HOW TO PLAN YOUR OWN FESTIVE ANTINOUS BIRTHDAY PARTY

ANTINOUS was born on November 27 and worshipers around the world are busy planning their own festivities ... from Chile to Canada and from New England in the US to New South Wales in Australia.

November marks the start of the ancient pagan Festive Season, a season which is still full of fabulous party dates ... including Christmas, New Year's Eve, Twelfth Night and of course American Thanksgiving. Dia de los Muertos and Halloween/Samhain usher in this Festive Season of twinkly lights and over-eating and drinking way too much. 

Our brothers and sisters at the Fundación Epithimia Antinoo in Mexico are busy making final preparations for an Antinous birthday fiesta. 

For worshipers at the Templo de Antinoo México Temple of Antinous in Mexico City, the fiesta requires weeks or even months of preparation because the papier-mâché icons are created by artist Yanko Garibaldi ... each a work of art. Caricaturist Sirius has also created iconic images of the Martyrs and Saints of Antinous.


Other images on this page offer inspiration for Antinous Birthday festivities. 

At right is "Das Gastmahl" (The Symposion Feast) by Anton von Werner (1877) - preliminary color sketch as part of a series of wall murals on the theme of "Roman Life" for the Café Bauer (53 x 89 cm) (Privately Owned).

Images below are courtesy of the gifted artist FELIX D'EON and serve as an inspiration for Antinous Birthday festivities in the open air ... in the Southern Hemisphere, where the jacarandas are in bloom and summer will soon be here.

These ancient festivities go back WAAAAY before Christianity, of course. So it's a safe bet that Hadrian and Antinous would recognize many of the features of these festivities

So when you plan your Antinous Birthday Party, you can mix-and-match customs from all sorts of pagan Festive Season holidays, in full knowledge that Hadrian and Antinous would nod in approval.

It should be celebrated with feasting and drinking and singing and carousing. Green boughs (palm fronds, holly, pine boughs or whatever is native to your climate) should decorate the feast room in honour of the forests of Bithynia, the highlands of modern-day Turkey where Antinous was born.

Electric lights should be turned off in favor of candlelight or at the very least those strings of tiny "fairy lights" Moslems use during Ramadan and Hindus during Divali and Christians at Christmas.

The one really bright spot in the room should be a bust or image of Antinous, which is spotlighted, signifying our belief that Antinous brings light into the world.

The Antinous Rosy Lotus would be perfect. But since not everyone has access to lotus blossoms in late November, orchids would also be fine. 

Bithynia was well known even in Ancient Times for its forest orchids and the Romans loved orchids ... even orchid root beverages!

Orchids would be lovely as well as being a Hellenistic conversation piece. 

If they are too pricey, then your favorite seasonal flower will do. 

Look around and find something that is beautiful and unique to your own locale which you think would be very nice.

The Birthday of Antinous would be a wonderful opportunity for a costume party, also in keeping with the Halloween-Carnaval-Christmas flavor of these ancient pagan holidays. Guests might be encouraged to come as Greco-Romans or Egyptian priests.

The menu could be Mediterranean, with lots of finger foods such as tahini and couscous and humous and pita bread, stuffed olives, eggplant/aubergine, goat's cheese and so on. 

Refried beans (which the Egyptians call "fuul" and eat for breakfast) would be ideal since the theory goes that the Moors introduced "fuul" to the Spaniards, who introduced it to the New World, where it became refritos ... Mexican refried beans.

But you should feel free to go local with favorite regional dishes of your home area. 

There must be lots of good South American dishes which would be perfect, or Scottish specialties, or Aussie barbecued prawns or New England pot pies ... good simple "plebeian" food which is festive and spicy and filling.

In keeping with these pagan festivals, foods should represent birth and regeneration: beans, peas, black-eyed peas, pumpkins, squash, nuts, berries.

It doesn't really matter what food is served, of course, as long as it's delicious and plentiful, and as long as there is plenty of drink to wash it down, wine or beer or just good old iced tea.

Beer is appropriate, since the Ancient Egyptians were brewing beer thousands of years before Antinous was born.

Antinous' last meal may have been refried beans and beer and flat bread.

In a change from holiday cakes and cookies, how about baking Antinous cookies? 

Bake simple sugar cookies which have been cut out to resemble stars, comets, an imperial crown and Bithynian fir trees and lions and so on and decorate them with Antinoian lettering or symbols.

