Why Celebrate Holidays?

Today is Sunday–a day on which many polytheists might be saying, “So what?  I’ve got a day off work…big deal!”

Today is also Easter Sunday–a day on which many pagans and polytheists might be saying, “So what?  I wish tomorrow would come, so that all of this Easter candy will go on sale and I can pay 50% of what I would today for cheap chocolate crap!”

But for a number of devotees of Antinous, today is an important day, the Megala Antinoeia.  In our yearly calendar, this is roughly the third-most-important day of the year (after Foundation Day, October 30th, and the Natalis Antinoi, November 27th).  The significance of this day is manifold, and didn’t emerge until a few years of my own Antinoan devotional practices had passed.  Originally, it was the Roman festival day of Parilia, a festival involving amongst other things the herding of goats between two fires for purification purposes (similar to what is attested about the Irish Beltaine on May 1st with cattle!), and which was formerly a kind of “foundation day” for Rome itself.  During the time of Hadrian, the festival was redefined as being in honor of Venus and Roma and the grand shared temple he had constructed for these two Goddesses, and it took on a greater significance for Romans from then onwards during the Imperial Period.  It was later revealed that astronomical alignments at both Hadrian’s Villa and the Pantheon were made so that sunrise on this day would illuminate particular places at these locations, thus confirming the special significance of this day for Hadrian himself, and for his particular circle; thus, it seems that this would have probably had some significance for Antinous Himself while He was still living, as well as Hadrian.  It was then chosen by us modern devotees as the date to mark the inauguration of the period of Antinous the Lover, the date of the festival of the Bear Hunt, and also the time when the Megala Antinoeia sacred games would be held.

As the Christian Easter is a “moveable feast” (and the history of determining this date is a lengthy and interesting one!), it is never entirely certain when it will be on a given year with any regularity.  While doubtless the Megala Antinoeia has occurred on a Sunday between 2004 (when we first began to mark this particular date for the holiday) and 2019, to my knowledge it has never been on a date coinciding with Easter Sunday as well, so this is a rather unique occasion, and one on which it might be worthwhile to stop and consider why it is that particular festivals are celebrated on particular dates.

There is an ongoing debate/discussion in some pagan circles regarding when particular festivals should be held, if at all.  While the Solstices and Equinoxes can be pinpointed more exactly now than they ever have been in the past, the quarter-days that fall in between these astronomical markers in the annual solar cycle of the Earth are not-quite-as-exact.  The Irish custom of celebrating them on the 1st of February (Imbolc), May (Beltaine), August (Lugnasad), and November (Samain), often plus the night preceding these because of the Irish practice of beginning a day with the sundown of the previous day, has been adopted in generalized pagan practice (mainly due to the assumption that “Wicca” is a “Celtic religion,” unfortunately!), but as these dates are not precisely within the “middle” of the times between the Equinoxes and Solstices, it has been seen as somewhat arbitrary to have done so.  There has been a drive to distinguish these dates from their “true” dates based on rather random assumptions about astrological times (when the sun is at such-and-such degrees of Scorpio is the “true Samain,” etc.), but this is entirely modern in origin and has nothing to do with the practices of ancient peoples.  There are some standing stone monuments that mark these quarter-days as equally as the solar dates, and there are even some such monuments in the southwestern region of Ireland that only mark the quarter-day sunrises/sunsets of the dates corresponding to Samain and Imbolc, in fact (and along their modern solar dates rather than any assumed astrological calculation)!

There is precedent in having these dates fall within a timespan of usually two weeks before and after the date concerned, which is especially the case for Imbolc (in a time period known as Faoilleach, “the wolf-month,” which used to refer to February in Ireland and is now January in Scotland), Lugnasad (in a period known as Iuchar, “the dog-days,” which is now July in Scotland), and Beltaine.  There is a record in some literary sources for a period known as the “Thirds of Samain” in Ireland, with these three thirds being comprised of the three days before Samain, the three days after, and Samain itself.  Thus, some people who observe these festivals now approximate them to the indicated calendrical “firsts” of their respective months, but locate them on an adjacent weekend in order to have the proper amount of time and freedom to fittingly celebrate them, with the understanding that they are primarily dates of seasonal significance and therefore anytime within the “general season” of two weeks before and after their taking place will suit them equally well to hold one’s official marking of the occasion and performance of the rituals.  If that works for one and one’s co-religionists, that’s fine!

With particular dates, though, which are not necessarily tied to the general seasonal flow of things, celebrating them on “the day itself” becomes more important.  Certainly, in my own practice, this is the case, and thus whenever possible I try to hold the specific dates (particularly in terms of Antinous-specific holidays) on the date itself.  Just as many people celebrate their birthdays on the day itself (though increasingly some people reserve their larger parties for convenient adjacent weekends these days, and likewise with their children!), it is often important with particular dates like Foundation Day and Natalis Antinoi to go on the date itself, particularly since Foundation Day is a date from which larger reckonings of time are determined and thus its exact occurrence is important to likewise recognize.

