Where's the chicks? In the Greek fête pictured above. Where's the chicks? That's a dead giveaway. Classical Athens, whether or not the squeamish Etics want to admit it, had a "Pederastic Tradition." Which is another squeamish way of saying that In the Athens which is so admired by Academics and Artists, Male Homosexuality was not only tolerated but it was ritualized and mythologized. We are not talking about Female Homosexuality, since that is a scenario in a Universal Male Fantasy and has long been tolerated, if not encouraged. But the sticky stuff, the Mano-a-mano of Man to Man - that has a long and checkered history of wild pendulaic swings from the Tolerated to the Pink Triangles of the Nazi Concentration Kamp System. Homos, it turns out, go up the chimneys just like Jews and Gypsies. Commies and Polacks. The Greek System, aka their "Pedarastic Tradition," revolved around the distinction between Eromenos and Erastes. The "Eromenoi" was an Adolescent boy - usually between puberty and 17 - who was in a "love relationship" with an Older Man. The Adult Male was known as the "Erastes." The Eromenos were also called "paidika" and if you squint you can see words in there like: Pediatrician and Pederast, Encyclopedia and Pedantry. The root: "pedia" has to do with the raising up of children. In Sparta they called the Eromenos an "aites" which means "hearer." I suppose this makes the Adult Erastes the "Speaker." You can follow the Analogy to its core perceptual concepts of "giver and taker." Skippy finds it interesting that in Navajo the same linguistic verbal root means both "giving and taking." The Navajo made their Homos into powerful Shamans and Medicine Men. In Greece the "Golden Mean" was first and foremost a Philosophical description of how to live a balanced life between the passions of the Emotions and our Rational Intellect. The Eromenos/Erastes relationship was governed by "Enkrateia" - Self-mastery and Discipline. Enkrateia described Moderation and Self-Restraint in all matters. Much of Greek Homosexual life was akin to Courtly Romance in the Medieval Midi where Passion is never actually spilled. Much of it was not.
The Captain and Ibeca were gone. Flown back to the States from Paris after we had all quit Mont St. Michel. Skippy grabbed A Eurostar between Paris and London via the Chunnel and was drinking Guinness on the back lawn of his Kensington Garden Hotel and staring at the crisscrossing web of Vapor Contrails from all the stratospheric jetliners which were traversing the skies of the rapidly crumbling British Empire. London is probably the most efficient and beautiful of all 3rd World Cities, but it more and more reminded Skippy of the Sub-Text of this picture which he took by just aiming his camera up - anywhere in the sky - the semi-guided randomness of it all. Sooner or later there was bound to be a catastrophic collision. Sure, the Moderns will tell you that our Technological Mastery of life is also founded on "Enkrateia" - Self-Mastery - and they start to sound like Oscar Wilde, both protesting and explaining too much. I was in London for a few days before heading south and west to the Cornwall Peninsula and the English version of le Mont St. Michel which is called: St. Michael's Mount. Pooler had already returned to his "properties" in London and he and I had both a Mission and a Plan. Pooler and I had been discussing the links between Oscar Wilde, the Secret Gospel of Mark, Morton Smith, and an underground Fraternity of Gay Men in Victorian England. Pooler assured Skippy that there was an odd but interesting link between all of this and the Iconography and Hagiohistory of St. Michael the Archangel, who - along with his Recension-Clone St. George - was the Patron Saint of Great Britain. St. Michael is bigger than the Beatles in England and with more Cultural Impact in what Braudel called the Structures of the "longue durée." Fernand Braudel was a Parahistorian - a species of Academic History which studies the "Structures of Everyday Life," over the Lineage of Kings and the dates of the big battles. Parahistory finds meanings in Medieval Cheese distribution routes and in the uses of local Stone products in the construction of Roofs in the regions of France.
Braudel is interesting to Skippy because the Frenchman is considered the John the Baptist of World Systems Theory. The Precursor. He was the leader of the Post WW2 Historical approach which made meaningful distinctions between the "histoire événementielle" - a History of Events or "courte durée" (short span) history - and "Longue Durée" history, which studies the "all but permanent or slowly evolving structures." The Battle of Antioch is Event History, while the position of the "Crusade" in Western Mentalité is Long-Haul History.
Click the Eagles 11 times to watch Mike get his Lance back.
Uranian is a 19th Century word which at first "referred to a person of a 3rd sex ... someone with a female psyche in a male body" who was perforce attracted to men. Later, the term swelled to include "homosexual gender variant females, and a number of other sexual types." The word itself is an English corruption of the German word: Urning - coined by Karl Ulrichs in 1865 in 5 booklets of his which were collected under the title: The Riddle of Man-Manly Love. Urning was in use 4 years before the "first public use of the term `homosexual.' Brits adopted the term `Urning' but had soon transformed it into `Uranian.'
Click on the Water Whore 12 times and decode London into its Parahistories.