Instead of gingerbread men, make gingerbread Antinouses. The gingerbread man, after all, is thought to come from pagan rituals for honoring Thor or other gods. 

Generally, they are sweet dough which is filled with a nut-date-spice filling representing rebirth and spiritual sustenance. You still find them today on St. Nicholas' feast day throughout Europe.

Whatever you bake, make sure to include a small "surprise" somewhere in the cake or muffin or cookes for some lucky guest to chomp down on. It doesn't have to be a diamond ring, but a trinket of some sort is always fun. 

If that is too challenging for your skills as a confectioner, then just an ordinary cake with the letters "A-N-T-I-N-O-U-S" in store-bought candy lettering would do the job just as nicely. 

Or just a large "A" in icing in the middle of the cake.

Another tradition should be oracle games. This is the first major festival of the New Year in the Antinoian liturgical calendar, so oracles are appropriate.

And when your guests suggest you are robbing traditions from Christian festivals, just look them square in the eye and insist that the Christians stole these wonderful traditions from us pagans because the Christians didn't have any of their own. 

Where would Christian holidays be without pagan traditions?

Who knows? Perhaps Hadrian and Antinous enjoyed these very same pagan traditions in their Saturnalia revelries.

One more thing: Mistletoe. Mistletoe is plentiful in the forests of Bithynia. You can never have enough mistletoe ... as these two 1928 vendors in Paris show.

Antinous would be well familiar with mistletoe. I'm sure he would like it as a reminder of his boyhood hikes through the woods of home.

Use your imagination and you'll come up with lots of ideas.

Let the Festive Season Begin with an Antinous Birthday Party!

THE FEAST OF JUPITER, JUNO, MINERVA

ON the 13th of November we celebrate the Roman feast of Jupiter, Minerva and Juno. Romans celebrate with a lavish feast outdoors, with the statues of the gods being brought in as the major guests. The feast is in the inner courtyard, open to the sky, so that the gods can see that all is done correctly.

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.

NIANKHKHNUM and KHNUMHOTEP SAINTS OF ANTINOUS

ON November 11th the Religion of Antinous honors two men whose love for each other has survived the fall of all ancient civilizations.

We honor Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep, Blessed Saints of Antinous.They lived in Egypt 2,000 years before the siege of Troy. 

They had been dead and forgotten for 2,650 years when Hadrian and Antinous visited Mennefer (Memphis) Egypt in 130 AD. 

Most likely Hadrian and Antinous stood directly on top of (or very nearly on top of) the lost tomb of these two men — two men who were buried together at the Memphis necropolis some 4,500 years ago.

When the tomb was discovered in 1964 it sent shock waves through the dusty world of Egyptology. The vividly painted reliefs on the walls of the tomb showed an intimate embrace between two male Royal Manicurists — the first recorded depiction of an openly homosexual couple.
Prudish Egyptologists have argued ever since that the two men were "just good friends" or perhaps that they were possibly "twin brothers".

But recent research by more open-minded archaeologists, such as California-based EGYPTOLOGIST GREG REEDER, has offered compelling evidence that the two men were more than "just good friends" or "close brothers."

Greg Reeder has written and lectured extensively on this extraordinary tomb, which was uncovered in 1964 in the necropolis of Saqqara at Memphis, on the west bank of the Nile. The site atop a cliff overlooking the Nile has drawn tourists since ancient times. Julius Caesar and Cleopatra stood atop this cliff and gazed in awe at its ancient tomb structures.

Hadrian and Antinous almost certainly stood on this very same spot in October of the year 130 AD, only weeks before Antinous drowned in the Nile. Beneath their feet was the Lost Tomb of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep. The sand has been removed and now that long-lost tomb is no longer lost.

And what a tomb it is! It has a splendid entrance and charming layout befitting a pleasant gay holiday retreat cottage — for an eternal, never-ending holiday vacation.

While grave robbers stripped the tomb of relics in antiquity, the wall paintings reveal tantalizing hints about its original occupants. The men are repeatedly depicted together, sometimes holding hands, sometimes with their arms around each other.

In two instances they are shown with their noses touching — the most intimate embrace permitted in Egyptian art of the time — tantamount to kissing. Their bodies are pressed so closely together that their groins rub against each other in a decidedly intimate sort of way. 

In Ancient Egypt, such male-male depictions were reserved for kings who merged with gods, not for two mortal men.

