ANTINOUS the God
The Last God of Rome
Antinous fell into the Nile, beneath the swirling waves, but when his body was pulled from the water…a God emerged. Antinous is our God, he has accomplished the salvation of all lovers of his beauty. There is no question that for us, he was elevated to reign among the immortals. Look above and you will find him with his loins swathed in the light of the Milky Way, with the never-setting stars, in the presence and in the fullness of Unbegotten Love.
On the 28th of October, in the year 130 of this era, the gilded barge of the Imperial court of Hadrian came to the sacred bend in the river Nile where Antinous fell, and became star-infused. Green-skinned Osiris embraced him below the current, and opened his pomgranate mouth to the black muddy water that had once rained down over the mountains of the moon, freeing the flood from its embankment.
For three days Hadrian searched in a panic among the reeds and channels, leading dog-headed priests. His world turned vague and destitute, his desperation was that of Isis asking children if they had seen the body of the beloved pass over the water. Death called out across the desert, and the jackals, the scavenging hounds, were the first to hear its voice, coming as if from nowhere. Anubis led his morbid priests to the perfect body of Antinous, to feed upon it and carry it away to the underworld.
The Egyptian priests of Hadrian's court were the first to know that Antinous had become a God as they intoned the chants of deification that called Antinous back from his journey into darkness where he conquered Death, and was lifted up by the thundering feathers of the flaming eagle.
On the third day, Hadrian came upon the body of Antinous on the riverbank, his head resting on the sand, his feet floating among the red lotus flowers. In the Roman sacerdotal fashion, Hadrian covered his head, and blessed the shore where he had found his beloved, before daring to touch the departed flower of the new god. Surrounded by the beautiful youths of the court, the bearded priests, the steel covered guards, the shaved scribes, the questioning philosophers, the distant poets, the necromancers and the somber Imperial ladies... Hadrian chanted,
"Antinous Mortuos Est."
The ivory chest and dark heavy curls, the pomegranate mouth, the grace of His limbs, the serenity of his voice, even the distance of His eyes had turned to cold stone, growing ever more pale and other-worldly. The Classic beauty of the true Antinous, the exact perfection of His face, and the distinguished ripples of His hair were given over to the Priests of Anubis for eternal preservation. The macabre cruelties of mummification were inflicted on the smooth, white corpse of Antinous, forever desiccating His beatitude, while making it forver imperishable.
As Persephone, Antinous was led down to the embrace of the Lord of the City of the Dead, through gates of Adamantine, over roads paved with tear-soaked stones. Bloodstained Anubis escorted Him through the valleys of oblivion and torment, to the place of Judgment, where the denizens of earthly fate weigh the heart of the once living.
But the beauty of Antinous was radiance like sunlight in the underworld. The shades vanished in His brilliance, and the magistrates of reincarnation fled with their scales, before He could destroy them forever. The vine of eternal sleep shriveled at His touch. His illuminated face caused even the Lords of Corruption to tremble and weep. In darkness Antinous came forth by day, in silence He spoke, in cold, His living-fire broke forth. The Unknown Father swept his wing over the flames of Antinous and brushed away the clouds of grayed oblivion that gathered around. His blessed feet caused the stones of Tartarus to shake beneath his steps, as Anubis led the Adonis of the Underworld, resplendid in the glory of His beauty, into the throne room of the Most Low.
But Antinous was not just a reevaluation of the old gods. Though compared to many various deities, his own identity was never lost. He was a new unprecedented God. The majority of his statues portray him without any divine attributes at all. He stands completely naked and unadorned. His body alone was his divinity, he was the perfect youth, the perfect beauty that all men love and adore. Though infused with deeper mysteries, the bare surface of his faith was the love of his naked skin, purely carnal, and worldly. Antinous first showed his followers how to love the body, our vessel in this world. In this message was contained the hope and Glory of Hadrian's reign. That this world is just and good, and beautiful. That all men have the right to live in it in peace and splendor. That mankind is a brotherhood, living on and united by the Great Mother, the Earth, and the Roman Empire, beneath a Universal pantheon of Gods. As Rome decayed, so too did Hadrian's dream. But now, as the tide of Christianity slowly subsides, we find these same ideals rising from the sand.
A sacred city was built in the desert on the very bank where Antinous drowned. At the center of the city, his most splendid Temple was built, and his most solemn rituals observed. The priests must have been Homosexuals, only we can have been so deeply drawn to his message. Only we would have reason to devote our lives to his service, and the sustenance of his name. He was held sacred by those subtle admirers of the beautiful form of male human flesh. His beauty was the absolute desire and motivation of his followers. They wanted only to follow him to the stars, to sit beside him on his celestial boat for eternity. His face, the mysterious penetration of his eyes, became a fixation. The mysterious penetration of his eyes became a place where people were transformed into mirrors, into which he gazed, opening up the doors of infinity. Much as though two mirrors were held before each other and the observer stood perfectly in the middle, becoming the observed.
