ANTINOUS AND THE STARS

JUPITER ALIGNS WITH THE SUN

HADRIAN AND ANTINOUS/HELIOS REJOICE

JUPITER aligns with the Sun on Sunday, May 13th. It is one of the most fortuitous days of the year as the Sun and Jupiter make their annual rendezvous. This year they are in perfect alignment in comfort-loving Taurus. It's Mother's Day in most countries, and this planetary alignment ensures that family encounters will be surprisingly pleasant.

The whole purpose of this blog is to encourage you to see how ANTINOUS THE GAY GOD can be relevant to your daily life. The Ancients had no difficulty with this. They saw that the Divine was "immanent" (dwelling within) everything around them.

We look at the sky and see the Sun and are aware (if we are aware at all) that the gas-giant planet Jupiter is hundreds of millions of miles directly behind the Sun on the other side of the Solar System from us.

But the Ancient Priests of Antinous saw it very differently. They perceived Jupiter as symbolizing Emperor Hadrian. And they saw the Sun as symbolizing Apollo/Helios -- an aspect of ANTINOUS THE GAY GOD.

So the Ancient Priests would have appreciated the gloriously spiritual image above showing a bearded older man resembling Hadrian giving instruction to a fair-haired youth. They would recognize Jupiter and Antinous/Helios!

The image is by the late artist and art-history scholar BRIAN WILLIAMS (self-portrait at left with Antinous/Eros), who sadly died in 2002, exactly ten years ago. (Photo: Gary Ormond)

Brian was an openly gay artist who specialized in Tarot card decks, and this stunning image is from his beautiful "RENAISSANCE TAROT" deck, which we reproduce here with deepest humility and respect for Brian. May Antinous bless him forever!

The Ancient Priests of Antinous would have praised Brian's interpretation of the XIX Trump, The Sun, and would have interpreted this planetary alignment as being an exceedingly fortuitous day indeed.

It is important that we remember that the Ancient Priests of Antinous conceived of a world which was -- unlike our own -- an ANIMATED world from the beginning. Everything in their physical world was alive with spiritual dimensions.

They didn't PROJECT a spiritual entity into a hunk of carved marble. Instead, they APPREHENDED (or "saw") the spiritual entity that was already inside the stone. They didn't PROJECT spiritual interpretations onto the stars in the heavens. They APPREHENDED the Divine forces that were already there.

They had the spiritual eyes to "see" what their physical eyes could not apprehend. But that ability has been lost over the ages.

Most modern people think of ourselves as being isolated in a soulless universe. Those humans who have any religious background at all tend to think of God or the Gods as being "out there" somewhere on Cloud Nine or Olympus or some place.

The Ancient Priests of Antinous would think of us modern 21st Century people as being seriously bipolar and schizophrenic -- totally disjointed from each other and from all of the universe. The Ancients would think we are having a perpetual "out of body" experience which leaves us isolated in an inanimate world.

To the Ancients, NOTHING was inanimate. EVERYTHING had a soul. Every stone. Every plant. Every animal. Everything we eat. Everything we make. Every man-made object. 

EVERYTHING.

Everything is alive. Everything has a soul. And Everything is interconnected. And yet ... and yet ... each of us is separate, moving around on our own two legs in our own modest and humdrum little lives full of modest joys and -- often -- very great woes.

 

The Ancients understood this paradox between separation and interconnectedness. They knew they were each separate but, unlike us, they also knew they were all interconnected with everybody and with everything else in the universe.

Modern civilization has lost that conscious awareness of Spiritual Interconnectedness. For 2,000 years, the Judeo/Islamic/ Christian tradition has taught that god is separate from us and that he lives "out there somewhere" and that we are the only sentient beings in a lonely and inanimate world -- each of us alone and separated from the Divine Spirit.

One of the main goals of the Religion of Antinous is to restore the pre-Abrahamic spiritual interconnectedness -- at the very least among gay people. To do so, we have to address the paradox of existence/non-existence.

Take a look at Brian Williams' beautiful interpretation of the Jupiter/Sun alignment. Allow yourself to dive inside the card. You are the Emperor. You are Antinous/Helios. You are the Sun. Open yourself to all the Divine Light and Joy that this day has to offer you.