WARREN LEE WILLIAMSON

JUNE 2, 1939 - MARCH 13, 2012

BROTHERS,

(as Warren always saluted us) 

Today we remember our dear gay wizard friend Warren Lee Williamson, born on this day in 1939, and who  succumbed to bone cancer at a hospital in Dallas on March 13 this year, according to his friend Bob, his companion for 45 years. 

I want to send out a huge blessing from the bottom of my heart to the Wizard Warren on the occasion of his birthday!
I know that he is sitting there on the deck of the ANTINOUS BARQUE OF MILLIONS OF YEARS,
watching the hot young ancient Greek sailors manning the oars,
sipping champagne from an old fashioned (Marie-Antionette) glass,
on an Egyptian chaise-lounge next to Hadrian and Antinous and Lucius and all the rest of the sacred gays,
when suddenly our prayers will waft up from down below (or where ever it is that we are)
And the ship's DJ will announce over the amazing speaker system that it's Warren's Birthday!
The whole ship will freak out...a disco ball will drop from the mast...and confetti will shoot from the cannons!

He is the first of the NEW BELIEVERS IN ANTINOUS to check in with his boarding pass for the Barque of Millions of Years.

May Antinous give the Blessed Wizard Warren a special First Class seat with a window.

I love the Wizard Warren...he always had something right out of the cosmos to say,
...he gave me a tremendous boost of confidence when I was feeling out of my mind.

Warren was the holy grandfather of the Religion of Antinous...he was a magic presence among us,

We still continue to feel the ripples of his magic course through us even now.

The Blessed Wizard Warren is now the first of us to stand before ANTINOUS THE GAY GOD!

I know that the Wizard will sit down with Antinous and explain to the ancient boy-god,

what all our modern crazy madness is about (because Antinous must surely be confused)

...and then, with a wave of a divine hand, Antinous will restore the Wizard Warren to his pinnacle of eternal youth,

And in that perfect state of bliss, Antinous will reveal all the mysteries of HOMOTHEOSIS

That can only be known to those who have shed their mortal flesh forever.

I hope to join them there one day on the ship of millions of years.

The Wizard Warren was the 1st champion of the FIRST ANTINOUS GAMES,
He won with a beautiful story and a Haiku poem.

There were other great submissions, of course,
...but it was obvious to me that Warren's submission was something deeper
Than a devotional tribute to Antinous might usually be,
but it had what I can only describe as A VOICE OF MILLIONS OF YEARS
and this is why I insisted that Warren be named the winner.

In Memory of the Great Wizard, I want to share these two emails that were sent by Warren in 2006 during the First Sacred Games,
They are wonderful to read because it is only now that the uncanny VOICE OF MILLIONS OF YEARS
Is clearly obvious.

The Wizard Warren Lives Forever!

ANTONYUS SUBIA

______________________________________

April 13th 2006

Brothers:
I do not know whether I should relate this evenings occurrence, or
just keep it to myself. I choose to tell you; think of me what you will.
I went to church this evening, Thursday before Easter, not because I am a christian but because I love the music. Arriving late, I sat at the back.
I don't know when I first noticed Him, but it was with disapproval.
In the pew in front of me, but at the other side of the sanctuary,
stood a young man, probably 17 or 18 years of age. I felt that he was too casually dressed for such an occasion; he wore a rock style T-shirt, short pants and what we used to call in the old days (1970's) "Jesus boots', the roman style lace up sandals. During the service I kept feeling myself drawn to him; I purposely tried to look away.
He seemed familiar. And I loved His curly hair; He seemed Mediterranean.
As the sermon droned on I kept hoping he would look back at me, and then he did! It was as if someone had slapped me in the face. I was stunned! It was Him........It was Him. I knew....I knew it was Him.
He smiled and my heart stopped. I stood for the hymn not even aware I was doing so. It was by Bernard of Clairvaux. During the second verse his eyes never left me and I realized I was singing it to Him.

What language shall I borrow,
To thank thee, dearest friend,
For this thy dying sorrow,
Thy pity without end?
Let me be thine forever.
And, should I fainting be,
Oh, let me never, never,
Outlive my love to thee.

His eyes pierced to my soul, and his smile was more than I could bear. I kept thinking this was not happening.....it couldn't be! I have looked at his statues for years.....I know his visage well.......and it was Him.
At the moment the hymn ended he turned full front to me and I saw what rock band was emblazoned there on his T-shirt: OSIRIS RISING.
My knees went weak, and tears streamed down my cheeks. The woman next to me, thinking I had been overcome by the service, put her arm around me to comfort me.
The service over, I looked up to locate Him, to follow Him, but He was on the other side of the church and the crowd was thick. I saw Him move into the narthex and I pushed my way through the crowd to get there as quickly as possible. But of course, He was not there. He was no where to be found......and I looked for several minutes. I asked casually if anyone had seen the 'young man', but no, no one remembered seeing Him.
I left sadly, yet strangely content. Because I know deep inside it
was Him. So I know He is watching; He is more than myth, much more.
And I shall never forget that smile as long as I live. Antinous lives!

