SAINT SERGIUS AND SAINT BACCHUS

OCTOBER 7th the Religion of Antinous honors St. Sergius and St. Bacchus, Christian patron saints of male-male love.

They were inseparable officers in the Roman army stationed in Syria during the reign of Emperor Maximian, who was fond of them and honored them repeatedly, which gave rise to jealousy in the court. 

A rival denounced Sergius and Bacchus, accusing them of not venerating the ancient gods of Rome, and of being Christians. When summoned to sacrifice to the genius of the Emperor, as was the Roman custom, Sergius and Bacchus refused.

They were imprisoned and subjected to a long series of tortures aimed at forcing them to sacrifice to the gods. They were stripped of their uniforms and made to walk through the streets wearing the clothing of women, a strange form of humiliation not usually inflicted on Christians, but a sign that their sexuality was being used to mock the saints.

Bacchus was beaten to death, but Sergius proved to be considerably  stronger than any torture that the Pagans could subject him to. When he was on the verge of surrender, and in despair, the spirit of Bacchus appeared to him and said: 

"Why do you grieve and mourn, brother? If I have been taken from you in body, I am still with you in the bond of union — Hurry then, yourself, through beautiful and perfect confession to pursue and obtain me."

Sergius was so strengthened that he could not be compelled to betray his faith, and the pagans chopped off his head.

For their strength and for the valor of their love for one another, and because for so many centuries they have remained the champions of homosexual love and devotion, we honor the Christian Saints Sergius and Bacchus as saints of the Religion of Antinous.

WE RAISE A TOAST TO ANTINOUS AT THE AURA PLACIDUS WINE FESTIVAL

OCTOBER 5th is Aura Placidus, the autumnal feast of Dionysus, deity of liberation and ecstatic transcendence over death as symbolized by divine intoxication. 

Aura Placidus means "gentle breeze" and today is a day to simply enjoy a day of rest. 

For Dionysus, it was a day of rest after the gathering of the grapes and preparing them for fermentation ... and maybe having a taste or two, just to see how it was getting on.

The Aura Placidus was celebrated with singing, dancing and games ... and with much feasting and drinking.

Antinous traditionally has been identified with Dionysus "Twice Born" of mortal woman and divine radiance. 

Antinous/Dionysus reminds you that you are HOMOTHEOSIS ... Gay Man Godliness Becoming the Same in Divine Radiance. 

Today we take a break, sit back, and toast Antinous/Dionysus the divine liberator!

THESE JOKES HAD THEM LAUGHING IN HADRIAN-ERA ROME

EVER HEAR the joke about the astrologer who predicted a sick boy would survive the night and get well? He wanted payment in advance ... just in case! 

An English translation of PHILOGELOS (THE LAUGHTER LOVER) is a collection of jokes dating from the Hadrian Era and gives insights into Roman humor.

Take for example the joke in which a man complains that a slave he has just bought has died.

"By the gods," answers the slave's seller, "that's more than he ever did when he was with me."

Other jokes in the book show that sex, nagging wives and farting have formed the basis of humor for centuries.

One example is: "A misogynist is attending to the burial of his wife, who has just died. When a passerby asks, 'Pardon me, who is it who rests in peace here?', he answers, 'Me, now that I'm rid of her!'."

The 265 jokes in Philogelos are attributed to a pair of jokers called Hierocles and Philagrius. Little is known about them, except that they were more likely to have been the compilers of the jokes than the original writers of the gags.

The jokes have been published in a multimedia online book, which includes video of veteran British stand-up comedian JIM BOWEN performing the jokes for a 21st century audience.

Bowen said: "One or two of them are jokes I've seen in people's acts nowadays, slightly updated. They put in a motor car instead of a chariot."

The translator of the book, William Berg, a US professor of classics, said the Philogelos book was already a later version of jokes dating back to the 1st and 2nd Century AD.

HERE'S A SELECTION:

No. 187: An ill-tempered astrologer cast the horoscope of a sick boy, promised his mother that he would live for a long time, then demanded his fee. "Come back tomorrow and I’ll give it to you then," the worried mother said. "But what happens to my fee if he dies in the night?"

