Thursday, March 28, 2024

GATEWAY TO HADES FOUND IN TURKEY
A RIVAL TO GATEWAY TO HADES IN GREECE



AS Hadrian and Antinous traveled across Asia Minor in 129 AD it is possible they saw the legendary Gate to the Underworld.

Italian archaeologists say they have found the historical Gate to the Underworld of the ancient Phrygian city of Hierapolis in modern-day Turkey ... birth land of Antinous

But as always with these things, the Greeks also claim they have found evidence for the existence of a GATEWAY TO HADES IN GREECE.

In ancient times there were several Gateways to Hades ... in Asia Minor ... in Greece ... and in Rome ... but the one at Hierapolis was perhaps most famous of all.

The Turkish discovery was made by a mission headed by Francesco D'Andria from the University of Salento which is in charge of the excavations in the Greco-Roman city. The ruins of the city are near the modern-day Pamukkale in Turkey.

According to Greco-Roman mythology and tradition, the Gate to the Underworld, also known as Pluto's Gate ... Ploutonion in Greek, Plutonium in Latin ... was the entrance point to hell.

Both Cicero and Greek geographer Strabus referred to the Hierapolis Plutonium in their writings, and both had visited it. It was a well-known place of pilgrimage in Antiquity.

Since the excavations commenced in Hierapolis in 1957 ... by an Italian mission under Paolo Verzone from the Turin Polytechnic ... finding the exact location of Plutonium had been the focus of the archaeological digs.

D'Andria told ANSAmed news agency that he had found it by studying the vast literature from the period and reconstructing the route of a thermal spring to a cave, ascertaining that in that area bird corpses were collected.

According to the tales of the travelers in those times, bulls were sacrificed to Pluto before pilgrimages into the Plutonium. The animals were led by priests to the entrance to a cave from which fetid fumes arose, suffocating them to death.

The announcement of the discovery came only weeks after  archaeo-spelunkers announced that a rival Gateway to Hades in southern Greece apparently was a cave dwelling which once housed an entire underground city.

Ironically, the giant cave could have resembled something vaguely similar to the scene depicted by Jan the Elder Bruegel of Aeneas and the Sybil entering Hades (above). 
 

The complex settlement seen in this cave suggests, along with other sites from about the same time, that early prehistoric Europe may have been more complex than previously thought.

The cave, located in southern Greece and discovered in 1958, is called Alepotrypa, which means "foxhole."


The cave in Greece apparently went through a series of occupations and abandonments before it finally collapsed.

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

ANTINOUS IN BYBLOS
By Flamen Antinoalis Antonius Subia


IN the Spring of 130 AD, Hadrian and Antinous visited the city of Byblos, which Greek historians claimed was the oldest city in the world.  The city was dedicated to the Goddess, Ba'alatGebal who was the daughter of El and was equated with Astarte-Venus.

It was through Byblos that the founding legends of the birth of Aphrodite-Venus came to the Greeks.

It was here that the passion story of Adonis took place in the forests of nearby Mt. Lebanon.

Venus had fallen completely in love with him which made her lover Mars jealous, so he disguised himself as a boar and attacked Adonis, gorging him in the groin so that he bled to death in the arms of Venus.

When his spirit descended to the underworld, Venus demanded that he be returned from the underworld and given eternal life, but Persephone also fell in love with him and wanted him to stay with her, so Jupiter had to intervene and allowed Adonis to return each Spring in the form of anemone flowers to be with Venus and then descend again in the Autumn to be with Persephone.

It was during the Spring festival of the death and rebirth of Adonis that Hadrian and Antinous arrived at Byblos to take part in the ancient celebration. The festival included a period of wailing and morning for the death of the beautiful boy, followed by joy and celebration when he symbolically returned from the underworld.

The Adonis river which flows through the Byblos into the sea begins in a cave far up in the mountains where a temple of Venus once stood, it is here that Adonis was said to have been born and to have died.  Every spring the water of the river turns red, which is said to be his blood flowing to the sea, and the hillsides are covered in red anemones, the flower of Adonis.

Antinous was often compared to Adonis and the flower of lotus flower of Antinous was compared to the flower of Adonis as they were both beautiful boys who died and arose again from the underworld through the invincible love which Hadrian and Venus had for them.

