#wesir dionysos antinous

[antlering]

Wag festival offerings for Wesir Lord of Wine, Wesir-Dionysos-Antinous, and my ancestors. Smoked kielbasa, green beans, candy corn, and Apothic Dark wine. my new shrine furniture is still in the mail, so a makeshift shrine it is! 😊

[antlering]

Hi! I just recently found out about Antinous and am greatly intrigued. what can you tell me about Him?

cont’d: I’m specifically interested in His modern worship, in case that wasn’t clear! :)

Hey there! Thanks for the question and for being patient with how long it took me to answer!

In my experience, Antinous's presence in modern polytheism has grown over the past decade. I typically see him worshiped by Hellenistic polytheists, as well as by those who consider him a god of queer/gay love. He is both a god and a hero as a real divinized human. There is the tradition Religio Antinoi that is focused on the worship of “Antinous the gay god.” I really can’t speak to the tradition as their blog has thousands of posts and I’m not involved in any way, but they do have some interesting material from what I’ve read. (I’m conflicted on traditions that literally sanctify modern people at their death (for example, they’ve sanctified River Phoenix despite him dying before the tradition was even created), but that’s a personal conundrum.)

Naos Antinoou is another modern tradition that has a ton of good info. While they are specifically a queer tradition, they seem less focused on Antinous as a queer god and a little more on historical reconstruction. They have some pretty serious research available for reading. But again, I am not a member of the tradition.

From what I gather, Naos Antinoou is a schism from Religio Antinoi. There are surely other Antinous-focused traditions around, but these two are the ones I see the most. Fêting Antinous on Halloween seems to stem from one or both of these traditions. Although I haven’t dug into it, my quick reading concludes that Naos Antinoou has permanently set the Mysteries of Wesir to fall on the last week or so of October (as opposed to letting it drift slightly every year), which historically is the time Antinous drowned. 

(Of course, one does not have to be a member of any specific tradition to worship Antinous. He can venerated as human or deity or both, and he doesn’t have to be syncretized with Wesir and Dionysos, although their story together is powerful!)

Other stuff: Prayers by Ptahmassu Nofra-Uaa 

@religionismyfandom blogs about Antinous worship both on tumblr and on WordPress!

Specific to my practice:

For me, Antinous is an intersection of the mysteries of Wesir and Dionysos, as well as being his own mystery. They are gods of the process of death and dying, of fermentation, of intoxication and wine, of descending and transcending. Each of these deities die in a slightly different way, and the differences are critical to my understanding of Them. 

Wesir is a god (maybe once a mortal) who is killed and does not return from the Underworld, being given new life there. He is the perfect king. He accepts death forever and forges a life in the Duat. His death gives us humans a place to go when our mortal time ends. He is the silt of the Nile in which he drowned.

Dionysos is a god who is killed and returns from the Underworld to a new life. As Zagreus he is wholly divine, and as twice-born Dionysos he is also human. He is mistrusted and challenged by mortals who refuse to recognize his godhood, and yet he is so powerful as to go to the Underworld again and bring back his dead mother Semele. His divinity gives him strength, and his humanity lets him transcend boundaries even other gods don’t push. He is fermentation, potentiality, water, sunlight.

And Antinous is a mortal who is killed or maybe just dies, who goes to the Underworld and is given not life but godhood. Antinous is a symbol of the highest potential of mortality - he is what happens when both internal arete and external love intersect. He is what happens when the gods recognize a powerful story, given from god to worshiper and back to god. Like Wesir he drowns and truly dies, like Dionysos he is given new life by those who love him, and yet what emerges from those intertwining stories is something else - he does not die a god, and he does not come back human. He is the seed of the lotus, planted in the silt and fed by water and sunlight, become something altogether new. I’ve posted a little bit about Antinous on my blog here. Please let me know if you have other questions or want me to expand on something! There’s so much that can be said about Antinous and I didn’t want to ramble forever! ^_^

[antlering]

Hello, antlering! Can you tell me more about your tag "wesir antinous dionysos" and how they're connected? That quote reflects how Wesir appears in my mind sometimes. It could be relevant to my personal experience. Or not. But i'm still curious :p

Hello my friend! Thank you for this question! Antinous and Wesir-Dionysos-Antinous (in any order) have been on my mind and in my practice a lot this year. I’m surprised anyone noticed that tag!

So first things first: Wesir-Dionysos-Antinous is an actual historical syncretism who most specifically appears as Antinous in the syncretized form of Wesir-Dionysos. Here’s a picture of the “Braschi” Antinous:

I first became aware of Antinous years ago when I realized the image I have always used for Dionysos’s shrine is actually a picture of Antinous-as-Dionysos. I began to explore Antinous and at some point he transformed from being a background figure in Dionysos’s retinue to Antinous The God. I nearly always interact with Antinous-Dionysos, because for me the mystery of Antinous is inextricably linked to the mysteries surrounding Dionysos.

Further down the road, as I begin to give Antinous his own dedicated worship and rituals, Wesir began appearing more. About a year after that it was revealed that archaeologists had discovered a temple to Wesir-Antinous, meaning a state cult for this syncretic god existed in the Hadrian era.  

This was also the point when I realized that image of Antinous-Dionysos on my altar? Actually Antinous-as-Wesir-Dionysos. Yeah.

Wesir and Antinous are linked even more directly in myth than Antinous and Dionysos are, because Antinous’s mystery is actually that of Wesir - of drowning in the Nile and becoming a “new” kind of god. Of course, Wesir-Dionysos is also a historical syncretism, and an extremely popular one at that.

So ultimately for me this syncretic god is probably Antinous-Wesir-Dionysos, because Antinous’s mortality is central to understanding the layers of the mystery. I think Wesir appears to me alone just as much as he appears with Antinous and/or Dionysos, but I know there’s something I’m supposed to be learning here.

I hope that was some food for thought!! Let me know if you have any questions!