in Saqqara necropolis by an excavation team led by Salima Ikram, professor of Egyptology at The American University in Cairo (AUC), and an international team of researchers led by Paul Nicholson of Cardiff University.

Initial inspection reveals that dogs of all breeds and ages were mummified, from newborn puppies to decrepit old dogs.

“We are recording the animal bones and the mummification techniques used to prepare the animals,” Ikram said.

Ikram also told National Geographic, which is financing the project, that "in some churches people light a candle, and their prayer is taken directly up to God in that smoke. In the same way, a mummified dog's spirit would carry a person's prayer to the afterlife".

Saqqara dog catacomb was first discovered in 1897 when well-known French Egyptologist Jacques De Morgan published his Carte of Memphite necropolis, with his map showing that there are two dog catacombs in the area.

However, mystery has overshadowed such mapping as it was not clear who was the first to discover the catacombs nor who carried out the mapping, and whether they were really for dogs.

"The proximity of the catacombs to the nearby temple of Anubis, the so called jackal or dog-headed deity associated with cemeteries and embalming, makes it likely that these catacombs are indeed for canines and their presence at Saqqara is to be explained by the concentration of other animal cuts at the site," Nicholson wrote on his website.

"These other cults include the burials of, and temples for, bulls, cows, baboons, ibises, hawks and cats all of which were thought to act as intermediaries between humans and their gods."

Despite the great quantity of animals buried in these catacombs and the immense size of the underground burial places, Egyptologists have focused on the temples and on inscriptional evidence rather than on the animals themselves.

The mysteries behind De Morgan's mapping were unsolved until 2009 when this team started concrete excavations at the cemetery in an attempt to learn more about the archaeological and history of the site.

"Results at the first season showed that De Morgan map has substantial inaccuracies and a new survey is under way," Nicholson said.

"The animal bones themselves have been sampled and preliminary results suggest that as well as actual dogs there may be other canids present. Furthermore the age profile of the animals is being examined so that patterns of mortality can be ascertained."

ANTINOUS WORKS MIRACLES FOR YOU WHILE YOU DAYDREAM AT WORK

NEXT time you have a difficult problem to solve, and concentrating on it just isn't getting you anywhere, consider this: Maybe you're thinking too hard.

"Walk over to a window and think about the people or cars going by for a few minutes, until you get bored," suggests Josh Davis, research director at the New York Neuro-Leadership Institute. 

"Let your mind wander."

How will that help? "Always being 'on' blocks the brain processes that occur when we daydream," says Davis. 

His book, TWO AWESOME HOURS Science-Based Strategies to Harness Your Best Time and Get Your Most Important Work Done, draws on new discoveries in brain science.

The idea is certainly not new. This enkoimesis (ἐγκοίμησις) "dream-incubation" was used in Abaton sleep chambers of Aesculapius temples where worshipers sought healing visions from the god to cure their ailments.

The Ancient Priests of Antinous knew that enkoimesis "dream-incubation" and zoning out, even for a few minutes, allows your brain to tackle tasks it can't handle when you're busy. 

They called it the medium for Antinous to work miracles in your life.

In ancient times, Antinous was known as a miracle worker. His worshipers prayed to him for miracles, oracles, visions and answers to problems in their daily lives.

The Egyptian hieroglyphs on the OBELISK OF ANTINOUS state clearly that Antinous answers the prayers of all who call upon him through dreams and visions, for example.

The hieroglyphs also make cryptic references to his ability to work magic through his heart. This is a reference to the Ancient Egyptian concept of the "Intelligence of the Heart."

The Egyptians knew that the brain is the center of motor activity and sensory perception. 

But they believed the heart is the center of a form of intelligence which has baffled most mainstream Egyptologists ... who assume the Egyptians believed the heart was where cognitive thinking occurs.

But the Egyptians had a very different view of the universe from our rational, scientific view of the universe. 

We dissect facts and analyze them. But while the Egyptians were very good at analyzing facts, they also retained the Zen-like ability to see the whole ... which leads to contemplation ... not analysis.

The Egyptians understood that if you want to find an intelligent solution to a problem, your brain can do the work. You have all the necessary intelligence inside the bone in your skull.

However, most people use their brains the same way they use their muscles. You can strain your head just as if it were a muscle, and work very hard trying to arrive at an answer, but it doesn't really work that way.

When you really want to find an answer to something, what you need to do is contemplate the problem. Visualize your question as well as you can, and then simply wait.

If you don't, and if you instead try to find the solution through brute mental strength, you may be disappointed, because any solution that comes in that way is likely to be wrong.

But when you have waited for a while, the solution will come of itself. That is what the Egyptians called the Intelligence of the Heart ... using your heart instead of your head.

It will work for you in the same way your stomach will digest your food for you without your having to supervise it consciously. Our attempts to supervise everything consciously have all led to consequences that aren't too good for our stomach, and the reason for that is quite simple.

Conscious attention, which employs words, cannot think of very much. We are forced, therefore, to ignore almost everything while we are thinking. We think along a single track, but the world doesn't proceed along a single track.

The world is everything happening altogether everywhere, and you just can't take all that into consideration because there isn't time.

However, the Intelligence of the Heart can take it all into consideration because it is capable of handling innumerable variables at once, even though your conscious attention cannot...

The hieroglyphs on the Obelisk of Antinous promise that Antinous the Gay God enables us to discover the Intelligence of the Heart ... the Intelligence of HIM ... he opens his heart to you ....

THE HISTORY OF THE ROSY LOTUS OF ANTINOUS THE GAY GOD

 

When Emperor Hadrian visited Alexandria,
the poet Pancrates presented him
with a beautiful lotus flower.

Awestruck by the magnificent rosy-red petals,
Hadrian agreed to name the flower
after his beloved Antinous.

Drawings by Julien

Beautiful CG Art by Antonius Subia

Music by Kevin MacLeod

For more info: THE TEMPLE OF ANTINOUS