HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO JERMAINE STEWART WHO TAUGHT US 'THE WORD IS OUT'

Happy birthday, Jermaine Stewart, born September 7th, 1957, who was one of the first gay artists to break out of the clubs and crossover into mainstream just as the music video was being born and kids were clamoring "I want my MTV!"

Jermaine was an out and proud inspiration to gay kids at home in front of their parents' TV sets in the '80s, and to jaded gay grownups in front of theirs as well. 

He always made you smile and want to get up and push the furniture out of the way and dance.

Jermaine began his performing career as a teenager in Chicago, touring with the Chi-Lites and The Staple Singers and appearing on the "American Bandstand" and "Soul Train" TV shows, which were prototypes for all-music broadcasters.

He would go straight from school in the afternoon to the "Soul Train" studios in Chicago where the show was shown locally in black-and-white — who knew that the show would become a nationwide hit within a few years?

By the early '80s he had worked with Shalamar, Millie Jackson, Tavares, the Temptations, and Culture Club as a background vocalist and dancer.

With the help of Culture Club member Mikey Craig, he landed his first solo recording contract with Clive Davis of Arista Records (10 Records in the UK) in 1984. 

His first single, "The Word Is Out," was produced by Peter Collins and was supported by a video shot in Paris. 

The song reached number 41 in the US R&B and Billboard charts, and was followed by an album of the same name in 1985.

Although "The Word Is Out" did much to enhance Stewart's reputation, it did not prove to be the commercial success Arista had expected.

But things changed with his second album, "Frantic Romantic," which included the song that would be Stewart's biggest hit, "We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off." It became an international success, reaching the Billboard Top 5 and number 5 in the UK charts.

Jermaine's third album, "Say It Again," was probably his most successful internationally. He was big in the US and Britain, but he was stupendously popular in Europe and Asia. 

He was a veritable superstar in Germany , where "Don't Talk Dirty To Me" was one of the biggest selling records of 1988, making the top 5.

While other mainstream pop stars went for a mainstream look, St. Jermaine went for eye-popping glitz-and-match attire and a glamour-diva image which Asians and Europeans loved.

This was when his career peaked and began a slow but steady decline as '80s radio-friendly pop tunes fell out of favor. In the early '90s he recorded an album entitled "Set Me Free." The album marked a return to the dance funk style of his pre-fame days. The title track was released as a single in the U.S., but sold poorly. The album was never released ….

Meanwhile, his health was beginning to decline. He did however start recording a new album in 1996, but never finished it. St. Jermaine Stewart died of complications of AIDS on March 17, 1997, at the age of 39.

Ironically, his biggest hit "We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off," with its safe sex message, was one of the first mainstream pop responses to the AIDS crisis.

We honor Jermaine Stewart for his courage and for his talent and for his audacity at being an in-your-face '80s gay style icon. Besides, not even Diana Ross had this many costume changes in a four-minute music video:

ANTONIUS SUBIA SHOWS YOU HOW TO MAKE ANTINOUS PRAYER BEADS

THERE are Catholic rosary beads, Eastern Orthodox beads, Swedish Lutheran Frälserkransen beads, Islamic prayer beads, Buddhist meditation beads, Hindu japa mala beads and even Wiccan prayer beads ... now several adherents of Antinous are designing prayer beads.

This photo shows Antinous Prayer Beads designed and created by Antonius Subia. Click here to read how he hand-crafted the FLAMEN ANTONIUS SUBIA PRAYER BEADS.

Priests Uendi and Hernestus also have created their own special prayer beads ... very different in design and function from Antonius Subia's beads.

Priest Hernestus calls his the "Antinous Moon Magic" beads and describes them in full detail HERE.

They consist of 52 beads symbolizing the 52 primary annual lunar phases, each of which represents a specific archetypal spirit in Antinous Moon Magic (photo at left).

In addition, there are some 30 additional beads representing various major "Saints of Antinous" and "Blessed Souls of Antinous."

There are also has beads for what Hernestus calls his "Sorgenkinder" (German for "special needs children") ... beads for persons or situations which require urgent spiritual attention.

Priest Uendi's beads have a unique flavor all their own and she uses them in her daily meditations and prayers (photo below right).

Many other modern-day Antinous adherents have created their own Antinous Prayer Beads.

You can construct a set of prayer beads with a variety of themes and use them in rituals to express your particular beliefs and spiritual interests.

Let's look at ideas for two different types of Pagan prayer beads. The first  set is a devotional one that honors the elements, the changing seasons, and the phases of the moon. The second pays tribute to Antinous.

