Welcome

The Celebrants of Antinous are a self-selected few. Like the deity they honour, they are vigorous of the mind and spirit. They are seekers, and they are artists.

Through the study, expression and performance of the Sacred Texts of Antinous, Celebrants are invited to embrace and embody His most powerful and enduring message: all that is Sacred is sired by the Profane; every Divine is impotent in the absence of a Mortal mind to conceive it.

If nothing of the above makes sense to you, it is unlikely you’ll find wisdom here. If, however, you’ve discovered in these words an intriguing and provocative challenge, then you are most welcome, and invited to stay for as long as you wish.

About This Site

This site and its contents are the creation of Shawn Postoff. I'm a professional screenwriter, playwright, filmmaker and novelist whose interests are many and varied. With The Sacred Antinous, I'm attempting to construct a comprehensive "Anti-Religion" - a canonical collection of "sacred" writings that paradoxically advise their reader to avoid the standard trappings of an organized religion.

The closest approximation for a genre here is Historical Fiction. The Sacred Antinous uses as its starting point the few extant facts that are currently available in the historical record concerning the emperor Hadrian, who reigned from 117 to 138 CE, and his young Greek lover, Antinous. Building from the established (and sometimes disputed) timeline, I am trying to fill in the missing links with a comprehensive set of "Sacred Texts" that seek to flesh out the story in a way that is culturally sensitive, historically plausable, and dramatically intense... (more)

The Romulus and Remus of Clichés

The legend of the founding of Rome involves two brothers, the sons of Mars, who were raised by a she-wolf until they were discovered by a shepherd and brought up by him to adulthood. On the site where they were found, they decided to build a town, but fought over who should be its first ruler. Romulus, alas, was the victor.

With regard to this website -- in particular, its construction and ongoing improvement -- there are a couple of legendary and fraternal clichés that suddenly become quite useful to us. The first is "All Roads Lead to Rome." While this was probably once true, what the statement fails to mention is that, in their construction, the roads very likely expanded outward, away from the central city. This in turn gives us a nice metaphor for The Sacred Antinous: it has been launched with a core of essential texts (namely, The Epistles of Antinous and The Gospel of Hadrian), and will subsequently begin to slowly extend its narratives out into a wider world of satellite characters and motivations. And because this site was always envisioned as an ongoing work-in-progress, we suddenly and delightfully find ourselves arrived at that other much loved cliché -- the one that's forever employed in counselling patience: "Rome Wasn't Built in a Day." As I'm sure is obvious, neither shall be this site.

Advertising

In order to offset the costs of running this site, and also to raise money for the Performance Campaign, The Sacred Antinous makes use of advertising and affiliate links throughout. Notable and trusted affiliate partners include Google, Art.com, Amazon.com, CafePress.com, and a host of other companies.

Each time one of these sponsors is clicked, visited, or makes a sale through this site, The Sacred Antinous will receive a small commission. I ask that you support and patronize these sponsors should you feel the urge to shop.

Every effort has been made to select sponsors that I hope will enhance the content of the site and provide a value-added experience to its visitors. There is, however, one glaringly obvious exception: In many of the Google text ads (like the one at left, for instance), it's highly likely that there'll appear at least one reference to either the Bible, the Gospels, the Epistles, God or Jesus. 99% of these ads are inviting you to discover or renew your commitment to the Christian faith. And although I could have easily adjusted the Google display settings to ensure their exclusion, I've deliberately followed the lead of Hadrian himself and very intentionally left them alone. Why? Because I like to think that their annoyingly evangelical solicitations from the margins of this very pagan website add a nice little dash of historical authenticity. Enjoy!