They are so close together that some Egyptologists have theorized that they may have been Siamese twins joined at the hips.

Other figures, identified as wives and children, are relegated to the background. In one scene, in which the two men share a final banquet before their journey into the afterlife, Niankhkhnum' s "wife" has been plastered over by the craftsmen who decorated the tomb. Khnumhotep's spouse fails to make an appearance at all — highly unusual in Egyptian tomb art, if not totally unprecedented.

Throughout the tomb, the two men are depicted in joyous pursuits, such as this relief vignette (right) showing one of them playing flute accompaniment as the other sings.

The magnificent reliefs show a variety of scenes involving nude or semi-nude males involved in all sorts of artistic and manly activities, such as one scene (below left) of a sort of "Egyptian Rodeo" bull-roping tournament with accompanying scenes of a raucous "beef barbecue" feast.

Or the scene (below right) of athletic youths — so sparingly attired you can see they are circumcised — engaged in a playful mock battle using reed skiffs on the Nile.

Throughout the tomb, the reliefs show men, men, men (and a few token females) engaged in service to the tomb's two male occupants who are — unprecedented in Egyptian Sacred Art — wholly committed to each other. Other tombs invariably show man-and-wife. Not this one.

Hieroglyphs describe the men as "Overseers of the Royal Manicurists" to pharaoh. 
Ostensibly, they were responsible for the care of the pharaoh's hands and were among the select few permitted to touch the ruler. 

However, it is also possible that the title "Royal Manicurist" could be a ceremonial honor similar to the "Order of the Garter".

Though the hieroglyphs say nothing of the two men's relationship, Greg Reeder, an Egyptologist based in San Francisco, believes the wall paintings suggest homosexuality is the answer. Reeder points out that Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep clearly chose to depict themselves in poses usually restricted to husbands and wives in other tombs. 

"Same-sex desire must be considered as a probable explanation," Reeder said at a lecture in Britain which made headlines a couple of years ago.

"We can only say for certain that the carvings show a profound intimacy between the two men, and the people who built the tomb were possibly unsure how to portray this," the US archaeologist noted.

The tomb was restored by German archaeologists in the late 1970s and opened to the public in the 1990s.

While gay tour operators have not targeted the site, in large part because Egypt outlaws homosexual activity, Greg Reeder's articles and lectures have created gay interest in this long-lost tomb.

"It has now become famous and lots of gay tourists go there," he says with scholarly pride.

Reeder notes that, regardless of whether the two men were sexual lovers, they were definitely two men who loved each other so much that they wanted to spend all eternity in an intimate embrace.

Even their two names are intertwined. Over the entrance to one chamber their names are mingled together so that Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep become "NiankhKHNUMhotep" — Peace and Life joined in the ram-headed Source-of-the-Nile Deity Khnum, clearly their mutual sacred patron.

Thus, their names blend together, forming a single name: "Joined in Life and Joined in Peace at the Source of All That Lives and Dies and is Born Again for All Eternity". Such is the subtlety of the Egyptian language, which turns a name into a commitment.
Our Flamen Antinoalis Antonyus Subia says:

"Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep is one of the earliest and most vivid portrayals of homosexual love, crossing all boundaries, binding two men and two families for all time, and demonstrating the profound antiquity and sacredness of our form of love." 

Thanks largely to the bold and candid research of Greg Reeder, the names of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep have been rescued from oblivion, so that their KAs might live forever — together! 

SAINT ARTHUR RIMBAUD

ON November 10th the Religion of Antinous honors St. Arthur Rimbaud, the free-spirited French poet whose openly gay lifestyle shocked even the most avant garde artists of London and Paris in the late 19th Century.

On this day, in 1891, the poet Arthur Rimbaud, Saint of Antinous, died of cancer just three months short of his 37th birthday. Despite his early death, he was already an acclaimed and highly controversial literary figure.

In his youth, Rimbaud had been what we would nowadays call a twink. A schoolboy friend said he was prettier than any of the girls and that he had "the most beautiful pale blue eyes" he had ever seen.

Raised by a staunchly Catholic single mother in isolation in the country, Rimbaud ran away to Paris at age 16 with no money but with a prodigious talent for poetry — he had already published a couple of highly praised poems.

In Paris, Rimbaud's behavior became outwardly provocative. The mild-mannered country boy started drinking, speaking rudely and writing scatological poems, stealing books from local shops, and instead of his previous neat appearance and in defiance of short-hair fashions, he began to wear his hair rebelliously long.

