JosephHPerkins
05-23-2012, 07:25 PM
As a Pagan I have researched and studied about many ancient deities,but never found one that really really seemed to connect with me until I read about Antinous.
There are other groups out there working to revive his ancient Religion,one I feel promotes Antinous as strictly as a God of Homosexuality,and there was that aspect to his ancient religion,but that did not set 100% with as I felt Antinous was the God of the GBLT Community as a whole.
So I have started working on a website dedicated to Antinous and reviving his religion not merely as God of Homosexulaity but as a God of the GBLT Community as a whole.
http://templumantinous.webs.com/index.htm
Here is a little bit of info about Him.
The story of Antinous is one of tragedy and triumph, love and sacrifice, imperial intrigue and divine mystery. Its beginnings were humble: a beautiful young Greek boy in Asia Minor was plucked, like Ganymede, from his native soil and whisked away to the heady atmosphere of imperial Rome to become the favorite companion to the emperor Hadrian, a man who fancied himself as Zeus incarnate.
Their love, celebrated in antiquity and later denigrated by puritanical Christians, ended abruptly during a trip to Egypt, when the young Antinous drowned in the floodwaters of the Nile. Rumor and speculation surrounded his death – was it murder, suicide, an accident? Or was it, as several ancient authors claimed, a deliberate act of religious sacrifice, voluntarily undertaken to restore and renew the emperor and the land?
Whatever the cause of death, the subsequent apotheosis of Antinous resulted in a tidal wave of religious sentiment that swept the breadth of the entire empire.
Temples were built and priesthoods established, and thousands of religious images of the new god were created in the remarkably short span of a few years. Much of this cult activity was vigorously promulgated by Hadrian himself, who was so overcome by grief that he never fully recovered. However, there was also a spontaneous outpouring of popular faith in Antinous -- enough to sustain the cult for some two centuries after his death; enough for him to be declared the last pagan god of the Greco-Roman world.
There are other groups out there working to revive his ancient Religion,one I feel promotes Antinous as strictly as a God of Homosexuality,and there was that aspect to his ancient religion,but that did not set 100% with as I felt Antinous was the God of the GBLT Community as a whole.
So I have started working on a website dedicated to Antinous and reviving his religion not merely as God of Homosexulaity but as a God of the GBLT Community as a whole.
http://templumantinous.webs.com/index.htm
Here is a little bit of info about Him.
The story of Antinous is one of tragedy and triumph, love and sacrifice, imperial intrigue and divine mystery. Its beginnings were humble: a beautiful young Greek boy in Asia Minor was plucked, like Ganymede, from his native soil and whisked away to the heady atmosphere of imperial Rome to become the favorite companion to the emperor Hadrian, a man who fancied himself as Zeus incarnate.
Their love, celebrated in antiquity and later denigrated by puritanical Christians, ended abruptly during a trip to Egypt, when the young Antinous drowned in the floodwaters of the Nile. Rumor and speculation surrounded his death – was it murder, suicide, an accident? Or was it, as several ancient authors claimed, a deliberate act of religious sacrifice, voluntarily undertaken to restore and renew the emperor and the land?
Whatever the cause of death, the subsequent apotheosis of Antinous resulted in a tidal wave of religious sentiment that swept the breadth of the entire empire.
Temples were built and priesthoods established, and thousands of religious images of the new god were created in the remarkably short span of a few years. Much of this cult activity was vigorously promulgated by Hadrian himself, who was so overcome by grief that he never fully recovered. However, there was also a spontaneous outpouring of popular faith in Antinous -- enough to sustain the cult for some two centuries after his death; enough for him to be declared the last pagan god of the Greco-Roman world.