Antinous is a Moon God. He is, of course, many other things and he wears many hats. But one of the ways he was worshiped in Antiquity was as ANTINOUS THE MOON GOD.
His worshipers looked skyward and saw His beautiful face perpetually turned towards the Earth. The Man in the Moon was actually the Blessed Boy in the Moon for the ancient priests and worshipers of Antinous. Swiftest and most youthful of all the Zodiacal deities, Antinous speeds through an entire year's worth of Astrological signs in just 28 days.
ANTINOUS THE MOON GOD represents our deepest personal needs, our basic habits and reactions, and our unconscious gay selves. Where Hadrian the Sun acts, Antinous the Moon REACTS. How do we instinctively react or respond to problems? What do we feel we need for a sense of security? Look to ANTINOUS THE MOON GOD for answers.
ANTINOUS THE MOON GOD is both our inner boy child and our inner lover. His ever changing phases, as he sweeps past all the other Planets in all the Signs, make us at turns responsive, receptive, and reflective. Eternally youthful, ANTINOUS THE MOON GOD represents our childlike spontaneous and instinctual reactions.
ANTINOUS THE MOON GOD beams down on us to make us imaginative, creative, intuitive, sentimental, adaptable, introspective, and protective. On the negative side, and depending on where he is in the Zodiac, he can make us moody, restless, and irrational.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1st, 2026
This week, Mercury is at right angles to both Mars and Pluto. Some astrologers say this is when people sharpen their swords, but we prefer to say it is when people sharpen their tongues to use as weapons! Remember that lovely line from "The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde (who is a Saint of Antinous, by the way): "On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure." This is an aspect which encourages people to say vicious and intentionally hurtful things. People are overly persnickety and bitchy and downright mean. You'll be amazed how true this is.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2nd, 2026
This week, powerful energies are at play when Mars is in a 120-degree trine aspect to dreamy Pisces Neptune even as the War God is in 180-degree opposition to revolution-minded Pluto. Imagine yourself barreling down a freeway at high speed ... and suddenly being enveloped in a fog bank which cuts visibility to zero. If you don't reduce speed immediately, you are bound for disaster. Mars is the fast sports car thundering down the highway ... and Neptune is the fog bank ... and Hades (Pluto) is in the driver's seat. This astrological configuration spells trouble for people who proceed full speed through life without any regard to their surroundings. They will come a cropper this week. However, this Mars/Neptune trine configuration is excellent for people who have latent intuitive, artistic or spiritual talents ... like Antinous-Dionysus. Mars invigorates and enlivens these talents. So the answer is: Proceed with caution, but keep your eyes open for brilliant new opportunities and insights which otherwise would have flashed past you unseen at high speed.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 3rd, 2026
This weekend, ANTINOUS THE MOON GOD is at right angles to the Sun. This is the Cancer Third Quarter Moon, which is the DISCORDIA MOON in Antinous Moon Magic ... The goddess Discordia can be a powerful friend ... or deadly foe. Many gay men have assertiveness problems. On a gay spiritual level, the Discordia Moon shines its light on problem areas where you need to stand up and assert yourself. Anger is one of the most cathartic emotions, and it can also be a very effective cleanser of the emotional system. However, when it becomes a habit, it actually loses its power to transform and becomes an obstacle to growth. Meditations and rituals during the Discordia Moon can help you in identifying the role anger plays in your life and restoring it to its proper function so that it can bring new energy and expansiveness to your emotional life.Also this weekend, Scorpio Venus stops and turns around. An ex-lover will call or visit you in the next 40 days ... Venus goes "Retrograde" (backwards) from October 3rd until November 14th. Retrograde Scorpio Venus is emotionally passionate, suspicious and distrustful ... this is a good time to review, reassess, and revive your relationships ... and that means it may be time to end some career or personal relationships. Retrograde Scorpio Venus is nostalgic for "the good old days" ... so you can expect to hear from old friends and ex-lovers. You may not have seen them for years, and suddenly they show up on your doorstep ... and the two of you have a wonderful time reviving old memories ... and possibly reconciling old differences. In fact, Retrograde Venus periods are often characterized by old lovers getting back together and re-marrying.
SUN-MONDAY, OCTOBER 4th-5th, 2026
This week, we come to our annual reality check with the Sun in 180-degree opposition to Saturn. The result is that Saturn floods you with doubts and caution while the Sun showers you with over-confidence and over-optimism. You find yourself wanting desperately to achieve long-stalled goals ... but you are plagued by doubts and insecurities. You crave recognition, but you find it difficult to cope with praise. And because Saturn is retrograde, problems from the past come back to haunt you.