At the same time he wrote to an old school teacher of his who had encouraged his poetic talents, telling him about his method for attaining poetical transcendence or visionary power through a "long, intimidating, immense and rational derangement of all the senses. The sufferings are enormous, but one must be strong, be born a poet, and I have recognized myself as a poet."

Still a teenager, he was friends with radical Communists in Paris known as the Communards (hence the name of the '80s pop group) and he even wrote a poem about being sodomized by drunken Communard paramilitary men entitled "Le Coeur Supplicié" (The Tortured Heart).

He solicited the friendship of the established poet Paul Verlaine by audaciously writing a love letter to him and enclosing two hotly sexy poems, including the hypnotic, gradually shocking "Le Dormeur du Val" (The Sleeper of the Vale), in which the forces of Nature more or less rape a sleeping soldier.
  
Verlaine, who was intrigued by Rimbaud, sent a reply that stated, "Come, dear great soul. We await you; we desire you," along with a one-way ticket to Paris.

Verlaine was so smitten with the 17-year-old Rimbaud, that he abandoned his heavily pregnant 17-year-old wife and took up living with Rimbaud instead. Verlaine quit his job to become what he called "a full-time professional drunk" At left is a caricature of Rimbaud that Verlaine lovingly sketched about that time.

All of Paris was shocked by their behavior which, even among avant-garde artists, was considered scandalous.

The two of them fled to London, where they lived the life of starving artists. Rimbaud spent most of his time in the Reading Room of the British Museum for the simple reason that "heating, lighting, pens and ink were free", he later said. 

Verlaine and Rimbaud had a volatile on-again, off-again relationship punctuated by drunken bitch fights and which climaxed with Verlaine firing a gunshot at Rimbaud which resulted in a wrist wound.

In his 20s and early 30s, Rimbaud was a vagabond poet who traveled the world, mostly on foot, doing odd jobs and writing poems. There is a marble plaque on the island of Java commemorating his short visit there as a soldier in the Dutch Colonial Army — he decided the military life was not for him and deserted almost immediately upon arrival there and returned to Europe.He was living on the Horn of Africa with an Ethiopian mistress (he had had several lovers of both sexes, basically one in every port) when his health began to deteriorate due to what would later be diagnosed as cancer — alas, the diagnosis would be made too late to save his life.

He was 17 years old when he wrote the poem The Drunken Boat: 

"..Lighter than a cork, I danced on the waves which men call eternal rollers of victims, for ten nights, without once missing the foolish eye of the harbor lights! Sweeter than the flesh of sour apples to children, the green water penetrated my pinewood hull and washed me clean of the bluish wine-stains and the splashes of vomit, carrying away both rudder and anchor. And from that time on I bathed in the Poem of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk, devouring the green azures; where, entranced and pallid, a dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down; where, suddenly dyeing the bluenesses- deliriums and slow rhythms under the gleams of the daylight, stronger than alcohol, vaster than music-ferment the bitter redness of love."

 We dedicate this poem and the course of the free and disordered life  of St. Arthur Rimbaud to the period of 72 Archons, and our difficult passage towards godliness.

THE DEATH OF HEPHAESTION RECALLS THE DEATH OF ANTINOUS

THE 10th of November 324 BC is thought to be the day when Hephaestion died in the arms of Alexander the Great. Ancient writers said Hephaestion was "... by far the dearest of all Alexander's companions. He had been brought up with Alexander and shared all his secrets." This friendship lasted throughout their lives, and was compared, by others as well as themselves, to that of Achilles and Patroclus ... and by later generations to Hadrian and Antinous.

MUNDUS PATET

NOVEMBER 8th in Ancient Rome was Mundus patet: the day when the gate of the underworld is open and dead people return to us.

English: Memento Mori Roman mosaic from Pompeii representing the Wheel of Fortune. The wheel turns. Rich people (symbolized by the purple cloth on the left) become poor. Poor people (symbolized by the goatskin at right) become rich. Both conditions are very precarious. Death is in the balance. Death hangs by a thread: when it breaks, the soul (symbolized by the butterfly) flies off. And thus are all made equal.