-----------

(Following Submission to the First Antinous Games)

April 21st 2006

Dear Brothers:

Believing that the time of Antinous has truly come, that he is no longer a local phenomenon only, but has taken his place with the eternal Olympians, I offer the following haiku poem to His honor and for the glory of His games throughout the world.

"Antinous Epiphanios"

Maundy Thursday's King,
Brazen, Antinous smiling,
Osiris Rising!

Also,a sad note. I attended both Good Friday and Easter services,
searching each face, hoping that He would be there. But, of course,
He was absent, as I reckoned He would be. I will keep searching,
but I knew it was but a single epiphany. He is indeed Antinous
Epiphanios!

I appreciated, so much, your comments. And I asked myself the same questions you did...........what would I have done had I met Him? I have no answer; I only felt compelled to touch His hand, to be with Him for a moment.

Glory to Antinous and peace to the Ecclesia Antinoi!

ANTINOUS VIVIT, AVE!

INTERNATIONAL OUTRAGE OVER PLANS

TO DUMP GARBAGE AT HADRIAN's VILLA

 

INTERNATIONAL outrage has prompted Italian officials to back down on plans to dump mountains of garbage adjacent to Hadrian's Villa at Tibur outside Rome.

When he decided to build his palace in the fields outside Rome in the 2nd Century AD, the Emperor Hadrian wanted to escape the sounds and the smells of the capital.

Little did he imagine that 18 centuries later the stench of the city would follow him there thanks to plans to build an emergency garbage dump near the villa, as Rome runs out of space to bury its trash.

But now, officials are backing away from the plan after environmentalists launched a protest and a "Save Hadrian's Villa" petition which has gathered over 6,000 signatures from historians and archaeologists.

"Hadrian’s Villa and its surroundings must not be disfigured. We cannot allow an international wave of protests," Italy’s Culture Minister Lorenzo Ornaghi told La Repubblica newspaper, after visiting the site.

Ornaghi has threatened to resign while the popular and well-respected head of Italy’s High Council for Cultural Heritage, Andrea Carandini, has vocally slammed the scheme and also threatened to quit over it.

The fight to defend Hadrian's Villa near Tivoli from the garbage trucks has been spearheaded by a high-profile Roman noble. Prince Urbano Barberini, an actor, farmer and descendant of a 17th Century pope, is mustering local farmers for a fightback against a scheme he claims will ruin the UNESCO-listed ruins.

"This is like dumping rubbish next to the pyramids — what if tourists have to time their visits according to which way the wind is blowing?" said Barberini, who produces olive oil locally. "And should people attending the concerts held at the ruins bring gas masks?"

The decision to dump rubbish in an old quarry near the villa, after Rome's main garbage dump at Malagrotta was filled to capacity, involved using emergency powers to overrule bans on developing the virgin countryside.

A 250-acre complex of 30 buildings including palaces, baths, a theatre, temples and libraries built in Greek and Egyptian styles, Hadrian's villa centers around a small house sitting in the middle of a pool, accessed only by drawbridges, where the emperor could seek refuge from his court.

"You can't bury 2,000 years of history under tons of rubbish," wrote actor and campaigner Franca Valeri in a full-page appeal to Italian president Giorgio Napolitano taken out in Italian daily Corriere della Sera.

Barberini warned that a Roman era underground aquaduct which still carries water into Rome 25 kms away, is dug into the porous tufo under the site of the proposed dump and risks being polluted.

"A small tributary of a river that runs into the capital is also 30 meters from the site," he added. "It floods regularly, and we risk rubbish floating straight back to Rome."

A descendant of Pope Urban VIII, who commissioned works in Rome by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Barberini owns a castle in the nearby picture postcard hamlet of San Vittorino. But he denied the campaign was a case of not-in-my-castle's-back yard.

"My visibility is useful, but this is really about local farmers who were all told to go organic and now will have nothing. We are fighting tanks with arrows, but this will be a battle to the end."

Local campaigners have been joined by Italian environmental group Legambiente, which has attacked the governor of the region of Lazio, which covers Rome, for opening new dumps instead of promoting recycling in Rome — with 80 per cent of the city's rubbish, it stated, still ending up in dumps.