TUES-FRIDAY, OCTOBER 6th-9th, 2026
This week, romance is in the air when Mercury conjunction Venus causes sparks to fly. Because Venus is Retrograde right now, you may get a message from an old flame who rekindles desires you thought were long extinguished.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10th, 2026
This weekend, we come to the LIBRA NEW MOON... the Lunar Phase we call the TRIPOD MOON in Antinous Moon Magic in honor of the clouds of incense with which three-footed incense braziers filled the Ancient Temples of Antinous. The clouds of incense created a sacred other-worldly atmosphere of intoxication and purification ... but made rational decision-making difficult. If you are having trouble "seeing the fog", the Libra New Moon will show you where the confusion lies.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 11th, 2026
This weekend, Venus and Mars are in a 90-degree right angle to each other, causing chaos in love relationships. This is the astrological textbook recipe for a relationship in which tempers are always hot, the love is always hot, passions are always hot and in which you are fighting violently with each other one moment — and then violently making love the next moment.
SNEAK PREVIEW OF NEXT WEEK:
Another exciting week lies ahead between October 12th and 18th, 2026, when we come to the CAPRICORN FIRST QUARTER MOON. In Antinous Moon Magic, we call this the MERCHANT MOON which offers you an opportunity to reap the benefits of your hard work — and find new opportunities for material advancement ... More details next time ....
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."
TWO PRIESTS of Antinous at the Temple of the Blessed Boy in Rome had devoted their lives to the Good God and were getting on in years.
As young men they had become priests together.
Their love for each other was symbolized and enhanced by their love for Antinous. Together, they had lived out their lives at the great Temple of Rome under the most exalted Priest Nikias.
Nikias of Rome was the author of a famous inscription in Greek which addresses Antinous as NEOS HERMES the "New Hermes" who conveys the deceased through the portals of death into transcendent light. A great Antinoo-Hermeticist, Nikias had taught them much about the triumph of Antinous over death.
And now, as toothless old men, they were approaching the final stage of their earthly priesthood. Both men were frail and ill. They knew death was imminent.
But they were unafraid, for they were confident that they would be re-united in death through the grace and love of the Most Great and Good God whom they had served so faithfully all their lives.
But how exactly would that re-union occur? The ancient texts spoke of the Barque of Millions of Years sailing across the heavens towards the Star of Antinous. But that was the Egyptian imagery, and these priests were both Romans and had only ever served in the Antinous Temple of Rome.
The Rome Temple would of course place their death masks in niches in a special area of the temple dedicated to former priests.
Incense and prayers would be offered to them. Would their shades inhabit those niches?
Would Antinous welcome them in Hades, despite the fact that Antinous the Boy God had come from Bithynia in Asia Minor?
Would their souls be reincarnated as some Eastern mystics believed? Would they hover between heaven and Earth or perhaps be consigned to spending part of the year in the underworld and part of it as lemurs roaming the Earth?
They weren't afraid. But they were exceedingly curious to find out. Confidentially, they believed amongst themselves that they would sail with Antinous aboard the Boat of Millions of Years — a perpetual journey which would never end. But they weren't sure ....
They had spent years perfecting their meditation skills and, without false modesty, they could claim to be masters at the art of trance vision travel. They both knew that the Egyptian hieroglyphs had told the truth in promising that Antinous speaks through dreams and visions. They also knew how to send psychic messages to each other, and had done so on many occasions.
So they made a deal. He who was the first to die would appear to the other in a dream and reveal what the afterlife was like.
As accomplished as they were, they nonetheless knew that such astral communication must be as succinct and simple as possible.
So they agreed that, if the afterlife was as they had envisioned it, the deceased would appear to his friend and utter the word TALITER meaning "exactly so" as they had expected it to be.
And if it was not as they had imagined, the deceased would say ALITER meaning "different" from what they had expected.
The fateful day came not long afterward, and the surviving priest lit incense and recited prayers before the niche mask of his beloved friend and fellow priest.
That night, almost immediately after his head touched his pillow, his deceased friend appeared to him. He was no longer old and sick and frail. He was as young and handsome as the day they had entered the temple. And he was smiling and clearly very excited and seemed to have forgotten the agreed-upon words.
"Taliter or aliter, which is it?" the sleeping priest asked his departed friend.
The friend smiled bigger than ever and said: TOTALITER ALITER — "totally different" — and still beaming with joy, he turned and vanished into golden light.
