MEGALA ANTINOEIA 

The Megala Antinoeia (Great Festival of Antinous) has many aspects to it, but one of the enduring ones is that it continues the tradition, established at the earliest stage of Antinous' cult, of holding competitions in honor of the god.  Several cities in the eastern empire held these competitions, and a few cities in Egypt, including Antinoopolis, did this as well.  There was an athletic portion of these contests, which involved (at very least) running and rowing, and very likely horse or chariot races additionally.  However, in many of these cities, there was also an artistic agon, of which the citharoedic hymn from Curium on Cyprus was very likely a winning entry.

In the modern Ekklesía Antínoou, we have continued to hold this competition on an annual basis. Artistic entries of any sort are accepted, and then are judged or voted upon, with a winner selected in various categories if there are sufficient entries.  

In the 2008 Megala Antinoeia competition, there were only five entries:  four poems and a painting, and thus all were in the same category, and the winner was the poetic entry by Shawn Postoff. However, each entry was of exceedingly high quality, and represents a timeless honoring and devotion to the god, which is here to be enjoyed and used by those who give him cultus.

Icon of the Divine Lovers Antinous and Hadrian by Gregory Mattson

Sunrise
by Michael Routery

The sun fallen in the west stains
The desert with its blood, the wind
Wheezes through red rock canyons,
And in the oasis petals fall on still pools—
Petals dyed red with an alchemy born of
Lion’s blood spilt in the Black Land,
And of the amor of an emperor and his Greek
Boyfriend, whose wine-ripe body has slipped
Beneath the waters of the Nile. For you Antinous
I weave a garland: there are so many flowers,
So many transfigured youths: Cyparissus, Hylas, Adonis, Hyakinthos…
But these are the reddest (no pale blooms of Hades here!)
Fierce with the vigor of Bythinia’s
Pine-shaded torrents and the lupine runs of Arcadia.
Out of the turbulence of the emperor’s grief
(far to the south soft pink clouds of locusts mass)
You have made Your way through the Western Lands,
Borne on the lilt of soft chants: “O boat of millions of years!”
While tears fall into the silted waters of Africa,
From whence the lotus rises again in immortal hue: our sunrise.

Untitled
by Tristissima et alia…

I feel your kisses
in my knees, leaving my legs
liquid,
and squirm beneath your every touch.
I suddenly feel like a lake nymph,
my hair dissolving
into waters clumsily still, eliminating
up-down distinctions as I perfectly reflect
your sky.

Zeus, I'll call you,
as you trail your fingers through me, rippling
my skin
into symphonies
of circles.

Purify
yourself with me.
Lift the digits
my locks have wetted.
Dab them to your forehead,
your throat,
your heart,
to every piece of you
that has felt shame. Pollute me
with your filth.

I am large enough
to dissolve your dirt
into nothingness.  I dream
of living
fingertips and throat
with you,
because you tremble when you speak and I stutter when I touch.


Antinous of the Earth
by Shawn Postoff

I. Carbon; Post-Coital

When Antinous into me, and I
Into the air our joys have exploded,
He settles beside me like the sediment
Of happy, undersea geologies,
And I, now a rich, primordial soup
With proteins of His proto-life seeded,
Begin to bubble... oxygenating.

Antinous stills: His body to clay
Thickens and compresses the bedrock.
Deep inside Him, warm pressures of pleasure
Congeal His blood to some combustible
Carbon, brewing a vast and future store
Of carnal power for my thirsty heart.

Can such ecstasy forever endure?
How long shall I, 'midst the languid riches
Of His flesh, enjoy such fat consumption?
My lips whisper, "I fear to lose you,"
But there is no response from He who sleeps
Like a child: sweaty, smirking, and soundly.

II. Rapture

When Antinous to the day returns;
When thought on His consciousness alights
And the Singular flash of awareness
Zaps to His synaptic mind a white poem
Of majestic, cosmological scope,
He rises from our bed and vanishes.


III. Coital; Post-Carbon

I weep as would a weary Emperor
For the women whose warriors lie dead.

I wail as every age of History
At the cruelty of its marching victors.

I fall to rotting kneecaps; I crumple
Like a sack of swords and axles, rusted.

"How shall I live, Love, who now has lost you?"

And lo, there urges upon me a Voice;
The gush of a river's melting rapid
Thunders dead and playful over my ear:

"I am become the living Universe.
There burns in me a blue star to fuel thy fire,
The wind from my lungs shall churn thy millstone,
And this, my Word, shall nightly keep you warm.
Cease, therefore, thy pale and bootless lament:
No more now of my blood do you require."

And there is revealed to me a Wisdom;
The lucid slip of certainty races
Prim and nimbly, glist'ning upon my mind.
Arises Antinous Invictus,
And fuses me the conduit to His code.
I suddenly see as a Favourite
Whose mortal sights immortal visions made,
And coursing now as One, the signs appear:
The ancient roads of Rome arrived us here.


gates
by Erynn Rowan Laurie

did you go down
into the depths
down
below stark brown waters
down
into mystery
down
into the light of your own soul

keepers of the gates of night
of the stars
beyond the stretch of the sun-boat's oars
receive him

he is the god born of waters
born of the nile
born of the eyes of his lover

he is the god born of black locks
born of mourning
born of desire

 
he stands at the gates of night
at the gates of the place of Ereshkigal
at the gates of ivory and horn
stands
his name a power for throwing open gates
his name a power for throwing open hearts
his name a power for throwing open the lotus of blood

did you go down
into the depths
down
below stark brown waters
down
into mystery

let Khnum open the gates
send forth the flood
Antinous has come