No. 201: A man consults a charlatan soothsayer and asks about the health of his family who live in a distant province. "They are all well, especially your father." "But my father’s been dead for ten years!" "Ah, clearly you do not know your REAL father."

No. 202: Having cast a boy’s horoscope, a charlatan prophet predicted that he would be first a lawyer, then a city prefect, and finally a provincial governor. But the boy died. His mother came back and remonstrated, "My son has died, the one you said would be a lawyer and prefect and governor." "I swear by his memory," responded the prophet, "he would have been all of those things had he lived!"

No. 203: Someone went to a charlatan prophet and inquired if his conniving rascal of a rival would come back from a voyage. The prophet promised that he would die at sea. But the man found out a few days later that his enemy had returned unharmed. "Well," said the prophet, "how shameless can you get? That man even goes so far as to cheat the Fates!"

No. 204: A charlatan prophet cast a client’s horoscope and told him he could never have children. "But I’ve already got seven!" "Then you’d better take good care of them!"

No. 205: A charlatan prophet was captured by the enemy, and confessed his trade. Now it so happened that they were about to fight a battle. "You’ll win it," he promised them, "as long as the enemy don't see the hairs on the back of your heads." (trans. B. Baldwin)

Get it?

IN A FIRST, WE CAN READ WORDS FROM A VESUVIUS-CHARRED PAPYRUS

FOR the first time, words have been read from a burnt, rolled-up scroll buried by Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.

The scrolls of Herculaneum, the only classical library still in existence, were blasted by volcanic gas hotter than 300C and are desperately fragile.

Deep inside one scroll, physicists distinguished the ink from the paper using a 3D X-ray imaging technique sometimes used in breast scans.

They believe that other scrolls could also be deciphered without unrolling.

The work appears in the journal Nature Communications.

The resort town of Herculaneum, sometimes called "the other Pompeii", was similarly buried in ash by Vesuvius. A remarkable library of scrolls was excavated from one of its villas in the 18th Century.

Previous efforts to read them, over many centuries, involved special strategies for unravelling the scrolls as delicately as possible.

Although some unrolled fragments have been read successfully, particularly in recent years with the help of infra-red cameras, such unwinding efforts were eventually abandoned because of how much of the scrolls they destroyed.

Some other efforts to peer inside the rolled-up scrolls using CT scans have revealed the shape of the ancient, coiled layers - but never successfully deciphered their contents.

Now, a team led by Dr Vito Mocella from the National Research Council's Institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems (CNR-IMM) in Naples, Italy, has identified a handful of Greek letters within a rolled-up scroll for the very first time.

The key to the discovery was a technique called "X-ray phase-contrast tomography", most commonly used in medicine.

In fact, when Dr Mocella's team placed one of the scrolls - carefully - in the path of a very bright X-ray beam from the synchrotron, it was bumps on the paper rather than chemicals in the ink that yielded the long-hidden letters.

"So the letters are there in relief, because the ink is still on the top."

It was this extra thickness - just a tenth of a millimetre - that revealed the strokes of the letters, even after volcanic incineration and two millennia underground.

The work was time-consuming and involved a lot of guesswork, particularly because the layers of paper were not just rolled, but squashed and mangled by their encounter with Vesuvius.

Furthermore, the grid of papyrus fibres within the paper posed complications, because it disguised many of the letters' vertical and horizontal strokes. For this reason, letters with curved lines were easier to pick out.

"I don't think the technique is perfect," said Dr Mocella, who is already planning more experiments to improve it.

BLESSED ORPHEUS THE GOD

 

"Three times the sun had ended the year, in watery Pisces, and Orpheus had abstained from the love of women, either because things ended badly for him, or because he had sworn to do so. 

"Yet, many felt a desire to be joined with the poet, and many grieved at rejection. 

"Indeed, he was the first of the Thracian people to transfer his love to young boys, and enjoy their brief springtime, and early flowering, this side of manhood." 