We praise the beauty of the reborn gods who’s return is the time of blessings and new beginnings. 

Ave Antinous-Adonis!

ANTONIUS SUBIA

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

WALT WHITMAN
SAINT OF ANTINOUS


ON March 26th the Religion of Antinous takes a moment to celebrate the life of one of our most popular Antinoian prophets ... Saint Walt Whitman.

Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, on the West Hills of Long Island, New York. He was lavished with love by his mother, but treated with stern discipline by his carpenter father.

After only a few years of school, Whitman was pulled out to help with the family earnings. He educated himself, reading all that he could, worked in a printing house, and eventually became a schoolteacher who taught with refreshing openness and excitement, allowing his students to call him by his first name. After years of teaching, he went into journalism, and in time was the editor of several publications.

However, Walt Whitman is said to have experienced a life-transforming epiphany. He left New York, and returned to live for a period with his family, then returned from isolation with Leaves of Grass, one of the most powerful collections of poems in American literature and the first to allude heavily to homosexual love.

It is often said that, during his time in isolation, a religious sense of purpose entered his heart, which he revealed in the Calamus poems.

The aromatic, psychotropic calamus plant with its phallic spadix flower pods was his symbol for homosexuality. The calamus has special meaning for us because Kalamos of Greek myth fell in love with the beautiful youth Karpos. 

Like Antinous, Karpos died by drowning. Grief-stricken Kalamos wept among the reeds at the waterside until he was himself transformed into a reed, whose rustling in the wind is his sigh of woe.

When the American civil war broke out, Walt Whitman was 42 years old and served as a hospital nurse, falling in love with all the soldiers, especially those who died in his arms.

Open expressions of love between men were accepted without issue during the war, and it was when the visionary enlightenment of Walt Whitman became clear to him. He saw that the origin of this love, brotherly, or friendly perhaps, if not more, was the salvation of the human race, and certainly able to heal the divide between North and South.

His final years were spent communicating his message to the new torchbearers, such as John Addington Symonds and Edward Carpenter. After his death, and as Gay Liberation took strength, he was called a Prophet, particularly by the George Cecil Ives and the Order of Chaeronea.

We, adherents of the ancient/modern Religion of Antinous, proclaim him to be St. Walt Whitman the Prophet of Homoeros, and we elevate him to his own stratosphere in our devotion.

He died March 26th, 1892 of tuberculosis compounded by pneumonia. Over 1,000 mourners paid their respects. St. Walt told us how he wanted us to remember him, not as a great poet, but as "the tenderest lover":

You bards of ages hence! when you refer to me, mind not so much my poems,
Nor speak of me that I prophesied of The States, and led them the way of their Glories;
But come, I will take you down underneath this impassive exterior ... I will tell you what to say of me:
Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover,
The friend, the lover's portrait, of whom his friend, his lover, was fondest,
Who was not proud of his songs, but of measureless ocean of love within him ... and freely poured it forth,
Who often walked lonesome walks, thinking of his dear friends, his lovers,
Who pensive, away from one he loved, often lay sleepless and dissatisfied at night,
Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he loved might secretly be indifferent to him,
Whose happiest days were far away, through fields, in woods, on hills, he and another, wandering hand in hand, they twain, apart from other men,
Who oft as he sauntered the streets, curved with his arm the shoulder of his friend  while the arm of his friend rested upon him also.

Monday, March 25, 2024

WE HONOR THE EMPRESS SABINA


THE Empress Sabina Augusta ... Vibia Sabina ... Hadrian's Wife ... died sometime in the year 136, and was deified in the year 138.

The date of her elevation to godliness is not known, but because she was so often compared to the Mother Goddess Ceres-Demeter, we declare her Apotheosis to coincide with the return of spring in Rome, and dedicate our celebration of the Equinox to our mother and Empress, Nova Dea Ceres, Sabina Augusta.

This relief sculpture of her deification, in which she is shown rising up from the cremation flames on the wings of a female Aeon, shows Hadrian enthroned, behind him is a figure that resembles Antoninus Pius.


And reclining on the floor is one who could possibly be Antinous, the resemblance to the youth on the Apotheosis of Antoninus is remarkable.

