The Lives of the Saints, Martyrs, Exemplars and Prophets of ANTINOUS the GAY GOD
Updated for Each Liturgical Feast Day
By
Antonyus Subia and Hernestus Gill
Priests of Antinous
JANUARY 1st
The Lives of the Saints, Martyrs, Exemplars and Prophets of ANTINOUS the GAY GOD
Updated for Each Liturgical Feast Day
By
Antonyus Subia and Hernestus Gill
Priests of Antinous
On January 1st the Religion of Antinous commemorates the moment the Egyptians called SEP TEPY, the moment of endings and origins, the moment that is not a moment and is every moment, the place that is no place and is every place.
The God Janus, doubled-faced, observes the passage of the common year. Hadrian mourns the tragic death of his Beloved Antinous, who died in October of the year which has now passed. The Prince of Flowers is dead, and the New God Antinous is rising, just as the STAR OF ANTINOUS will rise in the heavens during the year to come.
Hadrian's Beloved Antinous resides in SEP TEPY, the inner-most celestial sphere, where he is filled with the Semen of the First God which infuses him with godhood. ANTINOUS THE GAY GOD emerges from that moment which is no/all moments and from that place which is no/all places, and he strides forth as one of the Imperishables of heaven.
The Religion of Antinous recognizes the common calendar and uses the date as a reckoning that pertains only to our place in time and a space within the earthly sphere.
We know that, though our bodies are of Earth, our spirit is of the Heavens, and through the conquest of Antinous over the 72 Archons our spirit is set free.
Father Janus opens the way for the passage of Antinous through the outer limit of the celestial sphere. Janus is the mouth of the serpent that bites its tail, and we observe that as the common year is born, so the liberation of Antinous from our cosmos nears completion, with only eleven heavenly spirits standing before him.
This is the Holy Day of The Gate, the tool of the priesthood of Religion of Antinous. We wash our sacred stones and seek new auguries for the year.
On January 10th the Religion of Antinous pays respect to the untold hundreds of thousands of homosexuals who have died during the Gay Burning Times which started with the Medieval Inquisition and which, in a sense, continue to this day -- in lands where homosexuality is still punishable by death.
The Heretics of the Middle Ages were the last defenders of the Gnosis, against the authority of the Catholic Church. Like the Gnostic Fathers before them, they advocated homosexuality as a sacred form of love.
When the Order of Knights Templar was disbanded in 1310, the inquisitors discovered (under torture) that Heresy, Homosexuality and Devil Worship were interrelated. They represented a united Satanic assault on the power of the Church and the stability of Christian Civilization.
Heresy infected the soul by undermining faith, Witchcraft bred hatred in the form of hexing. But Homosexuality was the vilest of the three because it infected Love, turning a man from his natural affection for a wife, and causing him to waste his seed in lecherous desire.
The homosexual was a danger because he was a threat to the perpetuation of the family and of the human race. He fostered chaos, and weakened the already tenuous position of a society hemmed in by Islam, infected with Plague, and torn apart by War.
The Bible warned that any city guilty of the crime of Sodomy would be destroyed by the fire of heaven. So the solution of the Church, in order to avert god's wrath, was to burn the Sodomites.
The Gay Burning Times lasted six hundred years, seven hundred including the Nazi Holocaust, which was based on the same principles.
In all, it was a prolongued period of torture, murder and all-out war against our kind, lasting much longer than the Inquisitions against Heresy and Witchcraft combined. Indeed, in a sense it even continues to this day, when homosexuality is illegal in many parts of the world, and it is punishable by death in seven nations.
The most intense period of burning was the 1600s through late 1700s in France and England, when hundreds of thousands were burned at the stake.
The word "Faggot" which means fire-log is said to have derived from the practice of piling the Sodomites upon the pyre, at the feet of the Heretics, because a Sodomite was not worthy to burn standing up.
We who believe in Antinous the Gay God, and in the sanctity of Homosexuality, solemnly remember the cruel death of the Sodomites who burned for us. Antinous was with them, he burned by their side.
On this day, Antinous the Gay God redeems the souls of all those who were burned, tortured, strangled, beheaded, or otherwise executed and condemned to Hell by the Church. That we may never forget the human sacrifice that was inflicted on our brothers and sisters, we honor the memory of the Heroic Sodomites who, knowing that our form of Love was punishable by death, Loved as Homosexuals nevertheless, and almost willingly gave themselves to be Burned at the Stake.