IN many religions the number seven is sacred ... Christians honor the Seven Archangels on September 29th … but (typically) apocryphal texts and regional denominations can't agree on the lists of seven. The big four are certain: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel, but after that things get a bit iffy.
Rather than worshiping mythical angelic beings, we honor these seven human beings of flesh and blood who really lived and who devoted their lives to Antinous. 
ON September 28th the Ancient Egyptians celebrated the Feast of the Creation of the Nile Inundation as represented by the intersex deity HAPI.
It was through HAPI that Antinous worked his first miracle ... bringing about a bountiful Nile inundation which ended a long famine ... only a few months after he died and was deified.
Hapi is special to us especially because Hapi is intersex. With many other such deities, the gender division is down the middle of the body (like some Hindu deities) or the top half is one gender and the bottom half is the other.
But Hapi is very complex and the genders are mixed throughout his/her body. Male deities invariably have reddish-orange skin in Egyptian Art and female deities have yellowish skin.
However, Hapi has bluish-green skin. Hapi has long hair like a female deity but has a square jaw and a beard. Hapi has broad shoulders yet has pendulous breasts like a nursing mother. 
Hapi has narrow hips and masculine thighs, but has a pregnant belly. Nobody knows what sort of genitals Hapi has, since they are covered by a strange garment reminiscent of a sumo wrestler's belt.
Hapi is both father and mother to the Egyptians. Hapi provides them with everything necessary for life. As Herodotus wrote, "Egypt is the gift of the Nile".
Hapi wears a fabulous headdress of towering water plants and she/he carries enormous offering trays laden with foodstuffs.
The Ancient Egyptians had no problem worshipping a mixed-gender deity.
It is very important to draw the connection between Hapi and Antinous, especially since the First Miracle that Antinous performed as a god involved Hapi. The Egyptians accepted Antinous into their own belief system immediately and were among the most ardent followers of Antinous.
They had no problem worshipping a gay deity who had united himself with a transgender deity.
It must have seemed very logical and credible to them.
It made sense to them and enriched their belief system, made it more personal since they could identify more easily with a handsome young man than with a hermaphrodite wearing a sumo belt (Hapi forgive me!).
Herodotus also said he once asked a very learned religious man in Egypt what the true source of the Nile was.
The learned man (speaking through an interpreter, since most Greeks never bothered to learn Egyptian) paused and finally told him the true source of the Nile is the thigh of Osiris.
We think of it as a strange answer. We think of the Nile as an "it" and the source as a "geographical location".
But the Egyptians thought of the Nile as "us" and its true source as "heka" — the magical semen of the creator.
So, a learned Egyptian would have assumed that a learned Greek would understand what was meant: That Hapi is the equivalent of Dionysus, who was "incubated" in the inner thigh of Zeus after his pregnant mortal mother Semele perished when she could not bear the searing sight of her lover Zeus in all his divine panoply.
It's a very poetic way (a very Egyptian way) of saying that the "true source" of the Nile, which is to say Egypt itself, is the magical heka/semen from the loins of the original creator.
The grandest depiction of HAPI is a colossal statue found in the submerged ruins of HERACLEION at the mouth of the Nile ... this statue once flanked the portals of the Great Temple in that city before earthquakes and tsunamis sent it to the bottom of the sea.
It was rediscovered by marine archaeologist Marck Goddio and is the highlight of a British Museum EXHIBITION ... as seen in the photo at left.
We will never know what happened during that journey up the Nile along the drought-parched fields with anxious Egyptian farmers looking to Hadrian for a miracle ... in September and October of the year 130 AD.
All we know is that Antinous "plunged into the Nile" and into the arms of Hapi in late October of the year 130.
And then the following summer, Hapi the Inundation Deity provided a bountiful Nile flood which replenished the food stocks of Egypt — and the Roman Empire.
The First Miracle of Antinous the Gay God is enshrined in the hieroglyphic inscription on the OBELISK OF ANTINOUS which stands in Rome.
The East Face of the Obelisk, which is aligned to the rising sun Ra-Herakhte, speaks of the joy that fills the heart of Antinous since having been summoned to meet his heavenly father Ra-Herakhte and to become a god himself.
Then the inscription tells how Antinous intercedes with Ra-Herakhte to shower blessings upon Hadrian and the Empress Sabina Augusta.
And Antinous immediately calls upon Hapi ...
Hapi, progenitor of the gods,
On behalf of Hadrian and Sabina,
Arrange the inundation in fortuitous time
To make fertile and bountiful, the fields
Of Both Upper and Lower Egypt!
We joyfully celebrate this, the First Miracle of Antinous!