Português: 8 de novembro na Roma antiga foi Mundus patet: o dia em que o portão do submundo está aberto e mortos voltar para nós. Mosaico romano de Pompéia representando a Roda da Fortuna. A roda gira, os povos ricos (simbolizados pelo pano roxo na esquerda) tornam-se pobres. Os pobres (simbolizados pela pele de cabra à direita) se tornam ricos. Ambas as condições são muito precárias. A morte é o equilíbrio. A morte pendura por um fio: quando quebra, a alma (simbolizada pela borboleta) voa fora. E assim são todos iguais.

Español: El 8 de noviembre en la Roma antigua fue Mundus patet: el día en que la puerta del mundo subterráneo está abierta y los muertos regresan a nosotros. Mosaico romano de Pompeya que representa la Rueda de la Fortuna. La rueda da vuelta, la gente rica (simbolizada por el paño púrpura en el izquierdo) hace pobre. Los pobres (simbolizados por la piel de cabra a la derecha) se hacen ricos. Ambas condiciones son muy precarias. La muerte es el equilibrio. La muerte cuelga por un hilo: cuando se rompe, el alma (simbolizada por la mariposa) vuela. Y así se hacen iguales.

Français : La mosaïque représente la Roue de la Fortune qui, lorsqu'elle tourne, peut faire du riche (symbolisé par l'étoffe pourpre à gauche) un pauvre, et du pauvre (symbolisé par la peau de chèvre à droite) un riche ; en effet chaque état est très précaire, la Mort est aux aguets à tout moment, et la vie tient à un fil : lorsque ce dernier rompra, l'âme (symbolisée par le papillon) s'envolera. Et tout le monde sera sur un pied d'égalité.

Italiano: Questo mosaico romano rappresenta la ruota della fortuna che, girando su se stessa, può far diventare povero il ricco (simboleggiato dalla stoffa purpurea a sinistra) e ricco il povero (la pelle di capra a destra). Ma l'equilibrio è molto precario: la morte è in agguato in ogni momento e la vita è sospesa ad un filo: quando il filo si spezzerà, l'anima (raffigurata come una farfalla sotto il teschio) volerà via. E, a quel punto, tutti gli uomini saranno uguali.

Deutsch: Das römische Mosaik repräsentiert das Glücksrad / Rad der Fortuna, das wenn es sich dreht die Reichen (symbolisiert durch das purpurrote Tuch links) arm machen kann, und die Armen (symbolisiert durch das Ziegenfell rechts) reich machen kann, aber alles ist sehr prekär, der Tod lauert zu allen Zeiten, und das Leben hängt an einem Faden: wenn dieser reißt, fliegt die Seele (symbolisiert durch den Schmetterling) davon. Und alle werden gleich gemacht.

FIND HOPE IN DESPAIR

ANTINOUS says: Instead of wallowing in despair, I offer hope: Please embrace your LGBT friends, your non-white friends, your female friends, your non-Christian friends. The USA says they are unimportant ... Antinous diz: Por favor abrace seus amigos LGBT, seus amigos não-brancos, suas amigas, seus amigos não cristãos. Os EUA dizem que não são importantes ... Antinous dice: Por favor abrace a sus amigos LGBT, sus amigos no blancos, sus amigas, sus amigos no cristianos. Estados Unidos dice que no son importantes.

EXPERTS DECIPHER MAGICAL SPELL BOOK FOUND NEAR ANTINOOPOLIS IN EGYPT

AN ancient Egyptian handbook containing magic spells in use in or near Antinoopolis has been deciphered by Australian scientists.

The Handbook of Ritual Power – as named by the researchers – explains how to cast love spells, exorcise evil spirits and treat 'black jaundice', a fatal infection still present today.

According to Live Science, the text is written in Coptic and the book is made of bound parchmentpapers. It is about 1,300 years old and was first acquired by Macquarie University in 1981 from antiques dealer Michael Fackelmann.

However, where Fackelmann first got the handbook from is unknown.

"The dialect suggests an origin in Upper Egypt, perhaps in the vicinity of Ashmunein/Hermopolis," which is directly across the Nile from Antinoopolis, researchers Malcolm Choat and Iain Gardner wrote in their book A Coptic Handbook of Ritual Power.

Antinoopolis was always a place of "magic, sorcery and strange religious fervor " according to Royston Lambert in his authoritative book about Antinous, BELOVED AND GOD. 

We know that the priests of Antinous wrote a LOVE SPELL. Lambert notes that even to this day local villagers believe the place to be haunted.