You will need:

• Beads in colors representing ASPECTS OF ANTINOUS you treasure
• Beads that symbolize some of the attributes of the deity
• Spacer beads in color of your choice
• Beading wire or string

Sort your beads and arrange them so they for a pattern that you like. You may want to try different patterns and designs and see which feels right for you.

Once you have your beads aligned the way you like them, string them on the beading wire and knot it securely. To use your beads in ritual, assign a prayer or short devotional to each bead. As you count them, recite the prayers.

For some more great ideas on how to construct and use Antinous prayer beads, read Donald L. Engstrom-Reese's excellent essay at We Are Walking in Beauty.

Here is a stunning set of Antinous Prayer Beads created by a modern-day adherent of the Most Great and Good God Antinous … Angelo Louis Montiserrat:

ROMULUS SHRINE TO JUPITER LOCATED AT BASE OF PALATINE IN ROME

IN the old Roman calendar, September was the seventh month of the year in counting March as the first. Among the festivals observed in September were several honoring Jupiter. 

He was hailed as the chief of the gods and had many epithets as a result.

As Jupiter Optimus Maximus, he occupied the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus on the Capitoline hill with the goddesses Juno and Minerva. With them, he received a Lectisternium (September 13) and the Ludi Romani  (September 5-19). 

He was honored with festivals as Jupiter Liber and Jupiter Fulminator (September 1) and as Jupiter Stator (September 5).

Jupiter Stator is the hand of Jupiter giving Roman troops their unstoppable force.

Romulus built a temple to Jupiter Stator at the foot of the Palatine Hill, Italian archaeologists say.

The ruins of the shrine to Jupiter Stator (Jupiter the Stayer), believed to date to 750 BC, were found by a Rome University team led by Andrea Carandini.

"We believe this is the temple that legend says Romulus erected to the king of the gods after the Romans held their ground against the furious Sabines fighting to get their women back after the famous Rape (abduction)," Carandini said in the Archeologia Viva (Living Archaeology) journal.

Historians have always been intrigued by ancient references to the temple, but never knew precisely where it was located or what it looked like. The lithograph above is a fanciful 19th Century idea of its possible appearance.

According to myth, Romulus founded Rome in 753 BC and the wifeless first generation of Roman men raided nearby Sabine tribes for their womenfolk, an event that has been illustrated in art down the centuries.

Carandini added: "It is also noteworthy that the temple appears to be shoring up the Palatine, as if in defence".

Rome's great and good including imperial families lived on the Palatine, overlooking the Forum.

Long after its legendary institution by Romulus, the cult of Jupiter the Stayer fueled Roman troops in battle, forging the irresistible military might that conquered most of the ancient known world.

In the article in Archeologia Viva, Carandini's team said they might also have discovered the ruins of the last Palatine house Julius Caesar lived in - the one he left on the Ides of March, 44BC, on his way to death in the Senate.

BRAZIL'S CULTURAL HERITAGE IN ASHES AFTER FLAMES CONSUME RIO MUSEUM

FIRST, the good news: The Southern Hemisphere's only Antinous sculpture is safe ... the bust of Antinous as Dionysus (photo below right) is still safe and sound in Rio de Janeiro's Museum of Fine Art.

But now the tragic news: an inferno has destroyed the city's other major museum: the National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, the oldest scientific institution in the country.

Most of the 20 million items it contained were reduced to ashes, including the oldest human remains ever found in the Americas.

The museum, located in a building that once served as the residence for the Portuguese royal family, celebrated its 200th anniversary this year. 

It was only in 2016 that Rio de Janeiro hosted the Olympic Games ... an event into which Brazil poured billions of dollars.

But the result was severe cutbacks in funding for local projects, especially cultural infrastructure. This was a museum that many saw as long ignored and underfunded ... now, with devastating consequences for Brazil's heritage.

Fire prevention equipment was not working ... water hydrants in the district were inoperative ... firefighters had to pump water from a nearby lake.

An employee at the museum is a dedicant of Antinous ... indeed, the modern-day Religion of Antinous has thousands of followers in Brazil ... more than in any other nation in the world.

The high priest of Antinous in Brazil is DECUS RIBEIRO, who issued this statement about the fire:

"Companions! May Antinous weep for us tonight!! Our Louvre, our British Museum is gone. The Brazilian National Museum is ablaze!

"Once the Palace of Emperor Dom Pedro I and II, it housed prehistoric dinosaur skeletons, indigenous art and history, Etruscan, Roman, Greek and Egyptian pieces ... more than 20 million items.

"The building was also home to items covering the centuries from the arrival of the Portuguese in the 1500s to the declaration of a republic in 1889.