We pray that they will bless us with their fire in our own struggle for liberation.
On January 13th the Religion of Antinous celebrates the birthday of Aelius Caesar.
Lucius Ceionius Commodus Verus was born on January 13th, 101, most likely in Rome. He was from an old wealthy Etruscan family. His grandfather, after whom he had been named, had been a Consul and his father a Senator.
Lucius Ceionius was beautiful and elegant, well educated, and was given over to a life of pleasure and voluptuousness.
He was a teenager when Hadrian came to power in 117, and his flamboyant and attractive character was a compliment to his physical beauty that soon gained the attention of the new Emperor.
It is believed that Hadrian and Lucius were lovers during the early years of Hadrian's reign, perhaps for the period of six years prior to Antinous. When Hadrian met Antinous in the year 123, Lucius was 22 years old, and in keeping with the Greek philosophy of pederastic love, it is very likely that their love affair had transformed into what would become a life-long friendship between the Emperor and his now matured Lucius.
Antinous entered Hadrian's heart just as Lucius was moving on to his responsibilities as a patrician citizen of Rome.
While Hadrian was courting the young Antinous, Lucius married Domitia Lucilla and had three children by her, one of which was the later Emperor known as Lucius Verus, who is often confused with his father.
After the Death of Antinous, as Hadrian began to grow ill, his attention turned again to his still beloved Lucius, and on August 10, 136, Hadrian surprised the world by adopting Lucius and declaring him to be his successor.
Suspicions abounded, as the eccentric and delicate character of Lucius hardly seemed appropriate to rule the Empire after such a man as Hadrian.
But there must have been more to Lucius than history has preserved. He assumed the name Aelius Caesar, and was sent to govern Pannonia along the Danube, but became ill and returned to Rome in the winter of 137, where he died on January 1st.
He is remembered and adored as a god, as the brother of Antinous, the twin and second love of Hadrian. We call him the Prince of Flowers.
On January 20th the Religion of Antinous honors SAINT SEBASTIAN who, despite being a Christian martyr, has been identified by homosexuals of all beliefs over the centuries as a symbol of our persecution and suffering.
Sebastian was an officer in the Imperial Guard of Emperor Diocletian, and he was a Christian.
In 302 A.D. Diocletian subjected the Christians to a brutal persecution, and it was during this period that Sebastian was "outed" to the Emperor as a practicing Christian.
When asked to sacrifice before a pagan altar, Sebastian refused and was sentenced to death. He was tied to a column before Mauritanian archers, who shot him with arrows...but to no effect.
Sebastian was strengthened by his faith, and did not die. He was finally clubbed to death in front of Emperor.
Homosexuals over the centuries have looked to Sebastian as a patron saint. His manner of death, which is like an affliction of Eros, and the sight of the beautiful young soldier plumed with arrows, has moved our hearts over the ages more than all other Christian saints.
In the Middle Ages, he was said to have power over the plague. And during the Black Death, his popularity grew among the penitent flagellants.
His image was a favorite subject of homosexual artists during the Renaissance who were fascinated by the erotic charge of his death. During the early 19th Century he was taken up as the model for homosexual suffering and persecution, some writers even claiming that he was the young lover of Diocletian and that his martyrdom had a jealous, sexual subtext.
In our time, the power of St. Sebastian over the Plague has made him a spiritual force in the fight against AIDS. And so we recognize his sanctity as the patron saint of homosexuals and as a protector from our modern plague. We consecrate him to the Religion of Antinous and offer our own quivering-hearts as a target for his thousand arrows of love.
On January 22nd the Religion of Antinous commemorates the brief, shining life of Saint Heath Ledger, the gifted actor whose on-screen portrayals inspired millions of gay people and whose off-screen life paralleled so many more. Not gay himself, Saint Heath nonetheless is a gay icon, like Saint Judy Garland and others.
Saint Heath died on this day in 2008 under mysterious circumstances after taking anti-depressants and sleeping pills at the age of 28. His body was found lying across the bed of his Manhattan apartment. The manner of his death bore eery parallels to the death of English singer/songwriter Nick Drake, who is also a Saint of Antinous.