The regional authority is also planning to unload tons of garbage in quarries next to the small town of Riano north of Rome, where locals have blocked railway lines in protest.

"We are heading towards a garbage crisis like Naples'," said Barberini. "Why couldn't they use their emergency powers to push recycling? The region once promoted the area around Hadrian's villa as a tourist destination, recommending a series of walks. Half of those pass straight through where the rubbish will be."

ANTINOUS THE GAY GOD

INVITES YOU TO TAKE HIS HAND

AND FLY WITH HIM OVER THE CITY OF ROME

AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS RELIGION

IN THE FOURTH CENTURY A.D.

TARRY A MOMENT WITH ANTINOUS IN HADRIAN's PANTHEON (4:00 min.)

JOAN OF ARC, SAINT OF ANTINOUS

ON MAY 30th the Religion of Antinous honors Saint Joan of Arc who was burned as a heretic on this day in 1431.

She was a peasant girl who led the armies of the King of France against the occupying forces of the English. She claimed to have been chosen by God to drive the English from France and deliver the country to her King.

Joan of Arc said that she conversed daily with Saints Catherine and Margaret and St. Michael the Archangel. Her greatest victory was the liberation of Orleans, where Charles, then Dauphin, was crowned as King of France.

She was later captured by the English and subsequently tried by the Church and burned as a heretic. The focus of her trial was upon the nature of her visions, which the inquisitors condemned as Demonic, and upon her refusal to wear women's clothing.

Joan of Arc was in essence the most courageous of all transvestites, whose insistence upon male dress and hair style, and occupation as a warrior was the excuse used by the Church for her condemnation and subsequent burning as a heretic. The Church however reversed this decision in 1909 by beatifying her, and then finally consecrating her as a saint in 1920.

Though she is a saint of the Catholic Church and a devoted Christian, it is for her courage as a transvestite and possibly as a sacred lesbian that she is included as a Heroic Martyr Saint of the Religion of Antinous.

JAMES WHALE, SAINT OF ANTINOUS

ON MAY 29th the Religion of Antinous celebrates the life of Saint James Whale (22 July 1889 — 29 May 1957), the openly gay British-born director of such films as Frankenstein, The Old Dark House, Bride of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man.

His movies were modern parables about the cruelty of "normal" people towards "monsters" in their midst. 

All of those 1930s films are recognized as classics of the genre. Whale directed over a dozen films in other genres, including what is considered the definitive 1936 film version of the musical Show Boat.

He became increasingly disenchanted with his association with horror, but many of his non-horror films have fallen into obscurity. Whale was openly gay throughout his career, something that was very unusual in the 1920s and 1930s.

He tended to use gay actors who were friends of his, including Colin Clive, Ernest Thesiger, Charles Laughton and Laughton's wife Elsa Lanchester, who played the "Bride". Thesiger has tea (below) in mad-scientist garb. 

Bride of Frankenstein, in particular, is widely interpreted as having a gay subtext and it has been claimed that Whale's refusal to remain in the closet led to the end of his career.

James Whale's true genius was in making movies which made the audience sympathize with the "monster" instead of the "normal" people, who invariably were portrayed as ridiculous, comic fools.

James Whale's soaring career was dashed by homophobic studio bosses who objected to having a "pansy" directing major movies. He spent the last decade of his life as an outcast in Hollywood.

He "accidentally" drowned in his own swimming pool in the mid-1950s after having become a chronic depressive following a stroke.

His life was brought to the screen in the award-winning movie Gods and Monsters, which is a masterful adaptation of a very wonderfully written gay novel entitled Father of Frankenstein by Christopher Bram.

The book and the movie are about his final weeks of life with flashbacks to his childhood in poverty in northern England and his traumatic experiences during World War I and to his heyday as the toast of Tinseltown, and his plunge into obscurity — and his final plunge into the watery arms of Antinous.

It is a great irony that the only out-and-proud Hollywood director of the 1930s is remembered as a man whose name is equated with monsters.

Sir Ian McKellen, who is also from conservative Northern England and is an openly gay star of stage and screen, was nominated for a Golden Globe and for an Academy Award for his role as James Whale in the 1998 movie Gods and Monsters.

Brendan Fraser also won critical acclaim in that film as Whale's yard boy who identifies with the Frankenstein monster. His compelling portrayal suggests to the audience that all of us are gods and monsters, to some degree. But then, even Antinous was a god to pagans — yet a monster to early Christians.

And Lynn Redgrave won a Golden Globe and got an Oscar nod for her scene-stealing performance as James Whale's disapproving Swedish housekeeper — a tongue-in-cheek characterization drawn from the real-life eccentrics who performed supporting roles in Whale's wonderfully campy old movies.