- Ovid: the Metamorphoses 

~SVBIA

DISCOVER THE MYSTERIES OF ANTINOUS IN YOUR DAILY LIFE NOW

IF YOU WANT a clue to the Antinous Mystery Teachings, just check out French director Marcel Camus' unforgettable film Orfeu Negro, which is a rendition of the Orphic Mysteries in the setting of 1950s Rio de Janeiro during Mardi Gras, or Carnival. 

It is based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Orfeu is a trolley-car motorman and gifted guitarist. Amid the joyous frenzy of Rio's Carnival, he becomes enthralled with the beautiful, doomed Eurydice. 

Against a backdrop of Rio's favelas (shanty-town ghettos on the hills), the lovers sway in a never-ending rhythmic samba among the crowds. But Eurydice is stalked by a man in a skeleton costume. 

Eventually, Orfeu finds her body in the morgue. In the house of the dead, voodoo rites are performed to bring her back to life. But impatient Orfeu looks upon her too soon ... and the spell is broken. 

In the end, bearing her body in his arms, he falls to his death from a cliff. His guitar, standing in for the lyre of Orpheus, is taken up by one of the street urchins who follow him as a sort of Greek chorus.

The movie is the stuff of pure myth. The movie shows a Rio which no longer exists. In fact, it shows a Rio that never existed. The movie was based on a highly political stage play which satirically condemned the poverty of the favelas. 

When the movie came out, Brazilians criticized it for portraying a Frenchman's romanticized TechniColor tourist vision of Rio.

So what?

That's what myths are about. Myths don't tell the plain old every-day truth that we see on the streets. Myths tell Sacred Truths that exist within our hearts and our souls.

Hadrian and Antinous had both been initiated into the Orphic Mysteries. That is the darker aspect -- the Antinous Mystery Teaching -- which was brought to the screen in Orfeu Negro. Mardi Gras (Carnival) ultimately is a Masque of Love and Death. 

The frivolities are fleeting. Death will catch up with each of us. But a few mortals are privileged -- like Hadrian and Antinous -- to have been initiated into the Mysteries which enable a mortal to cheat death. And that is why we put on gay costumes and dance until we drop.

Most mortals are dancing just because it's party time. But a few mortals are dancing because they have been initiated into the Mysteries of Life and Death. Initiation into the Orphic Mysteries promised advantages in the afterlife. Hadrian and Antinous were well-versed in both Mystery Schools.

But, like Orpheus in the Underworld, poor grieving Hadrian must have known as we wept over his lost boy that the Mysteries not only offer a promise of advantages in the afterlife. The Mysteries of Antinous are lived on a daily basis.

We face a dark demon every day, if not several dark and deathly demons. Physical death is only one of those demons. There are many other forms of death, and the Mysteries of Antinous help us to overcome them on a daily basis.

Bringing Light out of Darkness is a spiritual miracle each of us faces every day. Rejuvenating our spiritual life out of the setbacks and trials of mortality is a task we face every day of our lives, and not just at the hour of our death.

The Afterlife is Now! And THAT is the ultimate Mystery Teaching. The Mysteries of Antinous are not about the Afterlife. They are about your Spiritual Life on an everyday basis.

That's why we dance and sing till we drop ... and never look back! When we dance the Masque of Love and Death, then our lives become imbued with the stuff Sacred Myths are made of ....

ANTINOUS AND THE ORPHIC MYSTERIES

ON THIS DAY, October 1st, the beginning of the holy month of the Sacred Nights of Antinous, we venerate Orpheus. 

Antinous our God was initiated into the cult of Orpheus so that his teachings became part of the Religion of Antinous, and therefore we receive the salvation that Orpheus accomplished through our god Antinous, the New Dionysus.

It is on this date that the Religion of Antinous remembers the blessed heritage of The Orphic Mysteries, into which Hadrian and Antinous were both initiated.  

The Orphic Mysteries teach that human souls are divine and immortal but doomed to live (for a period) in a "grievous circle" of successive bodily existences through reincarnation. 