Best known for his Oscar-nominated role as a gay cowpoke in "Brokeback Mountain", the acclaimed Australian-born actor also played The Joker in the blockbuster "The Dark Knight", for which role he posthumously was awarded a Golden Globe Award for best supporting actor. On the first anniversary of his death, he posthumously won an Academy Award as best supporting actor for his role as the psychopathic criminal mastermind The Joker.
No one will ever know why Saint Heath overdosed on anti-depressants, as had his idol Nick Drake. No one will ever know why Saint River Phoenix took a fatal cocktail of booze and alcohol, just as no one will ever know why Saint Richey Edwards jumped off a bridge to his death (if he did), and no one will know why so many talented and overly sensitive young men meet death so tragically and so young.
Just as no one knows for sure what happened to Antinous. Thus they are all Saints of Antinous.
Shortly before his death, Heath Ledger made a video tribute to Nick Drake (photo right), the ambisexual English singer/songwriter who died in 1974 under almost identical circumstances to Saint Heath.
Saying he planned to make a movie about Saint Nick, Heath appeared in a self-made video (about drowning) to the tune of Nick Drake's song Black-Eyed Dog. It was the last song that Nick is believed to have recorded before he died under mysterious circumstances after taking anti-depressants and sleeping pills at the age of 26. His body was found lying across his bed.
The black-eyed dog is thought to be a reference to Winston Churchill's famous "little black dog." Throughout his life Churchill was shadowed by violent mood swings, fits of depression and periods of emotional doubt. He felt that he was followed by this unpredictable darkness and uncertainty. He called it his "little black dog."
Heath seems to have been very well acquainted with the "little black dog" of depression, the black demon which nips at the heels of so many sensitive young souls who cannot find their way in this harsh world.
And thus Antinous is the God of Lost Boys. He knows their suffering. He knows how it is to stand on the shore at the twilight of the world, with one foot on dry land and the other foot in the murky depths of oblivion — and he understands how a beautiful soul can slip off into that oblivion.
Antinous is the God of these very sweet, shy, sensitive and talented artists, young men who agonize over their shortcomings and who can only cope with the harsh realities of showbiz by taking tablets with unpronounceable names in private.
Saint Heath represents so many young men who seek what Nick Drake called the fruit of the tree of fame. "Fame is but a fruit tree, so very unsound", Nick sings in a song which Heath loved. It is a song about sensitive souls who reach for the fruit of fame and then, when it is within their grasp, they discover that its taste is very bitter.
Our Father Jupiter descended upon the slopes of Mt. Ida in the form of an eagle and carried away Ganymede, the beautiful young prince of Troy, ravaging him, and elevating him to live among the immortals.
At the table of the Olympian gods, Jupiter installed his Ganymede as the divine cupbearer who pours out nectar-wine from the cup of eternal life.
This love affair between the Phrygian prince and the Father of the Gods is a divine parallel of the love between Antinous and Hadrian.
Ganymede is the emblem of the coming Age of Aquarius, when peace and love will rule the hearts of all men.
On this day, the beginning of the sign of Aquarius, we observe the deification of Antinous as having made union with the Thunderbird-Phoenix-Eagle, and having been elevated to reign among the immortals in the manner of Ganymede. And we pray for the hastening of the coming age.
On January 23rd the Religion of Antinous honors the first of the many Christian Martyrs of Antinoe, also known as Antinoopolis. The first of the Egyptian martyrs with whose name and acts we are acquainted was Asclas of Antinoopolis.
This part of Egypt, near the nome sacred to Anubis, has always been a hotbed of religious fervor ever since the days when the "heretic pharaoh" Akhenaten built his capital city here, a scant 20 kms from our Sacred City of Antinoopolis. Christians and Jews constituted a major portion of the population of Antinopoolis. After all, the city was the flower of Greek civilization deep in the desert of the Thebaid, and it was a haven for dispossessed and exiled thinkers and theological revolutionaries.
There was a period of time in which Antinoopolis fell under the sway of the fear and violence that had swept across the world. The Christian faith was suffering one of the bloodiest persecutions in its history. Diocletian had sought to curb the rising tide of Christianity with brutal violence. He issued decrees that all citizens should be compelled to demonstrate their piety to the Roman Gods by offering sacrifice. It was a direct challenge. Any person who refused was not only insulting the Gods of Rome, but showing disloyalty to the Emperor and to Rome herself.