The ancient Egyptian magic spell book starts with a long series of invocations, annotated with drawings and "words of power", they say.

"These are followed by a number of prescriptions or spells to cure possession by spirits and various ailments, or to bring success in love and business."

The book, which is 20 pages long, includes a spell about how to control someone. To do this, people must say a magical formula over two nails, then drive them into his doorstop: "One on the right side (and) one on the left."

At the time the book was written, Egyptians had become Christians and it contains several references to Jesus. However, there are also mentions of the Sethians – a group that held the third son of Adam and Eve (Seth) in high regard.

Church leaders thought Sethians to be heretics and by the time the book was written, they had been all but wiped out.

The authors believe the handbook could be a transitional text created before all the Sethian spells had been purged. They told LiveScience they believe the spells were originally from separate books, but were later combined to create a "single instrument of ritual power".

Discussing who might have used the book, Choat said: "It is my sense that there were ritual practitioners outside the ranks of the clergy and monks, but exactly who they were is shielded from us by the fact that people didn't really want to be labeled as a 'magician'."

ARCHAEOLOGISTS RETURN TO ANTINOOPOLIS

WE are thrilled to announce that Italian archaeologists have returned to the Sacred City of Antinous, the glorious city of ANTINOOPOLIS in Egypt to resume archaeological digs.

In 2017 American experts from Chicago discovered a mysterious, "deliberately buried stone structure" as well as an extraordinary temple CORNICE STONE which mentions the name of Antinous along with Hadrian, Empress Sabina, the goddess Hathor and intersex Nile inundation deity Hapi.

But the archaeologists have filed no updates since 2017. When Antonius Subia visited Antinoopolis in 2020, there was no sign of archaeological work having been done for years.

Antonius Subia is the first priest of Antinous to make a VISIT TO ANTINOOPOLIS in 1,600 years.

It was at this bend in the Nile opposite Hermopolis that Antinous died in the Nile under mysterious circumstances in October 130 AD. Grief-stricken Hadrian consecrated the shore of the Nile where Antinous fell, and solemnly founded the Holy City of Antinoopolis in Egypt in the year 130 AD.

Antinous had risen again from the depths of Tartarus, he had conquered death and returned to the place of the living.

By Victory and Proclamation, Antinous was elevated to godliness, and the ancient religion of Our God was set in motion. 

The Priesthood of Antinous was ordained, sacred statues and images proliferated, and Temples rose up in every corner of the world, for the glory of Antinous the God.

We exalt in the deification of Antinous, and marvel at his assumption into heaven. 

We celebrate the founding of Antinoopolis by re-founding the sacred city within our hearts, declaring ourselves the New Stones of Antinoopolis. 

ANTINOOPOLIS MUMMIES HAD A 'SECOND SKIN' OF GOLD LEAF

THE city of Antinoopolis was so wealthy that residents buried their dead in a "second skin" of precious gold leaf, turning each mummy into a veritable golden statue, archaeologists say.

People who lived in the city, also called Antinoé, during the hey day of the religion of Antinous routinely covered every square inch of the skin of their dead loved ones with precious gold leaf. Even lips and eyelids were lovingly sheathed in gold by the embalmers during the mummification process.

As the Religion of Antinous waned and was replaced by Christianity, the gilded-skin practice went out of fashion, but was replaced by shrouds of the most exquisitely embroidered linens and ornate Byzantine jewellery.

The amazing revelation comes from a stunning French documentary film entitled LE MYSTÈRE DES MOMIES COPTES D'ANTINOÉ (Secrets of the Antinoé Coptic Mummies) which aired this week on the French-German cultural TV network ARTE.

Antinoopolis became renowned around the world in 1896 when the French archaeologist Albert Gayet began exploring the vast necropolis burial grounds south of Antinoopolis. An estimated 40,000 mummies were buried in the Antinoé necropolis.

Gayet's crews worked day and night unearthing hundreds of mummies representing all social classes and historical epochs. 

To his utter astonishment, many of the mummies were gilded, many were swathed in priceless woollen wraps and others wore Byzantine jewellery and headdresses.

He returned to Paris, where the most exquisite mummies were put on display at the Louvre, attracting throngs of visitors and spawning a "Coptic Craze" throughout Europe and America. 

Antinoopolis embroidery and linens inspired Matisse, Renoir and the leading Paris fashion designers, who incorporated the rich colors and designs into their work.

