Aedicula Antinoi: A Small Shrine of Antinous

On the galli: not necessarily. Everyday galli may have been eunuchs, but the archgallus (in the Roman period) had to be a Roman citizen, and Roman citizens were prohibited from castrating themselves. It is theorized by Robert Turcan (The Cults of the Roman Empire) and others that the taurobolic sacrifice was a replacement for self-castration for the consecration of an archgallus, and that makes sense to me. If the Maetreum of Cybele wants to have its own rules and run itself however it wishes, it is perfectly free to do so. The head of it is a transexual woman, and I think I’ve heard she regards herself as the modern equivalent of a eunuch as a result, which is a wonderful and excellent thing, and is completely her right as the person who owns the land and has put in the work (including legal recognition) to run that organization.

The Aedicula Antinoi is this website/blog, i.e. my own personal space that I maintain to honor Antinous. As such, it does not have a membership beyond myself. The Ekklesía Antínoou, however, is something else, and its members are under no obligation to swear complete allegiance or loyalty to any god–including Antinous–or to say that Antinous is first for them and all else is second–that’s called henotheism, or pagan monotheism/monolatry, and that’s not what we’re about at all: we’re a polytheist organization, and everyone is thus free to have as few or as many deities as they want, though it is quite likely that Antinous is at least one of them. And, that’s all that’s required. The ancient cults of Antinous do not give any precedent for exclusive devotion to the god, particularly since he is so enriched by his relations with other deities.

Why you’re being so insistent on this when it isn’t your organization and you’re not a member of it (and likewise the Maetreum of Cybele) is really beyond me. It’s one thing to actually do something and put in lots of effort with building an organization and then shaping it in a particular manner according to one’s own preferences, and an entirely other one to just sit on the sidelines and snipe about the way other people are doing things. When you form your own organization or website for Attis, do it however you’d like to; but in the meantime, don’t tell anyone else how to run their organizations or that they’re doing things wrong–it’s rude and uncalled for, and does nothing but earn you enmity in the eyes of others who could potentially be allies or supporters in the future.

As for Dionysos and Osiris being syncretized: that’s pretty standard, and has been since the time of Herodotus (Histories 2.42). Adonis could also be syncretized to Osiris, as you say; and likewise, Dionysos and Adonis were also syncretized (Plutarch, Symposiacs 4.6). Syncretism doesn’t only happen in one-to-one correspondences; many deities are syncretized to a great variety of other deities across diverse cultures (e.g. Cocidius in Roman Britain is syncretized to both Mars and Silvanus, as well as several other Romano-British deities), and Dionysos is one deity who is particularly promiscuous in that regard. Both Osiris and Dionysos are syncretized to Serapis, for example…

I’m not in charge of Neos Alexandria, and I am really not that bothered by that usage. If it bothers you, here’s a thought: don’t join the group, and don’t think about it. (See my comments above…)

Also, when I refer to my own shallowness, I’m talking about a wide variety of things, but not specifically my devotion to Antinous. I am fairly certain that my devotional activities are not shallow, and my involvement with him is not shallow. However, certainty is the death of spirituality, and so some healthy self-doubt is never misplaced–there’s always more that I can do, more that I can learn, and (hopefully) more dimensions of the god that I’ll come to encounter in time. I’m also far from shallow in relationships, and so I don’t know why you’re bringing that up at all. (And if there is any flogging going on in a relationship in which I’m involved, I’m the one holding the flogger.) In the Sequential Tart interview, I was specifically talking about my attempts at new activities–if I’m not good at something from the start, I tend to get discouraged easily and don’t go further with it, and that’s an admittedly shallow approach to trying new things (which is roughly what I said in the interview itself); but, it is what it is, and I’m at least aware that such is how I operate. I can choose what cases I’d like for that to be less the case, and what activities would be worth putting more time and effort into in order to get better at them. You’re taking things far out of context here, and making assumptions way beyond what was communicated originally.

“Hostility” and its absence is something that doesn’t come across very easily in an online textual format; and I suspect that there is bit of a language barrier here as well. If you’re genuinely not trying to be hostile, unfortunately it has not come across that way on my end. You’ve come in and nit-picked on several different matters that do not at all concern you, in terms of the running of groups (my own, Neos Alexandria, and the Maetreum of Cybele) of which you are not a part, in the areas of the expected or enforced beliefs of members, nomenclature, and physical requirements for sacred offices. These are things that you have absolutely no control over and no say in because you’re not a part of the organizations; and because two of those three organizations are things of which I am a member, for which I’ve exerted a great deal of effort and devotional attention, and in which everything is going quite well independent of your opinions, I’m quite prone to take your comments–no matter how light-heartedly you might have intended them (and if you did intend them as such, there was no indication thereof before the end of your last comment)–very personally indeed. I do not have to allow your comments to be approved here at all, and I can simply delete them if I wish, but I tend to try and make this particular resource one that is open and hospitable, and I’d like to continue to do that in the future.

I am obliged, therefore, to be hospitable to you, and to give you an opportunity to say what you wish; I am not obliged, however, to listen to anything that I think constitutes abuse, snark, or any other variety of negativity that makes me and my guest-room, i.e. the comments section of the Aedicula Antinoi blog, a place that I’m not comfortable with or happy about. So, keeping that in mind, I’m fine to continue a conversation with you, as long as you’re not so insistent and rude in your demeanor, whether or not you are doing so under the veneer of the practice of any Greek art.

I’m not aware of the information you’ve shared about Phrygian religion–if you have a source on that, I’d like to know it.

Though I agree that conservative Christianity and Islam are horrible, I’m not at all keen on the idea of calling any religion other than my own an abomination and trying to wipe them out. They did that to the pre-Christian Europeans and all of the non-Islamic religions they came across, and I find that sort of behavior reprehensible, so you’ll never see me giving my support to any group whose shared goal is the wiping out of another religion. You obviously do not know this, but you’re actually speaking to someone right now who has a lot of Jewish ancestry, and so I’m very apt to react quite poorly when someone talks about wiping out the entirety of another religion. You’ve reached my threshold of disgust now–before I thought you were just rude and rather uncultured, but now I see you’re a quite reprehensible individual.

As for your suggestion that I “lack that centre, that focus”–fuck you, you’ve no clue what my focus or my center happens to be, and thinking that I have a “lack” in comparison to a religion that you’ve just abominated and think should be wiped out, because they’re doing that particular thing correctly…again, fuck you.

Really, don’t bother responding. I have no interest in furthering any conversation with you. I wish you all the best of luck in founding an intolerant and exclusivistic polytheist group that will draw more hatred and misunderstanding to the names of your chosen god and goddess than any Christian ever heaped upon them in their own critiques.