I had thought, from your flings against the expressions "boy god" and "holy boy imago," that you wanted to discuss the topic?!?!

In reading Timothy D'Arch Smith's /Love in Ernest/ (a book about the English Uranian poets, 1890-1910) for a research project, I came across a passage which makes clear the notion of the "Holy Boy Imago." I do not use the adjective "holy" to recommend him as a COMPETITOR WITH GOD for BL affections; I use it to to distinguish and free the HBI from the PARTICULARITY of any PARTICULAR boy the the BL's eye may happen to fall on, and from the PHYSICALITY (never far from LUST) which is so often a feature of the masculine gaze. It's a Platonic thing. Consider the following passage from Edward Emmanuel Bradford. Bradford, of course, is NOT taking a Christian view, but has completely surrendered himself to worship of his "boy-god." But he does a very good job of articulating the way he experiences his MALE SELF IMAGE AS FRAGMENTED, and he describes very nicely how those shards manifest themselves to him, as he sees them one-by-one in Edwardian England.

"My friend is my God. I know no other God. He is not one and indivisible, but one and a million times divisible. I find him everywhere, because once I found him in a single soul. He gave me my clue. He is the little apprentice who looks a momentary greeting to me across the counter, as I speak to him kindly over some trifling purchase: he is the litle ink-stained clerk, who moves nearer to me on the the seat of the omnibus, he does not know why: he is the young undergraduate whose eyes meet mine with a serene shyness as we pass in the street; he is the young engine-driver who stops work for a moment with his hand full of cotton-waste, and wonders where we met before: he is the eager-faced young factory hand with stooping shoulders who bends forward and gives me a light in the train: . . . There is the bond we would have between the shop-assistant and his friend." (Shop Slavery and Emancipation (1912))

And what use is it, Blackstone, or what pleasure to God, to have one's MONOTHEISTIC JARGON correct, if in reality one's heart is given over to creaturely affections?

---Didaskalos