But why else might one do this, not only in particularly polytheist occasions but also more widely with an approach to holy-days more generally speaking?  I would argue that it is an effort very much along the lines of making material offerings, and it certainly also falls into line with doing rituals generally, which is that it has the practical and significant function of making the Deities more present in the world and in one’s own life.  If making offerings is a way in which physical objects are made full of the presence of divine beings, and likewise keeping shrines, altars, and temple spaces is a way of consecrating larger spaces to divine presences, then keeping holidays and observing them on their exact dates (or at any time, really!) then makes these periods of time holy for one’s Deities.  From smaller objects, spaces, and times, then Deities can begin to “spread out” and impact–almost by contagion!–those things around them in physical time and space.  It isn’t as if Deities are entirely limited to acting in the objects, times, spaces, and persons with which They have become involved or who have dedicated themselves to Them, though it is certainly easier to start from such a base that is regularly strengthened in that manner.  A particular holiday might have marked a certain event in which the Deity did something significant, made an important epiphany, or dedicated to some purpose, but then remembering that moment and attempting to rekindle the impacts of it on that occasion in the future doesn’t mean that the Deities-in-question will then likewise show up “on-demand” on those occasions (unless they want to!), but either the anticipation of such or the consciousness that They had done so previously can then make the lead-up and the aftermath of such events that much more infused with significance and the possibility of recognizing the impact of said Deities on the lives of Their devotees.  From these occasions, further roots can reach out into further events more distant in time from the holy-days concerned, until the presence of one’s Deities can then potentially infuse every day, and every moment.

Taking those times to deliberately cultivate such an awareness of divine presences and interventions is not only practice, but an occasion of “recharging” one’s divine interaction potential batteries, so to speak, so that these can occur more easily and frequently outside of such times.  But, one should never put the cart before the horse and simply “assume” that because Deities can operate whenever They like, that therefore They will, and that particular dates thus fall into obsolescence or can be ignored with impunity.  If “everything is holy,” then nothing is holy; and if every day is a holiday, then there is no such thing as a holiday.  While it is tempting to assume that one’s own mystical prowess and fitness makes this possible from the get-go, let us be realistic:  these kinds of feelings take time to develop, these senses take much effort and trial-and-error to cultivate, and to simply think that just because Deities can that They will and have done so, simply because one wishes that it were so, is to make the mistake that so many beginners in spiritual practice make, with polytheism and with many other religious systems and styles.  Intellectual understanding is not the same thing as spiritual experience, and the difference is not only monumental and palpable when it actually occurs, it is essential to know this distinction in order to have useful discernment.

To use a metaphor that is quite outside of my own level of comfort:  this is the difference between working on strength training regularly by working out and lifting weights and doing other such exercises on a regular and reasonable basis, and having a random adrenaline rush during an accident that allows one to lift a car off an injured person.  Yes, the latter is possible, but if one aspires to having that sort of strength at all times, it is better to make the regular effort (with all of its potential tedium and consumption of time) rather than to rely on the possibility that when the essential situation arrives, that one will be able to manage both the adrenaline and the physical necessities required to do amazing things.

What Is The Role Of History and Historical Scholarship In Your Religious Practice?

honorthegods asked a really interesting question, from which I extracted the above question to make a wider point.  But here’s the original:

Question related to the cult of Antinous: While I know politics is, and always has been, a dirty business, I was a little shaken to learn that some scholars think Hadrian may have killed (or ordered the death) of Sabina and his sister Paulina. Evidence is scarce for many generally accepted incidents in history (such as the circumstances of the death of Cleopatra), just wondering what you think. If true, what relevance does it have upon the apotheosis of Sabina, and the cult of Antinous?

So, this prompts a few further thoughts in line with the question I’ve given as the title of the present post.  I’ll address both the specifics and the more general in what follows here.

Several newer books (which can be found in the Antinous Bibliography) have some intriguing new ideas in them.  Antinous:  Boy Made God has the suggestion, for example, that based on Roman sculpture’s artistic norms, the majority of Antinous’ nude statues not showing Him with pubic hair indicates that He couldn’t have been older than the age of 15 when He died because only late adolescents and young adults are shown with pubic hair, thus the absence of it is noteworthy.  Whether this is true or not as an established and certain “norm” in Roman sculpture, what it ignores is that the statuary of Antinous, apart from His head, is not portraiture, and is generally religious iconography. In Greek Hero Cultus, certain Heroes who died in their youth or infancy could be shown as older in iconography; likewise, certain Deities get shown as younger in some sculptures (e.g. Dionysos, for one!).  Attempting to conclude things about historical persons from religious iconography, even if it is based to some extent on the person when they happened to be alive in recent history, is about as advisable as trying to conclude historical things about Jesus based on iconography.