This belief that each of us is divine and immortal — Man-Godliness-Becoming-One — is the mystery which Flamen Antinoalis Antonius Subia calls HOMOTHEOSIS. 

By welcoming this divine force instead of rejecting it, we take the first step away from our instinctive animalistic fearful self on the long road to becoming a Shining One of Heaven.

Hadrian and Antinous must have known by heart the story of Orpheus in the Underworld: Orpheus was the son of Apollo and the muse Calliope, and from his father he received the Lyre and the gift of music. 

So powerful was the music of Orpheus that he could tame the hearts of beasts and birds and his song enchanted even the trees and stones.

He was one of the Argonauts who, together with Jason, retrieved the Golden Fleece. Returning from the journey, he married Euridice, but the marriage was short-lived because while fleeing the Shepherd God Aristaios (ironically also often depicted as a form of Antinous in ancient times), who was attempting to rape her, she was bitten by a snake hidden in the grass and died. 

Orpheus was so overwhelmed with grief that he used his powers of enchantment to travel to the underworld to bring back his wife.

His music soothed the three-headed dog, and gained his entry into the dark hall of Hades and Persephone. There he sang to the rulers of the underworld, and his song touched the cold heart of the Lady of Death. Persephone decreed that he could lead his wife out of hell provided that he did not turn to see her following.

Orpheus, singing as he went, very nearly succeeded, but at the last moment, at the very gate of darkness, he turned and saw his wife vanish back into oblivion.

Flamen Antinoalis Antonius Subia tells the rest of the story, and why it is important to us:

From that moment Orpheus was a changed man, he became a priest of Dionysus, and gave himself over to intoxication, completely shunning the company of women, and separating himself from the customs of the world. Orpheus is said to have been the first to sanctify homosexuality as an indulgence that frees the soul from  continued reincarnation through the procreation of the flesh. His journey through the underworld gave him a deep detestation of death that he developed into a new philosophy. Orpheus taught that we were all children of the fallen star Dionysus-Zagreus, who had been torn to pieces by the Titans and consumed by them so that his light was mingled throughout their flesh. Zeus struck the Titans down with his lightning and from their ashes arose mankind, fashioned by Prometheus.
So that we will never suffer the fate of passing into the realm of Hades, Orpheus taught that we must restrain our titanic nature and restore the purity of our godliness, we must become Bachkoi, which is that we must become Dionysus again. A pure life, free from murder, including blood sacrifice and the eating of meat is required, and we must undergo initiation into the blessed rites which he inaugurated.
Although part of the religion of Dionysus, the Orphic cult was limited to men. Orpheus wrote volumes of sacred poems that comprised the heart of his new religion. The Orphic cult was a combination of the freedom and indulgence of Dionysus, tempered with the high-minded nobility of Apollo.The Orphics denied the world and set their minds on the inner light of Dionysus so as to liberate the soul from imprisonment within the flesh.

You can see the parallels between the story of Orpheus and Eurydice and the true-life story of Hadrian and Antinous. The emperor mourned and wept and sought to bring his Beloved Boy back to the world of the living. 

Hadrian's route through the Underworld was of a purely spiritual nature. He recognized that Antinous had always been Divine — a fact which is a tenet of The Orphic Mysteries. He decided to establish a religion which would enable the followers of Antinous to become aware of their own Divine Nature and to become one with ANTINOUS THE GAY GOD.

It is indeed ironic that this beautiful religion was born out of Hadrian's inconsolable grief. But the divine regenerative sacred force of this phenomenon is the secret behind the Tarot Trump called Death.

Death occurs in so many forms. We experience Death in some form every day of our lives. Loss of job. Loss of a lover. Loss of a friendship. Loss of money or status. Loss of confidence in ourselves ....

Your grief can be the powerful Gnosis which makes you remember that you are the musician. You are the dancer. You are that which has died and entered the Underworld. You are also that which rises re-born bright and shining like the dawn sunrise.

It is the process (because it is a process and not a method) which Flamen Antinoalis Antonius Subia calls HOMOTHEOSIS ... "Gay-Man-God-Becoming-the-Same-As-Gay-Man-God."