has become a youth
with perfect countenance
and festively decorated eyes.
- from the Obelisk of Antinous
The most important aspect of the Gay and Lesbian Pride festivities is not the process of recovery from generations of shame (Pride being the Anti-shame). That is to be pushed aside eventually, as society slowly overcomes the legacy of homophobia ... we know that pride is sometimes the bastard child of marginalization, demoralization and rejection. These things being absent, pride may not be necessary and may even be a bad thing. What matters more about the Pride festival, as I see it, is the idea of queer people for the first time openly and firmly articulating history from OUR perspective, having a voice and having visibility, and no longer allowing others to speak on our behalf and in our place.
Tomorrow night conmemorates the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, the time in history when for the first time queer people rose and fought back against constant harassment and police brutality at a bar in New York. Who would have thought that a single, revolutionary outburst would become such a pivotal crossroads for our community? For contemporary gay people and our emancipation movement, Stonewall marks the single most important event in our collective history.
But it's not all there is to our history. We're not just about oppression and freedom. There is much more to queer history! We're not just the scared persons who were pushed into the corner by bullies forty years ago. Four decades are quite insignificant within the span of human history.
In pre-Colombian times, aboriginals in the Americas knew gay people as two-spirited. These two-spirits had the role of shamans and ritual keepers and were revered, sometimes even feared. Other cultures, like the Germanics, knew these shamans as ergi, or gatekeepers in the case of the Dogon of Africa, or kedoshim in the Middle East. In Siberia, in fact in all continents, gays performed these sacred roles, and there were clear parallels between all of these roles. What Carl Jung would have called an 'archetype of the collective unconscious' seems to have been at play.
But man-made, non-aboriginal, non-natural religions erased our sacred history and people forgot about these sacred persons. Belief systems that did not arise out of our own experience and psyche crushed our humanity and dignity. Today, instead of performing our assigned rituals and seeking ecstasy through transcendental means, many gay men are seeking to channel their gifts in unwholesome, drug-filled lifestyles. They are hurting themselves, and our temples have been driven underground. They are dark caves where "trance music" is played. We should seek trance and we should experience ecstasy: that is our role, but we should do it in a wholesome manner. The fact that gay people always display the ecstatic and the creative in exhuberance is an indication that our psyche is hard-wired for that: we are STILL two-spirited.
The holy land of India is one of the few places on Earth (the other one being a state in Mexico with a huge aboriginal population) where the two-spirited caste (the hijra) are recognized as one of the peoples of God and their myths, legends and folklore are still observed. Beyond these lands, many are still struggling to convince people of our inherent right to exist and apologizing for being here. Most people in the gay community have to acquire the proper understanding that the secularization of two-spirited identity is an error: we ARE different from the rest of the population, and our own myths are a huge psychological tool and resource that should be preserved and celebrated.
Antinous was not 'the God of Gays' in antiquity, but he is considered so by many today. The events surrounding Antinous' life, passion, death and resurrection (whether believed in literally, or symbolically as a collective experience) are hugely important for us, whether we acknowledge it or not. They speak of an age where gay people were not dehumanized and demoralized, when the establishment did not seek to destroy our dignities and our hopes, an age where gay youth were idealized and even sometimes deified. Huge contrast to the modern rate of suicide and self loathing among gay youth, who must struggle to 'come out' - our society's euphemism for evolving past invisibility, silence, and shame.
Coming out should not be approached from the platform of shame. In pre-Colombian times it was during vision quests that two-spirited people first spontaneously manifested their vocation. Coming out should take place with the assistance of knowledgeable shamans, and it should be incorporated into a more comprehensive process of psychological rebirth. But people don't know ... we who know need to educate others.
In 2002, just as the modern version of the cult of Antinous was founded (coincidence?), the villa of Emperor Hadrian was rediscovered in Tripoli, Italy. In it were numerous busts and representations of Antinous, who had been his lover in life, had died by drowning in the Nile during the festival of Osiris' passion, death and resurrection, and was later deified by Egyptian priests who believed that his death by drowning in the Nile was sacrificial.
After two years of drought and with the entire Roman empire facing the chance of a huge famine if the drought pushed into the third year, after Antinous' death there was a huge inundation and opulence returned to the land. This was seen as a miracle by his followers ... Antinous, they believed, had died sacrificially since the sacred river was a deity, known as Hapi, who accepted human sacrifices. Hadrian had outlawed human sacrifices, and Antinous' death had been apparently accidental, but this was a very ancient belief and the priests were convinced that Antinous had completed his salvation.
They also believed that a new star that had appeared in the constellation of Aquila was Antinous himself, displaying his new divinity. These types of things occur, they're called super novae. Stars die and are born every day ...
Archetypes are like riverbeds which dry up when the water deserts them, but which it can find again at any time. An archetype is like an old watercourse along which the water of life has flowed for centuries, digging a deep channel for itself. The longer it has flowed in this channel the more likely it is that sooner or later the water will return to its old bed. - Carl Jung
AVE VIVE ANTINOE!
~ HAPPY PRIDE EVERYONE ~
0 comments:
Post a Comment