If Antinous had been younger at death, it would do away with all of the (often homophobic) “reasoning” which suggested that “something had to be done” about Hadrian’s relationship with Antinous because Antinous was getting too old for the usual erastes/eromenos relationship to be sustainable and still respectable.  Much of this kind of homophobic reasoning then leads to many assumptions that have been advanced about the death of Antinous:  that it could have been engineered by Hadrian or someone else to “do away” with the troublesome situation; that it would have been a shame to continue in that role for Antinous, and therefore a suicide under the guise of a heroic sacrificial death would have been the best He could hope for to preserve His posterity; and so forth.  However, the matter of Antinous being younger than we may have assumed then highlights what is the specter hanging over this entire affair for modern people:  that this was a relationship of paradigmatic paiderasteia, and therefore something entirely objectionable from a modern standpoint, which then puts anyone who is a cultist of Antinous and Hadrian in the position of having to “justify” underage relationships of the past.  One need not agree with the social norms of past ages, nor perpetuate or excuse them in the present, to find the story of Hadrian and Antinous powerful in its own right, and to have developed devotional relationships with both of Them that are not based on the status or form of Their relationships so much as the qualities of divinity which each of Them demonstrates in an experiential context.  But that may be a larger question deserving of a fuller treatment at another time.

As a further example of modern historical disagreements and new theories, there have been several archaeologists who have suggested that the Obelisk of Antinous was originally located at the Antinoeion at Hadrian’s Villa.  It would make the most sense, at least physically and practically, if it had been located there, and then was removed to Rome (possibly by Elagabalus in the early third century CE), located in several places, and eventually made its way to the Pincio Hill where it is now located, rather than being brought all the way from Antinoöpolis.  They suggest that the red sandstone base they found in the midst of the likely complex for Antinous at the Villa, of an appropriate size and shape to match the red sandstone of the Obelisk, was therefore the marker of His final burial place, rather than what had been assumed previously:  namely, that He was buried in Antinoöpolis.  The inscription on the Obelisk saying that it is in the “border-fields of Rome” also seems to indicate that this is likely.  But another scholar, who is most noteworthy for writing about dream incubation sanctuaries, wrote in various publications that He had to have been buried in Antinoöpolis because one of the church fathers reports this in his own account.  Couldn’t the Christian, writing later, have been wrong, and have potentially mistaken a cenotaph in Egypt for the actual tomb?  It’s possible, but no doubt some historians and future scholars will take various sides in this new debate as well; in absence of certainty, we can’t know, but it’s important to keep abreast of the developments and the latest theories.

As for the specific question of Hadrian perhaps being responsible for the death of Sabina so that he could make sure her apotheosis was before his, to which honorthegods’ question refers:  I seriously doubt this for a variety of reasons.  In the pre-20th century periods of history, many women did not live long past menopause, including from the upper classes, and both Diva Sabina and her mother Diva Matidia died in their early 50s, which would not be unusual.

But there has been all sorts of interest, from antiquity onwards, to make Hadrian as “bad” as possible in the estimation of some people, and to suggest that he had some role in even bringing about the death of Antinous, all because he showed little reluctance to have a few senators killed early in his principate, and likewise to compel one of his relatives to suicide late in his reign because he did not want him to attempt to usurp the principate after his own death.  The senators and his relative were specifically political deaths with political motives (whether we like that or not); suggesting that he would have not hesitated to kill his lover or his wife is something else entirely.  He refused to divorce his wife on one occasion, even though many said he probably should have done so and could have been forgiven for doing it, but he didn’t; Hadrian was no Nero, though!  If he was reluctant to divorce her, it stands to reason that he would have been reluctant to kill her, even in his declining years and with some loss of his more reasonable faculties.  So, I don’t buy it…

While I could say more about these various different historical controversies or debates, the wider and more general question yet remains, and so I should state plainly what my feeling are on the matter.

If historical evidence were produced that made a significant change to the “accepted” views of some of the issues involved in the historical cultus of Antinous, I would not hesitate to accept it.  The examples above are generally not situations of historical evidence being produced, but instead are hypotheses, conjectures, suggestions, some of which have better or worse supporting evidence for them; and while in absence of proof and certainty well-founded conjecture based on sound historical reasoning is warranted, that reasoning can always ben questioned if the definitive proof does not exist.

It is good to be familiar with the latest historical theorizing on these matters, but it is in no way required that one accept it.

Ultimately, questions like this begin to sound very similar to questions that get raised in Christianity about “the Jesus of history versus the Christ of faith.”  Unfortunately, for many Christians, the two have to be congruent or else neither of them makes sense for them theologically.  As an Antinoan, the Antinous of history and the Antinous of faith need not be two different things in conflict with each other, and even if history does at some point demonstrate something that contradicts a particular aspect of theological interpretation or spiritual practice, there is no reason that history cannot be acknowledged for its own validity while theology or practice is still engaged with due to its own aesthetic appeal, and to be able to admit that these two things may not mesh with each other.

When such a historical situation does come about, I shall be very interested in seeing how this all works out.  It hasn’t yet, and I look forward to the time that it might; but I also highly suspect that adapting to any potential iteration of this–up to and including finding a lost copy of Hadrian’s memoirs that states equivocally that Antinous was a slave that Hadrian loved but Who had refused the emperor’s advanced and then died in unfortunate circumstances soon after, or something to that effect–will actually be too impossible to reconcile with the practice I have developed during my devotional period with Him, nor will it alter the extensive religious remains of His wide and varied cultus from the ancient world that demonstrated how present and effective He was in the lives of His worshippers.