But the craze soon waned. The mummies were packed away in storage, most of them to disintegrate or become lost. Gayet died at age 60, impoverished and embittered after having spent 20 years of his life trying to raise funds for further exploration of Antinoopolis.

Gayet's dream of a "Musee d'Antinoé" in Paris died with him.

One hundred years later, at the end of the 20th Century, experts discovered that only 39 of Gayet's mummies had survived the rigors of time. For the past 15 years, the experts have studied these mummies to unlock the secrets of Antinoopolis.

What they have found is proof that Antinoopolis was a very rich city from its founding in 130 AD up until the Islamic onslaught in the 7th Century AD. 

"All of the mummies indicate a very high standard of living," says Louvre Chief Curator Yannick Lintz. "They had had a healthy diet during their lives and had no indication of having had stunted growth or chronic illness. We knew that Antinoé had been an important city, but now we have proof that it was very prosperous indeed for 500 years."

The film provides never-before-seen footage of efforts to restore the famous Basilica of Antinoé by an Italian team of archaeologists headed by Rosario Pintaudi.

As the cameras roll, Pintaudi and his crew raise a column at the Basilica to the upright position where it originally stood at least 1,700 years ago. The column had been in pieces and represents the turbulent religious history of the Sacred City.

The base of the column is a stone with incised reliefs from the time of Ramses II in 1400 BC. The column itself has an inscription honoring Emperor Hadrian from the 2nd Century AD. And graffiti chiseled onto the upper parts of the column dates from the Christian era in the 5th Century AD.

"The history of Antinoopolis is the history of using existing stone buildings to build new structures. Each new religion re-used stone from monuments to earlier religions," says Pintaudi.

"Antinoopolis was a major center of religious thought in Egypt for at least 500 years, and the vying religious sects and groups variously lived, fought and coexisted with each other all of that time," says Pintaudi. "It was and continues to be a very extraordinary city indeed."

ANTINOOPOLIS MUMMY PORTRAITS WERE TRUE TO LIFE, EXPERTS SAY

ANTINOOPOLIS is the site of some of the most spectacular portrait art ever found in Egypt. 

Art experts have always marveled at the exquisite encaustic (melted wax mixed with paint) portraits which were used as face plates on mummy cases at Antinoopolis and the nearby Fayoum Oasis.

At Antinoopolis, wealthy people even sheathed their mummies in gold leaf, turning their dead loved ones into virtual golden statues, according to FRENCH EXPERTS. 

But no one knew how accurate the portraits on those elaborate mummies were.

 Now experts using advanced forensic science have proved that the paintings were true-to-life portraits of the deceased when they had been alive.

“It was pretty exciting,” said Bob Brier, an Egyptologist at Long Island University and lead author of a new study published in the German Egyptological journal ZÄS Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde (Journal for Egyptian Language and Studies).  

“We didn’t know what we were going to find,” Brier said.

Brier and colleagues used a CT scanner to produce physical models of the mummies’ skulls. Then a crime artist, who only knew the mummy’s age and gender, used the models to recreate the mummies’ faces. The painstaking process took seven days per mummy.

“We were dying to see what it looked like,” Brier said.

The team then compared the faces to painted portraits entombed with the bandaged bodies.

Two of the four match-ups were strikingly similar.

A mummy from the British Museum was a small woman in her early 20s with delicate features, a narrow face and thick lips. Her face appears to match the features of her portrait. (Image credit: Caroline Wilkinson/University of Dundee Centre for Anatomy & Human Identification)

“It is believed that they were almost certainly painted during the lifetimes of the individuals and clearly were not idealized images,” Brier said of the portraits.

A second mummy from the British Museum was a large man in his 50s with a broad face, thick brow, flat nose, and heavy jaw. His face was very similar to his portrait, which may have been painted when he was younger. (Image credit: Caroline Wilkinson/University of Dundee Centre for Anatomy & Human Identification)

But one face didn’t match the portrait at all, leading the researchers to believe the ancient embalmers might have wrapped the mummy with the wrong portrait.

A mummy from the Glyptotek Museum in Copenhagen was a young man in his 30s with a wide nose, broad cheekbones, thick lips and rounded jawline.  This face looked quite different from the portrait, hinting that a switch might have occurred. (Image credit: Caroline Wilkinson/University of Dundee Centre for Anatomy & Human Identification)

“It is possible that during the mummification procedure, when several bodies were being mummified at the same time, a mismatch occurred,” Brier said.