THE NIGHT NIJINSKY UPSTAGED THE TITANIC

ONLY NIJINSKY could upstage the Titanic.

Exactly 100 years ago, on May 29th, 1912, with the sinking of the great liner still fresh in the public's mind, Vaslav Nijinsky made his debut as a choreographer — with a staging that was as unimaginably shocking as the Titanic tragedy.

Already acclaimed as the world's greatest dancer, Nijinsky choreographed Claude Debussy's "L'apres-midi d'un Faune" (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Fawn) for the Ballet Russes. A standing-room-only audience was crowded into the Théatre du Chatelet for the premiere.

Nijinsky himself danced the title role as the lustful faun trying in vain to seduce a group of nymphs.

Almost immediately after the curtain went up, gasps were heard in the audience. Nobody had ever seen ANYTHING like this on stage and most people could not recognize it as "dance" at all. They were accustomed to pretty ballerinas in tutus and agile men on pointed toe.

Nobody was prepared for THIS — an Art Nouveau frieze of two-dimensional Minoan Knossos mural characters that come alive and "walk like Egyptians."

And nobody certainly was prepared for his ad-lib pelvic humping. This impromptu "onanistic climax" at the end of the piece caused men to boo and ladies to swoon. 

Asked why he had rutted a scarf on stage, he answered, "It wasn't I ... it was the faun!"

The Titanic sank in April 1912, ending the "Gilded Age," and Nijinsky wanked on stage in May 1912, totally transforming the Arts. The stage was set (literally) for the Great War and total transformation of global political, economic and cultural structures.

The world would never be the same ...

 

We consecrate Vaslav Nijinsky as a Saint of Antinous and as a living incarnation of Antinous/Pan/Dionysus. St. Vaslav Nijinsky knew how to live Homotheosis every day of his life — which means living daily the Divine Spirit of Being Gay — and he knew how to express this ineffable spirit through dance as well.

NORTH SEA 'INVADERS'

ADVANCING ON HADRIAN's WALL 

INVADERS are crossing the North Sea in an onslaught on Hadrian's Wall which would have impressed even the Emperor Hadrian, who saw many wonders while traveling the length and breadth of his Empire.

Antinous is believed by many experts to have accompanied Hadrian on the Emperor's visit to Britain in 122 AD to oversee construction of the Wall.

But this time it's not Roman soldiers or barbarians, it's friendly day trippers from Amsterdam who have taken advantage of a special North Sea ferry tour to make the crossing and visit Hadrian's Wall.

This first-of-its-king DFDS Seaways' tour, called the "Edge of Empire" tour, was first launched on a trial basis last year. Due to the popularity of the trial crossing – 300 passengers took the tour in 2011 – this year the Edge of Empire tour to Vindolanda and the Roman Army Museum has been introduced.

Passengers travelling from Holland to England disembark the ferry at North Shields, just north of Newcastle, in the morning and spend the day in the region. They are collected on arrival by a taxi from EastCoast Tours and driven along the scenic route along Hadrian's Wall to the Roman Army Museum where they put on their glasses to watch the only 3-D film being shown about the World Heritage Site.

It's then off to Vindolanda to see the extensive excavations and artefacts including the famous Vindolanda Writing Tablets from 300 years of Roman occupation. 

The Vindolanda Tablets (photo lower left) are actually very thin chips of wood on which soldiers wrote messages which were then mailed home to Rome -- rather like postcards.

The first visitor to take the tour was Sacha Spoor and her son Yona Fokker. She said: "Yona’s father is currently touring Scotland on his motorbike, so we wanted to come and visit some of the places he has spoken about. Seeing Vindolanda on the 3-D film from above was breathtaking and then visiting the excavation site brought it all together. I am sure the visit will help Yona when he comes to study this at school. Meeting the archaeologist and having our own guided tour made the visit very special."

Yona added: "The 3D-film was 'cool', although I wouldn't want to be a Roman Soldier!"

Since undergoing a $10 million redevelopment project over the last three years, The Vindolanda Trust's two sites, Roman Vindolanda and The Roman Army Museum, have seen an increase in visitor numbers from people from all over the world.

DFDS Seaways is marketing the themed tours to its continental European audience as part of its minicruise breaks package from Amsterdam to Newcastle. 

Christine Burke, Contracting and Accommodation Manager at DFDS Seaways says: "We bring 200,000 Dutch visitors to the North East each year. It is important for us to develop the visitor experience and work with attractions and suppliers to show them what this region really has to offer. I'm sure our Dutch visitors will be fascinated by in what Roman life was like on the edge of the empire 2,000 years ago."

For Vindolanda & Roman Army Museum information and online tickets visit www.vindolanda.com .