Antinous was given a star in the heavens. Perhaps as the historian Dio Cassius says, a new star appeared, a super nova, within the constellation Aquila, which the court astrologers took to be the soul of Antinous. New lines were drawn between already famous stars in the arms of the Eagle. The meaning of the star is clear, Antinous had been taken up, body and soul, into the heavens to serve at the table of the most high. Pouring out wine to the immortals. Antinous was the new Ganymede.
Pancrates wrote an Epic poem found buried in the sand along with thousands of other papyrus fragments, the battered and deteriorated poem by Pancrates was used as a bottle stopper by its last owner. Only a small part survives. In sumptuous language, it tells of the ritual Lion hunt in the desert of Libya. Antinous, in his fullest, and most vigorous manhood, rides close to the Emperor. Together they corner the beast, Hadrian holds back his horse, letting Antinous move against it with the dogs. He spears the lion but not mortally, so that it rushes upon him in a fury. The strength and skill of Hadrian intervene at the moment of crisis, killing the lion by a careful blow. From the blood, pouring from the neck of the lion, Pancrates tells us that rose-colored lotuses sprouted. Thus Antinous acquired a flower, preserved from death, by the strength of Hadrian, only for a moment out of time. Wreathes of the red lotus were called Antinoeios in his memory.
But the practice of naming beautiful living things after Antinous did not end with the Romans, even if his star is no longer recognized, and his flower is only called a red water lily. There is a species of Brazilian Tarantula named for him, called Pamphobeteus Antinous, one of the largest tarantulas in the world, and one of the most beautiful. It is indeed appropriate that such a creature should be compared to the mysterious boy, now that he has been banished to the shadows by the Church, having been transformed by them into a demon. This tarantula seems to point to the darker side of Antinous as an unpredictable god with hidden dangerous aspects. Walking along the silken threads that join the worlds, moving silently through the underbrush of the surreal forest of our dreams.
These opposed emblems are a poetic intimation of the double nature of the god. Temples of Antinous have been found from Spain to Arabia, and from North Africa to the Danube, every corner of the Empire. But he was received most devotedly by the Greeks. His seven major centers of worship were the cities Antinopolis, Alexandria, Athens, Corinth, Bithynian Claudiopolis, Rome, and the mysterious city of Mantineia. Located in Greece, Mantineia was said to be the original homeland of Antinous's ancestors. This is one possible origin of the name Antinous, as it is said that the mythical founder of the city was a princess named Antinoa, the female form of his name. Some have suggested that it means a flowering or blossoming. A third possibility for his name is the only other Antinous of notoriety in History. The Antinous of Homer's Odyssey, leader of the suitors, who is even said to rape Penelope. This Antinous is the famous coward and parasite whom Odysseus and his son, Telemachus, triumphantly kill with their arrows. Even this side of Antinous must be considered. Homer's lines so prophetically set into motion the fall of the east, the establishment of Greece, and through Aeneus, the eventual rise of Rome. He also sets into motion the Antinoian Mysteries with Antinous, leader of the suitors, carnal and cruel, full of lust and greed, the manifestation of Desire, in the service of Venus and Mars, exacting payment for the horrors of the Trojan War upon Odysseus it's master mind. Antinous, leader of the Suitors is Eros, the beautiful and insatiable son of Venus, his death by arrows is like a sign.
The name Antinous, in vague derivatives, is spread out in the world. Take for example a similar event transpiring while Antinous, leader of the suitors, crowded around the Bridal Chamber. Virgil tells us in the Aeneid that two groups, not one escaped the burning of Troy. Here the Goddess Venus, demands of Jupiter that he keep his promise made at the fall of Troy. She complains that if he allowed Antenor, the nephew of Priam to escape with his followers and settle in Italy, where the Timavus River burst into nine mouths, then surely he must let Aeneas, Her son, settle on the Tiber, on the seven hills. Before Rome was ever built, according to Virgil, Antenor founded the city of Padua. This coincidence of name would be meaningless were it not for the conjunction of yet another. In the eleventh century, a follower of St. Francis was brought to die beside the Timavus River. He was still young but ravaged by disease and a life of pious denial, he had wasted away seeking god. When death was near, he asked to be carried to the city of Padua where a Basilica now stands over his miraculous remains. His name was St. Anthony of Padua, whose golden mouth poured forth the beauty of God. He preached to the fish, and to donkeys, and from treetops. He was able to bi-locate, so that he was seen preaching in two places at once. Late at night, he was observed holding the infant Jesus in his arms, along with a book, the sacred word of God. After he died, his body was exhumed and it was found that his tongue had remained miraculously incorruptible, though the bones all around were completely desiccated.