The fourth mummy’s nose looked more refined in the portrait than in the researchers’ prediction, but his “other facial features and proportions were so consistent between the reconstruction and portrait that no mix-up was indicated here,” Brier said.

A mummy from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City was a man in his early 30s with a wide nose, square jaw and thick lips. His "touched up" portrait appears to show a younger man with a more narrow nose but similar lips and jaw. (Image credit: Caroline Wilkinson/University of Dundee Centre for Anatomy & Human Identification)

The study sheds light on the purpose of the portraits, which represented a shift from symbolic art to realistic art after the Romans conquered Egypt in 30 B.C.

“This study convinced us that some of these portraits were dead-on,” Brier said, adding that some portraits were likely styled to be more flattering to the deceased.

Brier would like to extend the study to include more mummies. But  while there are more than 1,000 mummy portraits, less than 100 are still attached to the people they depict, he said.

“The difficulty is finding portraits that are still bound to the mummy,” he said. “Many portraits were taken off the mummies and sold during the 19th century and early part of the 20th century.”

MEXICO'S FIRST SAINT OF ANTINOUS IS VICTIM OF HOMOPHOBIC VIOLENCE

ON November 2nd, Día de los Muertos (All Souls Day), worshippers of Antinous in Mexico City solemnly honour the first martyr saint of Antinous in Mexico: Jorge Fernandez Martínez, a victim of homophobic violence.

Our sister group Epithimia Antinous at the TEMPLO DE ANTÍNOO MÉXÍCO hold a Día de lost Muertos vigil for him during ceremonies at the sanctuary of Santa Muerte in Tultitlán near Mexico City.

This tradition began in 2016 with the first funeral ceremony in the name of Antinous to be held since ancient times.

Jorge Fernandez Martinez was brutally murdered by unknown assailants near his home in the Mexico City suburb of Tultitlán.

Forensic tests showed he had been tortured, raped and asphyxiated. His broken body lay undiscovered for days.

Grieving neighbors who had known and loved him for nearly 20 years held a wake and asked for dignified funeral services conducted under the auspices of Epithimia Antinous with Pride Tultitlán Committee and Estamos Contigo.

The rites were held at the famous Shrine of Santa Muerte (Our Lady of Sacred Death) in Tultítlan led by Enriqueta Vargas.

Our brothers and sisters at Foundation Epithimia of Antinous Mexico says: 

"We were honored to officiate in the funeral ceremony for the repose of the soul of this beloved person in our community, Señor Jorge Fernandez Martinez, an active member member of our because Antinous abhors hate crimes.

"We share these images of the temple, the funeral and texts shared by Adolfo Voorduin Frappe and White White Fernandez , whom graciously thank for attending the rites. We thank Santa Muerte International and the godmother Enriqueta Vargas, for their loving support," the statement says.

In Hollywood California FLAMEN ANTONIUS SUBIA announced that Jorge Fernandez Martinez became a Martyr Saint of Antinous during ceremonies on Foundation Day in October 2016.

'ANTINOUS PANTHEON' IS ANTINOUS IN THE GUISE OF MANY GODS

WHEN Hadrian fell in love with our god, he brought Antinous to Rome and cultivated the beautiful youth into the flower of perfect manhood. 

It was during this time that the greatest building of Hadrian's reign was completed, the Pantheon, the magnificent domed Temple of All Gods. 

It was completed and consecrated in 126 AD, and Antinous was certainly present for the ceremony.

After all, he was the chosen favorite of Hadrian and attended Our Pontifex Maximus at the high altar of the only Roman Temple that has remained intact. 

At the start of our Liturgical Calendar's New Year in November we celebrate the glory of the Pantheon, and its builder, and know in our hearts that the divine spirit of Antinous fills the great sacred space beneath the dome.

When Hadrian commissioned the proliferation of images, he portrayed Antinous in the guise of many gods, all of them beautiful boys who died savage deaths for the benefit of mankind.

In these boys we see the mystery of Homo Deus, the gay god, the beautiful one who is sacrificed because his seed does not fall within that chamber from which life comes.

All these dying-boy-gods are Our God who we celebrate as Antinous Pantheon, the many-splendored god of beauty, Antinous who is All Gods, Antinous Uranus.

We offer our reverence to the full pantheon of the gods, and to the Cosmos Our Mother, through Antinous Our Love and Our Lord.