"The ethnology collection had unique pieces from the pre-Columbian era and artifacts from indigenous cultures. Among them were 2,000 mummies, 11,000 ancient human fossils ... including the First Brazilian, called Luzia.

"A fellow Antinous dedicant worked as an intern there. He's devastated beyond comprehension. We all are ... We who understand the value of History, Art, Culture and Beauty.

"There are no words.

"Absolutely no words."

In a statement issued by the Hollywood Temple of Antinous, the founder of the modern-day Religion of Antinous, ANTONIUS SUBIA, had this to say about the devastating inferno:

Im so sorry for you Decus

Im sorry for all of us

Because this is a loss to humanity and civilization not just Brazil

Like the Library of Alexandria

Gone forever!

~ANTONIUS SUBIA

ANTINOUS TAKES UP RESIDENCY IN KAISER'S PALACE IN BERLIN

ANTINOUS has returned to the restored Imperial Palace of the German Kaisers ... as a replica facade statue.

He is back as a colossal ... 10-foot-tall ... replica of the famous Belvedere Antinous/Apollo statue in the Vatican. He is a copy of a colossal Antinous Belvedere which was sculpted in 1699 for the Hohenzollern Palace in Berlin for the kings of Prussia ... and later Kaisers of Germany.

The copy of the sculpture of Antinous from the ruined Berlin Palace is enormous ... almost three metres tall and weighing 1,443 kilos (1.5 tons). 

The body is made of Silesian sandstone. Given the eventful history of the original Antinous sculpture from the Berlin Palace and, more importantly to worshipers of Antinous, its sacred significance, his reconstruction poses an exciting task for the team building the new palace.

In 1543, a Roman copy of a Greek sculpture of Hermes was found near the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome. It was then purchased by Pope Paul III for the Vatican’s sculpture garden. 

In 1624, the French sculptor Francois Duquesnoy used this as a model to fashion a small bronze that can today be admired in the Bodemuseum in Berlin. 

It was this work that Andreas Schlüter had in mind when he created his Antinous for the Berlin Palace in 1699. Schlüter’s sculpture was lost, however. 

A copy erected in the palace in the late nineteenth century was probably created in the workshop of Reinhold Begas. After suffering damage during World War II, but before the Berlin Palace was blown up in autumn 1950, this sculpture was salvaged and taken to the Bodemuseum along with other surviving sculptures.

In 2013, as part of the reconstruction of the Berlin Palace with three of its external facades and the Schlüterhof, negative impressions were taken, using silicon moulds, of all the original sculptures and fragments which had been preserved. 

The originals were then completely restored in preparation for being exhibited in the Humboldt Forum’s future sculpture hall. In 2017, the sculptor Andreas Hoferick restored Antinous' missing left arm, and the stone sculptor Wojciech Rostocki then used a plaster cast with the arm added to make a sandstone copy. 

After 300 years, a complete Antinous sculpture will once again stand on the third column from the north in front of Gate 6 in the newly constructed Schlüterhof.

The Berlin City Palace (Berliner Stadtschloss) was a royal and imperial palace in the center of Berlin, the historical capital of Prussia and subsequently Germany. 

It was the winter residence of the kings of Prussia and the German emperors … the kaiser in German.

The palace was almost destroyed in Allied bombing raids in World War II.

The ruins were razed by the Communist regime in East Berlin after the war because the palace represented "imperialist capitalism."

 In 2013 work started on reconstruction and a part of the exterior of the palace has been rebuilt. The completion is expected in 2019. The reconstructed palace will house the Humboldt Forum, a world centre for culture. More photos below:

SAINT WILLI NINJA

ON September 2nd, the Religion of Antinous honors St. Willi Ninja, who made the whole world take notice of a gay ghetto dance style called Vogueing.

Vogueing ... with its angular body movements, exaggerated model poses and intricate mime-like choreography ... and the colorful characters who populated Willi Ninja's world were introduced to the public at large by Paris Is Burning, the award-winning 1990 documentary about New York's drag vogue-ball scene. Later in his career, Willi Ninja also performed in works by postmodern choreographers including Doug Elkins, David Neuman and Karole Armitage.

Vogueing had been around for years, but Willi Ninja brought it to a level of visibility and perfection in performance that no one had ever reached before, according to Sally Sommer, a professor of dance at Florida State University.

"He was tall man, about 6-3," she said, "and God gave him the biggest, broadest dance shoulders in the world, so when he would do those things with his arms it was just so impressive."

Willi Ninja is featured in Sommer's 2006 documentary Check Your Body at the Door.