Such treason was punishable by death. This was a legal way to persecute Christianity, it was not an attack on the Christian doctrine, or its practices, but was an unavoidable line that no Christian would cross.
It is interesting to note that though many of the Christians were executed by beheading or by being shot through with arrows, some were executed by being drowned in the Nile. This similarity between their death and the death of Antinous must have been very moving to the Ancient Priests of Antinous. And it is also interesting that the authorities were not sensitive to the nature of this form of execution in the Sacred City of a boy who had become a god simply by drowning in the Nile.
The first was Asclas, who was arrested and tortured for his faith by order of Arrian, the governor of Antinoopolis who himself would later convert to Christianity. While Asclas was being tortured in prison by hot irons which left his flesh hanging down in strips, Arrian had reason to cross the River Nile to go to Hermopolis on government business.
Antinoopolis lies on the east bank of the Nile (depicted at left in its heyday), and Hermopolis (Sacred City of Hermes) is located diagonally across from Antinoopolis on the west bank of the Nile. But inexplicably, Arrian found he was absolutely unable to leave the water's edge.
Asclas sent word that the governor would never be able to cross the river until he acknowledged Christ in writing. Arrian wrote out the statement, and was promptly able to leave the river bank. He crossed the Nile, and the moment he was on the other side, he ordered that Asclas be thrown into the Nile with a stone tied around his neck, whereupon he drowned.
This story, while odd-sounding to us today, was very clear to Egyptians. Hermopolis is the Sacred City of Hermes/Anubis, or Hermanubis.
This remarkable deity, who lives on in Christianity as St. Christopher, is responsible for conveying souls across the Celestial Nile after death. People in Antinoopolis worshipped both Antinous and Hermanubis.
The miracle of St. Asclan is meant to show that the Christian god is the equal of Hermanubis. Within a few generations, Hermanubis "morphed" into Christopher who, in this early Coptic mural at right, still has canine features. Next time you see a plastic St. Christopher statuette on a taxi dashboard, remember that it is actually Anubis without his doggy ears. He's not carrying the baby Jesus on his shoulders. He's carrying the Boy God Antinous over the celestial Nile to eternal divinity.
Against that background of intermingling spiritual beliefs, the Religion of Antinous acknowledges the suffering of St. Asclas and of all the Christian Martyrs of Antinoopolis out of our Love for Antinous in whose Sacred City they died. Though their faith was in Christ and not in Antinous, we nevertheless honor them and glorify them because they were Antinoopolitans, people of Antinous. We ask their forgiveness for the murder and persecution of the Christian Martyrs and in their memory ask that we may be free from intolerance and never again partake in the crime of the ancient citizens of Antinoopolis.
The image above left is not Asclas, but is a burial painting of a person whose mummy was buried in the desert of the Fayoum in Egypt, which is the region of Antinoopolis. It is presented here as a contemporary image of what St. Asclas may have looked like.
On January 24th the Religion of Antinous celebrates the Birth of the Divine Hadrian.
Publius Aelius Hadrianus was born on this day either in Italica, Spain, or else in Rome, in the year 76.
His father was Publius Aelius Afer, his mother was Domitia Paulina. His uncle was the Emperor Trajan who had been adopted by Nerva.
Trajan employed Hadrian as a general in his conquests across the Danube, where Hadrian proved his military prowess, and gained the love and devotion of the Legions.
It is said that the relationship between Hadrian and his uncle was strained, and they are even known to have quarreled over beautiful boys. But Hadrian was very close to the Emperess Plotina, whose intellectual depth he preferred to the military harshness of Trajan.
During the unsuccessful campaign against the Parthians, in modern day Iraq, Trajan suddenly fell ill and died. Plotina is said to have insured that Hadrian be his successor, allegedly even forging the documents of adoption.
The New Emperor Hadrian inherited the largest Empire that the world had ever known, the borders of Rome had reached their greatest extent.
Hadrian is the Father of the Antonines, the bringer of the Golden age of Rome. He put an end military expansion of the Empire and turned instead to improving the interior.
He is the prime deity of the imperial cult as recognized by the Religion of Antionous. He is the representative of Zeus on Earth, emblem of the ruler of the cosmos, the great eagle. Hadrian is the leader of the Archons, the bringer of order out of chaos, founder of our religion.
