So, in mentioning Pete Seeger yesterday, I got to listening to and thinking about some music from the 1960s, and I went immediately to this Jefferson Airplane favorite of mine:
And that also got me thinking:
We know Antinous’ birth-date from two different independent sources (a Graeco-Egyptian cult calendar and a Latin collegia constitution from Lanuvium), so it’s pretty certain that November 27th was his birth-date. (There’s no other reason for the selection of that date…!)
So, if that is his birth, then we also know that, likely as not, and barring any knowledge about him being premature or late in his birth, his date of conception was probably in late February, or possibly early March if he was a bit early (but if he had been, the likelihood of his survival past infancy would have been much lesser).
In certain other religions, the conception of their main divine figure is celebrated nine months exactly before the birth; so, what about following a similar pattern for Antinous?
Or, should it be forty weeks before, since that is reckoned as the perfect amount of time for someone to be fully gestated in the modern scientific world?
If we went with “nine months,” that means his date of conception would be February 27th.
If we went with “forty weeks,” that means his date of conception would be February 20th.
But, there’s already a lot going on in that latter vicinity of February, whereas the end of the month is a bit clearer…
Or, perhaps we could do something wacky with leap year? (Though the year 110 was not a leap year, from what we know…but his birthday would have been on a Wednesday that year–appropriate enough for someone connected to Hermes, and who is even said to be his son in some texts! The year 112 was a leap year, but that would make Antinous a great deal younger than we thought, which then throws a few matters of interpretation off for how his life unfolded…hmm.) If we went with this, and then only had his conception take place as a festival during leap years, that might be intriguing…indeed, I had heard of people suggesting in Neos Alexandria before I was a part of it that (in absence of knowledge of his actual birth-date) Antinous’ birth be celebrated on leap year…but this actually lines up relatively well…
And, in any case, there could be certain further Serpent Path connections that could be engineered for the festival as well…
So, I don’t know: what do you all think?
1) Should Antinous’ conception be celebrated at all?
2) And, perhaps more importantly: how? What activities would be done on that day?
3) And, what date in late February would be the most sensible one for it?
I’m eager to hear your thoughts on this, especially if you are a regular devotee of Antinous!