Sunday, March 24, 2024

ANTINOUS WORSHIPERS IN GLOBAL RITES
TO CELEBRATE THE SACRED BOAR HUNT



TONIGHT, in observance of the Ancient Roman Vernal Equinox, modern-day priests of Antinous around the world conferred via Zoom to carry out rituals commemorating the Sacred Boar Hunt.

The priests from both sides of the Atlantic joyously celebrated the Sacred Boar Hunt of Antinous which was one of the few recorded events in the actual life of Antinous.

This wonderful, mysterious hunt represents the pinnacle of his life ... Antinous at the highest point of his brief mortal existence, full of youth, beauty and vitality ... mounted on horseback in the forest with his lover Hadrian, hunting a boar. 


That night there was sure to have been a big party, Roman style, with delicious boar meat, drinking, music, wild sex, and all the good things in life.

This is what our festival means ... to enjoy life ... to take it all in right now and be glad that we are alive and well.

Take all your pain and disappointment of the past, unfulfilled wishes, regrets, embarrassment, mistakes ... Hopes and dreams that never came true ... Take a moment to set yourself free of their burden, they are of no use to you anymore. 

Instead, look to good things that you have now, the pleasures and beauties that surround you, the friends you hold close, the accomplishments you have earned, enjoy what the gods have given you ... eat, drink, fall in love, indulge in sexual desire ... in all the splendors of being alive, right now at this moment.

For as just like Antinous as he rode, strong, young, beautiful and free, we never know what fate has in store. One year after the Boar Hunting ... Antinous was dead.

I offer my Blessing to All the people who love and believe in Antinous everywhere in the world on this occasion of the Sacred Boar Hunt. 

I ask Antinous to bless us as we begin the transition into this new phase of development. May the Temple of Antinous gather together in great numbers from all over the globe!

May the Meat of the Sacred Boar 
Feed the spirit of Homotheosis
In all our hearts!


Ave Antinous!


~Antonius Nicias Subia


Flamen Antinoalis

Saturday, March 23, 2024

ANTINOUS SAINTS BLESS THE MARRIAGE
OF BRAZIL'S FIRST PRIEST OF ANTINOUS


SAINTS Sergius and Bacchus continue to bless gay nuptials in their roles as patrons of Marriage Equality.

Marriage Equality is legal in Brazil ... and those saints were honored along with Antinous the Gay God at this wedding in Campinas, São Paulo, on 23 March 2013! 

See if you can spot an image of Antinous visible in this photo of the wedding of gay educator-journalist Deco Ribeiro (Brazil's first priest of Antinous) and his beloved Chessler Lohren Beauty.

A giant icon of Saints SERGIUS AND BACCHUS is the backdrop for the altar in the background. 

And also THE TWO LOVERS OF ANTINOOPOLIS are invoked. And it is in the upper corner of their round tondo portrait that you see a small golden image of Antinous.

May these Saints of Antinous watch over Chessler and Deco for all eternity:



Friday, March 22, 2024

ANTINOUS-ATTIS DIES AND IS REBORN
DURING THE CYCLE OF THE EQUINOX



THE cycle of the March Equinox is Sacred to the Great Mother of the Gods, and to her divine lover-son Attis, who dies and is reborn at this time of year.

Persephone returns from the underworld, and the verdure returns to the face of the Earth.

The death of Attis is symbolic of the fruit flowers that appear at this  season and then fall away, making room for the ripening fruit.

It was celebrated in Rome with the introduction of a great pine tree that was carried into the Temple of Magna Mater.

An image of the dead Attis was carried on a bier and hung from the tree which was decorated with purple ribbons and violet flowers.

On the Day of Blood, the priests performed austerities including the  self-castration of new priests, and the bloodletting of the old priests  to the accompaniment of drum and cymbal music.

After the Day of Blood, when Attis was said to have risen again, the festival turned to joy and elation and was known as the Hilaria.

The final part of the sacred days was the day of cleansing, when the image of the Great Mother, a black stone encased in silver, was taken to the river Arno and washed by the priests.


Flamen Antonius Subia says:

"The five-day cycle of the Equinox ... the Mithraic Mysteries and all the other remembrances ... are all contained in the Death and Resurrection of Attis, the beautiful boy, who severed his own testicles and died giving his blood to the bosom of the earth ... but did not die."