William R. Leake was born in Queens New York on April 12, 1961. He began dancing at 7. By the early 1980s he was vogueing in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village and at drag balls throughout Harlem. He prided himself on being a clean, sharp dancer, with swiftly moving arms and hands, and he was deeply inspired by the martial arts ... hence his adopted name, Ninja.

As the "mother" of the House of Ninja ... part dance troupe, part surrogate family ... he became a New York celebrity, known as much for his quick wit and sharp tongue as for his darting limbs.

His ensembles ... a coat made of braided synthetic hair, a suit jacket with a skirt and Doc Marten boots ... also turned heads wherever he went: "SEVERE" is the word.

An androgynous, self-described "butch queen," St. Willi Ninja taught vogueing throughout Europe and Japan, modeled in runway shows for the fashion designers Jean Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler and danced in music videos such as Madonna's 1990 hit "Vogue".

He also taught models how to strut, giving stars like Naomi Campbell pointers early in their careers. Before his death in 2006, he worked with the socialite Paris Hilton, whose red carpet sashay has since become her signature.

In 2004, he opened a modeling agency, EON (Elements of Ninja), but he never gave up dancing, appearing on televisions series like "America's Next Top Model" and "Jimmy Kimmel Live", and dropping in at local clubs.

"If he saw someone doing something on the dance floor that he loved, he'd walk up to them and say, 'Oooh, child, you are fierce,'" his friend Archie Burnett recalled. "That was one of his highest compliments."

In 2003 he was diagnosed with HIV, but he continued working to support his elderly mother, despite the fact that he could not afford medical health care for himself.

His mother was a wheelchair-bound woman suffering from Parkinson's. One of Ninja's best friends, fellow dancer Archie Burnett, said St. Willi was always grateful that his mother had taken him to the ballet and the Apollo when he was a boy, which inspired him to become a dancer. So he was determined to care for her at the expense of his own seriously declining health.

St. Willi Ninja died September 2, 2006, three years after an HIV diagnosis. In the end, the famous dancer had lost his sight and become paralyzed. But that didn't stop him from being fabulous.

"He was weak, but let me tell you, he was running the show," his friend Archie said, recalling how his acolytes did his hair in the hospital room.

He said, "Child, if I gonna die, then I want to look as fabulous as possible."

The Religion of Antinous honors Willi Ninja as a Saint of Antinous and Blessed Prophet of Homoeros for his courage in overcoming racial discrimination and homophobia. While others of his generation turned to drugs or alcohol or dysfunctional violence to assuage their shattered self-esteem ... St. Willi Ninja turned to the dance floor, where he converted the simple act of walking into a high-art form of sheer FABULOUSNESS.

ANTINOUS WELCOMES ALL

AS we celebrate the SACRED GAMES of Antinous, we welcome the hundreds of new subscribers and followers on this blog and on FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM and  TWITTER.

Antinous welcomes you!

Antinous, last of the Classical deities, embraces all others. 

He is the Gay God who embraces all Gays from all cultures and from all nations. 

Just as each gay man is different, His ancient statues depict HIM in the guise of Hermes, Dionysus, Apollo and many others. 

The image on this page by ANDRÉ DURAND shows a new follower adoring Antinous (as Osiris) in the inner-most alcove of the Canopus Pool at Hadrian's Villa.

Antinous welcomes all, regardless of cultural origins or religious beliefs.

There is no record that Antinous has ever fought against or squabbled with any deity. Instead, he prefers to cloak himself in their starry mantle and become one with them.

Antonyus Nikias Subia is the spiritual leader of our religion. Check out the online TEMPLE OF ANTINOUS. 

Some of us, like Antonius, worship Antinous to the exclusion of all other deities. 

But there are lots of Wiccans in this group, as well as Buddhists, Hindus, along with Jews, Christians and many, many fallen Catholics ... plus the odd Chaos "magickian" as well as none-of-the-above individualists.

All ages are represented, from 19 to 99. They are scattered around the world on all continents ... with the possible exception of Antarctica! 

Temples are in the process of being established in Mexico and -Brazil, where there is a huge contingent of Antinous worshipers.

So feel free to introduce yourself to the group and to tell us where you're coming from ... physically and spiritually.

Whether you decide to stay or whether you are "just browsing" and decide to move on elsewhere ... may the love of the Most Great and Good God, the Blessed Boy Antinous, enter your heart and fill it with His love and joy.

May He become one with you, as He has with so many mortals and deities throughout the ages. And may you discover Him in your heart and may you take the spiritual plunge to god-man-sameness," a process Antonius Subia calls HOMOTHEOSIS.