THE statue of Antinous from Eleusis - Ἐλευσίς - is the only one that seems to refer back to an incident in his life, his initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries of death and resurrection in September 128 AD.
The sculpture was erected after his death in the outer courtyard of Eleusis and captures this instant of his life, though officially it depicts him as the god Dionysos Zagreus, a divinity of suffering abd resurrection associated with the Eleusinian Mysteries.
Technically it is not one of the best of the depictions of Antinous, but it evokes a mood and a moment.
The sulptor clearly envisaged the young lad draped in his himation, standing in the darkened Telesterion (the initiation hall) and confronted with the Eleusinian Mysteries of death and resurrection.
He clutches at the folds of his himation anxiously, insecure, staring wide-eyed, his mouth pursed in awe, with an expression of apprehension, intent rapture and awareness of the tremendous significance of what was being revealed to him.
Even though it is a mediocre statue in workmanship and details it is redeemed by its expressiveness and pathos.
This statue is now housed in the Archaeological Museum of Eleusis: Antinous as Dionysus Zagreus, Inv. 5092, 1.83 m, in marble of Thasos.
ANTINOUS and Hadrian were welcomed as the new Ganymede and Zeus/Jupiter when they arrived in the fabulous city of Pergamum in Asia Minor in the spring of 129 AD. The people of Pergamum having once been firmly under the control of the Persian Empire, and then living under the domination of the Hellenistic kings of the Attalid Dynasty, were accustomed to worshipping their rulers as gods, and it is believed that the province of Asia is the birthplace of the Cult of the Emperors.
Hadrian was declared and openly worshipped as a living god by the residents, an honor that he did not refuse. Antinous being his chosen favorite was also viewed with interest, and began to take his place here as the Divine consort, as the Ganymede, who was a local deity.
When Alexander the Great died, one of his generals, named Lysimachus, made Pergamum his capital. The Kingdom of Pergamum, under the Attalid Kings was to become the strongest power in Asia Minor for the centuries preceding conquest by Rome.
It remained a grand and wealthy city throughout Roman times, and was mentioned in the Christian Book of Revelation as one of the Seven Churches of the world.
The main temple of Pergamum was dedicated to Zeus, and was richly ornamented by a frieze depicting the war between the Olympic gods and the Titans. Portions of that frieze are now on permanent exhibit at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.
Hadrian built a magnificent Temple to the Divine Trajan, his Father, and so it is in this vein that we consecrate the visitation of Hadrian and Antinous to Zeus, as the spirit of the Divine Emperors, and as the conqueror of Titanic chaos.
We in the Religion of Antinous remember the gentle love of Hadrian for his beautiful Antinous in an age when the virtues of Hellenism and divine order prevailed over the chaos of fear and rage and the desire to destroy.
Friday, April 5, 2013
"CURSED" ROMAN RING MAY HAVE INSPIRED
TOLKIEN'S "LORD OF THE RINGS"
A "cursed" Roman gold ring which may have inspired J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" novels has gone on display at a museum in Britain. The new exhibition at The Vyne, now owned by the National Trust, raises the intriguing possibility that the Roman ring and the ring of power in the Tolkien books are one and the same.
The museum exhibit, created in conjunction with the Tolkien Society, tells the incredible story of this ring, the Roman tablet inscribed with a curse on the man who stole it, and its fascinating connections with Tolkien.
Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford before he found fame as an author, with the publication of "The Hobbit" in 1937, and the first of the Rings trilogy in 1954. He certainly knew the story of the curse and the ring, and was researching the subject two years before he began work on "The Hobbit."
The ring was probably found in 1785 by a farmer ploughing a few miles away within the walls of Silchester, one of the most enigmatic Roman sites in the country – a town which flourished before the Roman invasion, was abandoned by the 7th century and was never reoccupied.
The ring is a strikingly odd object, 12 grams of gold so large that it would only fit on a gloved thumb, ornamented with a peculiar spiky head wearing a diadem, and a Latin inscription reading: "Senicianus live well in God."
A few decades later and 100 miles away, more of the story turned up: at Lydney in Gloucestershire, a Roman site known locally as the Dwarf's Hill, a tablet with an inscribed curse was found.
A Roman called Silvianus informs the god Nodens that his ring has been stolen. He knows the villain responsible, and he wants the god to sort them out: "Among those who bear the name of Senicianus to none grant health until he bring back the ring to the temple of Nodens."