Oscar Wilde, and his Victorian Brits, soon bent the term Uranian to their own uses. It became the blanket term which covered any organized attempt to advocate Gay Emancipation. Uranian, in British Gay hands, came to describe "a comradely love that would bring about true democracy," unite the "estranged ranks of society" and break down all class and gender barriers. By 1870, the term was hijacked by the cohort of young, overly educated, artistic Gay men who were esconced in the major Universities of Britain and studying the Greek Classics and inventing Romantic Poetry. Much of the Poetry is pederastic - but not overtly - it hides in plain site as flowery love paens without specifying the gender of the beloved. The 3 major Uranian Poets were: Gerard Manly Hopkins, Walter Pater, and Oscar Wilde. The Uranians thought of themselves as Gnostics and Carpocratians - not as a subculture but as "The" Culture. In their minds they were the "true heirs of the Western Greco-Roman tradition." Uranians were children of Eton and of Oxford almost exclusively. There they were schooled by the Erastes - the Older Male in the quotient - who taught them that the Eremenos/Erastes tradition of `paiderastia' - Boy-Love - "was a phenomenon of one of the most brilliant periods of human culture." The Urnings at Wikipedia continue: "The word itself alludes to Plato's Symposium, a discussion on Eros (love). In this dialog, Pausanias distinguishes between two types of love, symbolized by two different accounts of the birth of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. In one, she was born of Uranus (the heavens), a birth in which `the female has no part'. This Uranian Aphrodite is associated with a noble love for male youths, and is the source of Ulrichs's term urning. Another account has Aphrodite as the daughter of Zeus and Dione, and this Aphrodite is associated with a common love which `is apt to be of women as well as of youths, and is of the body rather than of the soul'. After Dione, Ulrichs gave the name dioning to men who are sexually attracted to women. However, unlike Plato's account of male love, Ulrichs understood male urnings to be essentially feminine, and male dionings to be masculine in nature."
Braudel argued that "Structures" - by which he meant "many kinds of organized behaviors, attitudes, and conventions, as well as literal structures and infrastructures" - had been `constructed' in Medieval Europa that had been of primary importance in the successes of Euro-Culture and were still present and operating today. Think of Victor Hugo's ramblings on the invention of the `Freedom of the Press' as stemming from the Artistic Licence given to Medieval Stone Masons who peppered their creations with whimsical, dangerous, and sometimes obscene sculptural elements.
Click the Crown 8 times and Geomance the Archangel's AOA.
The Ancient Greek Code of Eromenos/Erastes went like this: The Older Male - the Erastes - would pursue a young boy and try to win his affection. Drop your "Longue Durée" concepts such as Seduction, Stalking, and Prey; in the Classical Greek the relationship was highly ritualized and ceremonious, therefore the abstract, intellectual, and spiritual properties of the Man/Boy Love are - at first - prominent. The Yoot - the Eromenos - was expected to put up a Ritualized Resistance. Especially if he was a special Yoot and had several Erastes sniffing after him. The purpose of the resistance was to gain experience and select the best suitor. Some Eromenoi were so desireable they became the object of street brawls between their competing Erastes. Be still my quiet heart. Most Eromenos moved in with their older Erastes and would live with them until they came of age at 18. At that time the vast majority of Eromenic Unions dissolved. There's a clue in that. Much of this Greek Relationship is not really about Homosexuality. Grok this: a Sociobiological and/or Evolutionary Psychological take on Classical Greek Tolerance to Homosexuality would cleverly point out that the arrangement has a strong Economic component to its Etiology. Fathers are murderously pissed if you Spoil their daughters who are Economic Units of Wealth. Daughters are trained to "Marry Up" and forge family connections with other well-performing Economic Units. But Fathers often could care less if you bugger their sons who could end up being Economic Competitors. Just So, n'est ce pas? If the Yoot picks well and links up with a Richer, Powerful, and Connected Erastes his future is secured. Nearly all of the Eromenos go on to marry and raise families and live predominantly heterosexual lives save for the odd buggering of a delicious slave boy. Which is their right. By Law. But the key to the Eromenos/Erastes cycle is that the Yoot does not pursue the Elder, and that he does not simply submit. He must resist and heighten the tension, jack-up-the pot, raise the stakes. It's a Ceremony. A Ritual. To Uranians, it's Sacred and connects us back to the "True Faith," before St. Paul and his Homophobes hijacked the Faith and brought it West.
Skippy sums up the Uranian Creed like this: "The Uranians believed that Grecian pederasty had not only been Sanctioned by the gods, but had also Seeded Western Philosophy, had spurred military bravery, had inspired the highest arts, and had cradled democracy." Of course Skippy Summed all that up with some other Etic's words. Highly Ironic in the light of things discussed. This Uranian Weltanschauung was not, unfortunately, shared by the dull and the witless, aka - the Majority. So Uranians had to continue to lead clandestine lives while among the Others. There were rifts among themselves as to how far they should go in propagating their "boy issue." Oscar Wilde represented the `Unibomber' Wing. Hopkins sublimated. Pater lied.
Click 10 times on the Uranian Button and Explicate the Streets.
For a page about Gay Boys, Skippy sure does use a lot of Pussy Pics. What's that all about? Huh? Every phone booth in London - and most in the British Isles - look like this inside. Skippy thinks these must all be "Corinthian girls." Most of the themes which I have presented on this page about the Uranians are present in this short poem by John Addington Symonds - a fanciful translation of an ancient Greek dialogue called the Erôtes.
Skippy's going to steal that: "Lazy, lewd Corinthian girls." Maybe he'll pen an "Original" Walter Pater Poem and have Sinomé salt that mutha in the Pre-Raphaelite Papers in the Archives. Let some PsychoHistorian figure those dichotomies out. Uranian Culture - look what the Mind invents when it has no acceptable, prescribed outlet for `Inverted' thoughts. Its own Universe; its own Social Construction of Reality. A New Gospel claiming to be the First Gospel and like all Gospels, based solely on the Mindset of its Maker. And leaving its fingerprints all over its creation. Fernand Braudel should have written a Parahistory of the Gay World; Morton Smith could have been one of its Apostles and Evangelists.
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