He is the divine lover of Antinous, our model and God.
In Nazi Germany, on January 28th, 1935, the Ministry of Justice revived and amended "Paragraph 175," the old Prussian statute created in 1871 that made Homosexuality a crime punishable by imprisonment.
The law was increased in severity and became the legal basis for the systematic persecution of male Homosexuals. The Nazis believed that homosexuality endangered to the purity of the German people, that gay men corrupted the youth, preventing them from living normal married lives, and were therefore a threat to the race.
Homosexuality was denounced as an unnatural lust, and accused of being intrinsically Un-German, a disease imported by Jews and supported by Communists, the enemy of the Aryan People. Imprisonment and sterilization were the initial penalties, but Heinrich Himmler revealed his true design when he said that the "extermination of degenerates" was in keeping with ancient Nordic principles — an interesting idea considering that many of the Dying-Boy-Gods, to whom we compare Antinous, were killed as ritual human sacrifices.
Men were arrested and sent to the concentration camps by the tens of thousands. They were distinguished by the sign of the pink triangle, and subjected to extreme conditions of abuse. The Men of the Pink Triangle were beaten regularly, subjected to hard labor, deprived of food and exposed to the elements.
They were abused by the Nazi guards and by other prisoners alike because everyone considered homosexuality the lowest of low, a sin and an aberration, even the homosexuals themselves.
An estimated 60,000 men were legally sentenced under "Paragraph 175," nearly all of them died, and this number only includes those documented in Germany. The number of unrecorded homosexuals, and those outside of German is impossible to know, but may be twice as many.
The Men of the Pink Triangles were so successfully persecuted that even after the Nazi defeat, Paragraph 175 remained law, and many gay inmates were sent to regular prison to complete their sentences. It was not until 1969 that the law was finally repealed.
We sorrowfully remember the legions of Men of the Pink Triangles who died cruel and vicisous deaths under the Nazis. We remember the evil that was perpetrated with the blessing of "Paragraph 175." These men are our Martyrs, our Holocaust, our Guardian Saints, they suffered so that we would be Free. We will never forget their painful and miserable deaths, and we pray to Antinous the God of Homosexuality to watch over their immortal souls and give them rest.
On this day we remember the horrors that were raised against us through the Amendment of "Paragraph 175."
On January 31st the Religion of Antinous celebrates the life of Saint Derek Jarman.
St. Derek, born on this day in 1942, created eleven extraordinary feature films — including Sebastiane, Jubilee, The Tempest, Caravaggio, The Last of England, and Edward II — and over three dozen shorts.
This multi-talented artist is also acclaimed for his painting (several major exhibits), stage and film design (for director Ken Russell and for a glorious Pet Shop Boys concert tour), gay and human rights activism, literature (memoirs, social criticism, poetry), and, on a serene note, his exquisite gardens full of "found" art.
Most gay men have seen Sebastiane which, when it came out more than 30 years ago, was the first British film to feature positive images of gay sexuality, not to mention the first film entirely in Latin.
Edward II raised eyebrows among critics for its upfront depiction of the brutal assassination of England's openly gay monarch by means of rectal assault.
The exquisitely beautiful Caravaggio is Saint Derek's best-known film (excerpt below).
We Antinoians remember Saint Derek for his art and we honor him as well for his boundless courage. His death from AIDS was cruelly slow and agonizing. And yet, as AIDS robbed him of his mobility and even of his eyesight, he turned the tables on Death and Dying by turning Death and Dying into an art form. His last feature-length film, Blue, consists of a single shot of saturated blue color filling the screen as Derek talks about his "vision" of life and art. How very typical of Derek Jarman. Thumbing his nose at fate right up to the end. A dying man who is blind and yet who talks about his vision.
The light of his eyes faded until all he saw was the darkness where the Night Terrors feed on fear and doubt. And what did Derek do? He turned the darkness into vibrant color. He turned his fear and his worries into artistic energy. The dramatic lighting and brilliant colors of his films were so very dramatic and brilliant because they were always, always set against the inky darkness.
That is why we consecrate Derek Jarman a Saint of Antinous. Just like Saint Caravaggio, also one of our Blessed Saints, Martyrs and Exemplars, his "vision" lay in turning the Darkness into Light and Color. He died February 19, 1994.