Lydney was re-excavated by the maverick archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler, who called in Tolkien in 1929 to advise on the odd name of the god – and also spotted the connection between the name on the curse and the Chute family's peculiar ring. It seems that Senicianus only got as far as Silchester before he lost his booty.
Dr Lynn Forest-Hill of the Tolkien Trust said Tolkien's source was usually assumed to be literary sources, including the Niebelung legends.
"It is, then, particularly fascinating to see the physical evidence of the Vyne ring," he said, "with its links to Tolkien through the inscription associating it with a curse."
The ring is now on display with a first edition of The Hobbit and a copy of the curse – visitors are invited to vote on whether they are looking at the original of Bilbo's ring.
Thursday, April 4, 2013
LOOTING SITUATION IN EGYPT
CONTINUES TO ESCALATE
DESPITE beefed-up efforts to stop looting of Egyptian archaeological sites, the situation all up and down the Nile Valley is escalating rapidly, according to the country's leading newspaper. Egyptian antiquities police and archaeologists managed to stop illegal construction at Al-Bordan archaeological site on Alexandria-Marsa Matrouh highway ... but only after the site was "completely destroyed" by looters and people building illegally on the site, said the report in Al-Ahram newspaper.
The site includes remains of Graeco-Roman fortresses, roads, temples and cemeteries.
The encroachment on the Al-Bordan archaeological site started last friday when a large truck invaded the site with a construction bulldozer, which crushed a cluster of authentic structures that date back to the Graeco-Roman era, according to director of Marina Al-Alamein Antiquities Khaled Abul-Magd.
Abul-Magd accused Yasser Khalil, owner of a contractor company, and truck driver Mohamed Abdel Sattar of violating and damaging the archaeological site. The tourism and antiquities police arrested both men, but they denied all charges. Both are in custody until the completion of investigations.
On Saturday, all encroachment had been removed, but the site "is almost completely destroyed", the newspaper reported.
Egypt has suffered from illegal urban and agricultural encroachment on archaeological sites ever since the breakdown of law and order after the ouster of President Hosny Mubarak.
In March, widespread looting of was reported on this blog, and our urgent news release succeeded in prompting Egyptian officials to sit down with archaeologists to seek a way to end the plundering.
Just 20 km away, in at the adjacent site of Amarna, villagers began cultivating the area around a collection of 18th-dynasty noblemen’s tombs at the ancient site of heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten's fabled city.
The Egyptian antiquities ministry ordered a halt to the encroachment and looting at both Amarna and Antinoopolis and stepped up security in the area, while tourism and antiquities police were deployed nearby.
Dahshur, 30 km north of Giza plateau, was ravished in January 2013 (photo above). Residents of the neighbouring Dahshur village proceeded to construct a collection of modern cemeteries before the Black Pyramid of King Amenhotep II.
However, Dahshur residents halted construction of the structures after the antiquities ministry offered to provide them with land far from the archaeological site on which to build a cemetery.
A mysterious malady seems to have expanded drastically, wiping out as many as half of the beehives needed to pollinate much of produce in North America and many other parts of the world.
This is a crisis of mythic proportions ... in the truest sense of the word. In Classical Mythology the world's bees all vanished ... and it took the daring plunge of a brave Hero to find the divine powers to bring the bees back ... and to save mankind.
It is all there in Virgil's version of the story of Aristaeus (Aristée/Aristaios).
As this statue in the Louvre shows, Antinous was identified by the Ancients with Aristaeus ... they both descended into a river and emerged with godly powers.
Aristaeus was the son of Apollo and the river-nymph Cyrene and his assignment on the earthly plane was to teach mortal humans the art of farming and cultivating crops and tending livestock and keeping bees.
Honey was practically a form of ambrosia, or at least the nearest thing to ambrosia that mortal men had. It was the job of Aristaios to teach men how to cunningly harvest honey without being stung.
But Aristaeus had inadvertently caused the death of Eurydice by causing her to tread upon a venomous serpent. Her death and Orpheus's attempt to bring her back to the earthly plane were the origins of the Orphic Mysteries.
Shortly after Eurydice died, the bees which Aristaeus had been nurturing all began dying of a unexplainable cause. Nothing he could do seemed to prevent them from dying and soon they were all gone and humans were deprived of honey, beeswax, mead and the many other products which bees provide to man, not to mention the fact that, without bees, there was nobody to pollinate plants. The situation was dire.