On this sacred tongue, in the guise of Christ, was a spark that traveled from Asia Minor in the arms of Antenor. The Priests of the Cult of Magna Mater, of Attis, of Adonis, and the first wave of an invasion that would reach it's height with Antinous, arrived before the foundation of Rome. The Deification of Antinous was the culmination of a long-lost faith, that would only carry on in whispers and traces, but would forver be preserved by the images of Antinous himself.
There are so many Gods through all the cultures of men that bear subtle similarities, and meaningful differences. It's very easy to fit Antinous into the mold of the "God of this World." It was Hadrian's intention that our hearts would see through these masks. The lover employs parables of images and doctrines to fool the blind spirits of the cave-world.
It isn't Antinous, or Dionysus, or Jesus, or Mithras, or Buddha, or Kristna, or Jehovah, or any of these gods whom we are searching for, it is not to them that we pray. It is the lover within to whom we speak, for whom we desire. He calls us to him by our own name. It is our true name that we are looking for.
"Endeavor to ascend into thyself, gathering in from the body all thy members which have been dispersed and scattered into multiplicity from that unity which once abounded in the greatness of its power. Bring together and unify the inborn ideas and try to articulate those that are confused and to draw into light those that are obscured."
- Prophery, the Neo-Platonist
Antinous is not contrary to Jesus, but is one with his mystical teachings. The people of Antinopolis seem to have taken to him warmly. They could not have rejected the sayings of the young Jewish prophet, who reflected so much of what Antinous was to them. Almost like lotus flowers, new visions of Jesus spring up all over the Empire, under the Heresiarchs. Participation in the early formation of the Catholic Church, by the Priests of Antinous seems possible. Threatened by Bishops like Athanasius, many perhaps converted, bringing with them their methods of worshipping Antinous completely intact. They began to turn away from the mortal Jesus of Nazareth, as they had the mortal Antinous of Bithynia, and began to worship Jesus Christ, the fully Divine Manifestation of the Creator. They began to doubt whether the Creator being perfect, could ever fully assume the guise of the flesh, as he would no longer be perfect. A thousand heresies were born from this utterly pagan sense of faith.
We are by nature better able to accept gods like Jupiter and Venus, because their consecration comes from the dark and forgotten past. But we are unable to accept the same miracle when the events are well documented and the people involved are completely human. But Jupiter and Venus were instituted by the same authority as Antinous, and even as Jesus and all the Saints. The second King of Rome, successor of the Mythical Romulus, was Numa Pompilius. He was a Priest King who delineated the grand Religion of the Roman People. He consecrated the Gods, and showed the Romans how to pray and offer sacrifice. Chief among these gods was Jupiter, Venus and Mars. With this same authority, Hadrian consecrated Antinous. Numa was the King of a tribe, the Latins, while Hadrian was King of the entire world. Jesus chose Peter as his Rock, and buried him on the Vatican. His successors, the Bishops of Rome soon replaced the Emperors, and still retain the authority of Numa today. We still call the priest king of Rome by the same title as Numa and Hadrian...Pontifex Maximus. Under Pontifical authority, which from the most ancient foundation of Rome has meant supreme blessedness, Jesus was declared Our Lord. If we are willing to accept the authority of Numa to institute the Goddess Venus, and of the Pope to elevate heroic souls to Blessed Sainthood, then we cannot refuse the possibility that Antinous was also truly deified. The Pope is the direct descendant of Numa Pompilius, through an unbroken chain of priestly fathers. Hadrian stands in the middle of this line, and is ultimately the last to use its powers after the fashion of the ancient pagans, before the transition to Christianity. Antinous has the powerful distinction of being the last god of the ancient faith of our fathers.
The Religion of Antinous has always been held by few, those who are able to do away with the many faces and see the true Lover within us all. It isn't about praying to a God seated high above on a throne in Olympus. It isn't about worshipping a beautiful boy who died almost nineteen hundred years ago. The message of Antinous is to find yourself, within yourself, and rise up to godliness, by your own will.
In worshipping Antinous, one becomes self-sacred, learning how to love idols less and the self more. It is about loving the God within...Nothing more. The process of awakening Antinous within the heart of all gay men is called Homotheosis.
The message of Antinous cannot be spread around the world like a seed, because it is a germ that is not of this world. The voice of Antinous falls silent upon those who are not of his kind. But to his children, the name ANTINOUS resonates like a reed in the soul.
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