Here's what Bulfinch writes, quoting Virgil:
"Aristæus, who first taught the management of bees, was the son of the water-nymph Cyrene. His bees had perished, and he resorted for aid to his mother. He stood at the river side and thus addressed her: 'O mother, the pride of my life is taken from me! I have lost my precious bees. My care and skill have availed me nothing, and you my mother have not warded off from me the blow of misfortune.'
"His mother heard these complaints as she sat in her palace at the bottom of the river, with her attendant nymphs around her. They were engaged in female occupations, spinning and weaving, while one told stories to amuse the rest. The sad voice of Aristæus interrupting their occupation, one of them put her head above the water and seeing him, returned and gave information to his mother, who ordered that he should be brought into her presence.
"The river at her command opened itself and let him pass in, while it stood curled like a mountain on either side. He descended to the region where the fountains of the great rivers lie; he saw the enormous receptacles of waters and was almost deafened with the roar, while he surveyed them hurrying off in various directions to water the face of the earth.
"Arriving at his mother’s apartment, he was hospitably received by Cyrene and her nymphs, who spread their table with the richest dainties. They first poured out libations to Neptune, then regaled themselves with the feast, and after that Cyrene thus addressed him: 'There is an old prophet named Proteus, who dwells in the sea and is a favorite of Neptune, whose herd of sea-calves he pastures. We nymphs hold him in great respect, for he is a learned sage and knows all things, past, present, and to come. He can tell you, my son, the cause of the mortality among your bees, and how you may remedy it.'"
The story goes on to say a river nymph escorted Aristaeus to the cave of Proteus where he subdued the cantankerous old prophet (who was a shape-shifter and tried unsuccessfully to elude Aristaeus by changing form). Aristaeus told him of his plight and wanted to know the cause of this misfortune and how to remedy it. Bulfinch writes:
"At these words the prophet, fixing on him his gray eyes with a piercing look, thus spoke: 'You receive the merited reward of your deeds, by which Eurydice met her death, for in flying from you she trod upon a serpent, of whose bite she died. To avenge her death, the nymphs, her companions, have sent this destruction to your bees. You have to appease their anger, and thus it must be done: Select four bulls, of perfect form and size, and four cows of equal beauty, build four altars to the nymphs, and sacrifice the animals, leaving their carcasses in the leafy grove. To Orpheus and Eurydice you shall pay such funeral honors as may allay their resentment. Returning after nine days, you will examine the bodies of the cattle slain and see what will befall.'
"Aristæus faithfully obeyed these directions. He sacrificed the cattle, he left their bodies in the grove, he offered funeral honors to the shades of Orpheus and Eurydice; then returning on the ninth day he examined the bodies of the animals, and, wonderful to relate! a swarm of bees had taken possession of one of the carcasses and were pursuing their labors there as in a hive."
So there we have it! Even the most illiterate and ignorant peasant would know the story of Aristaeus and the bees and the plunge into the river to unravel a Sacred Mystery. Aristaeus survived the plunge and emerged with Secret Knowledge which was of a great service to mankind.
For without bees to pollinate orchards and crops, mankind can scarcely survive ... a fact which has come home to haunt us today as bee populations dwindle worldwide and food riots rage in developing countries.
Ancient peoples, even those who could not read or write, could look at the statue of Antinous-Aristaeus and immediately see the Sacred Symbolism ... Like Aristaios, Antinous is a god who took the plunge into a river and who emerged with knowledge of Sacred Mysteries.
Wearing a sunhat, carrying a farm tool and holding an olive sprig, Antinous-Aristaeus symbolizes the union of sunshine and water (Apollo/Cyrene) combined with ingenuity and hard work and the ability to dive into the spiritual depths ... defying death ... and to emerge with a miracle which benefits all humankind.
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
HERVÉ CRISTIANI SINGS
A LOVE BALLAD ABOUT ANTINOUS
THIS gentle love ballad is sung by French chanteur Hervé Cristiani from an album entitled "Antinoüs" inspired by Marguerite Yourcenar's historical novel "Mémoires d'Hadrien" (Hadrian's Memoirs).
Flamen Antonyus Subia says there's something lovely about this song...he especially loves that Hervé pronounces "Antinous" the same way that Antonyus does...the way that it should be pronounced, the way that Hadrian whispered his name.
There aren't too many songs about Antinous in the world, this is probably the first....
Cliquetis de timbales d'or, laissez passer Cesar Cliquetis de timbales d'or, laissez passer Cesar
Que les pages fardés pleurent leurs larmes de miel, les dieux sont fatigués d'habiter le ciel Que le festin commence, que les nubiennes dansent, que les vins de Chaldée apportent l'oubli
Antinoüs, Antinoüs, ton esclave endormi, Antinoüs, Antinoüs, tu peux pas l'oublier
Cliquetis de timbales d'or, laissez passer Cesar Cliquetis de timbales d'or, laissez passer Cesar
Par le cuir et le fer et les aigles d'Europe, tu as conquis la terre et soumis les hommes Tous ces princes barbares qui se trainent à tes pieds n'ont même pas le pouvoir de te faire oublier
Antinoüs, Antinoüs, ton esclave endormi, Antinoüs, Antinoüs, tu peux pas l'oublier
Dans les statues de marbre et les monnaies de l'empire, dans le souffle des arbres, il y a son sourire Par la pourpre impériale qui te couvre le corps, par le chant des vestales, il vivra encore
Antinoüs, Antinoüs, ton esclave endormi, Antinoüs, Antinoüs, tu peux pas l'oublier
Cliquetis de timbales d'or, laissez passer Cesar Cliquetis de timbales d'or, laissez passer Cesar ____________ _________ _________ _________ _________
Subia's translation:
Rattle the golden drums, and let Caesar pass Rattle the golden drums, and let Caesar pass
Let the painted-face pages cry their tears of honey, the gods have grown weary of dwelling in the heavens Let the feasting commence, let the Nubian girls dance, let the Chaldean wines bring oblivion.
Antinous, Antinous, your slave is sleeping, Antinous, Antinous, you can not forget him.
Rattle the golden drums, and let Caesar pass Rattle the golden drums, and let Caesar pass
By the leather and the iron and the eagles of Europe, you conquered the earth and subjugated all men All those Barbarian Princes who were brought to your feet, not even they have the power to make you forget.
Antinous, Antinous, your slave is sleeping, Antinous, Antinous, you can not forget him.
In the statues of marble and on coins of the empire, in the wind through the trees, there you find his smile By the imperial purple that covers your body, by the chant of the vestals, he lives even still.
Antinous, Antinous, your slave is sleeping, Antinous, Antinous, you can not forget him.
Rattle the golden drums, and let Caesar pass Rattle the golden drums, and let Caesar pass
ON April 1st we honor Venus Urania, who blesses homosexual love.
When Saturn castrated his father Uranus, and separated the sky from the earth, by cutting away the testicles of heaven, Venus, the Great Goddess of Love was born, where the foam of the testicles washed ashore on the island of Cyprus.
She was attended by the Erotes, the spirits of desire, as seen in this image: "D'après Botticelli" 1984, acrylic on canvas, by the noted Italian artist, Marco Silombria. Soon afterwards she created the three Graces. She was brought into Olympus by marrying Vulcan, the smith god, but Venus is an older, and more powerful than the Olympians, except for Zeus, because she is directly descended from Uranus, the heavens.
Venus shared her love with almost all the gods, to the humiliation of Vulcan, Juno's son, but her most ardent desire was for the war god Mars, whose virile masculinity is in direct contrast to her voluptuous feminine grace.
Together Mars and Venus fought for the Trojans against the other jealous goddesses, and though Zeus gave victory to the Greeks, he promised Venus that her chosen people would have their revenge.
Flamen Antonyus Subia says:
So it was that Venus guided her son Aeneus and his followers out of the burning city and across the world to the place where Rome would one day stand. The descendants of the Trojan refugees and of Mars were Romulus and Remus who founded Rome, whose sons, through War and Love would conquer the world.
Julius Caesar claimed to be descended from Venus through Aeneus, and so she became the guardian spirit of the Emperors.
In the year 135 Hadrian dedicated the Temple of Venus and Roma. Hadrian built one of the largest Temples in Rome for the Great Goddess of Love and for the Spirit of the Deified City.
Hadrian intended with this Temple to proclaim to the Romans that the Empire was the child of Love and War, but that Love, through the Goddess Venus, was to be the foremost power. We dedicate this day to Venus Urania, who blesses homosexual love.
