Order of Nine Angles

An Occult Way

As we have emphasized for over thirty years, the Order of Nine Angles is an esoteric, and Occult, group. Which in essence means that – beyond exoteric propaganda and rhetoric; beyond adversarial incitement, heresy, japes, and toying with mundanes – our primary concern is the interior change of individuals by means of particular Occult methods and Arts and which Occult methods and Arts form the basis of our particular esoteric Way. These particular Occult methods and Arts include and have included the Seven Fold Way, the Rounwytha tradition, traditional Satanism, amoral adversarial-heretical praxis, and sinister tribes.

As I mentioned in my essay O9A Adversarial Action – Success or Failure?

” Our real work, both as individuals and as an Order – our Magnum Opus  – is genuinely esoteric and Occult, and thus concerned with lapis philosophicus and not with some purely causal self-indulgence, or some ephemeral outer change in some causal form or forms, or with using such forms to try and effect some external change. For it is this esoteric, this Occult, work which will, affectively and effectively, introduce and maintain the Aeonic changes we desire and plan for – in its own species of acausal Time.”

In practical terms, the interior change of individuals, this esoteric alchemy, involves individuals: (1) developing a certain type of personal character; (2) acquiring certain skills both exoteric and esoteric; (3) acquiring – from both personal experience (pathei-mathos) and from an intellectual learning – a certain initiated knowledge and insight; and (4) living in a particular manner as a result of the foregoing.

Occult Orders such as the ONA primarily exist and are maintained in order to facilitate and encourage this interior, personal, change in those individuals such Orders have recruited or in such individuals as have succeeded in finding such Orders and overcoming the various obstacles placed in their way.

Such facilitation and encouragement most usually takes the form of a practical and structured Way or Ways, simply because such a Way or Ways have been shown, by experience, to work. There is thus for the individual, both in archetypal and in practical terms, a very personal journey of learning, experience, and discovery – that is, a structured and an initiatory Occult quest, since given the nature of human beings with their psyche being a nexion, a formal declaration, as in Initiation and subsequent rites, is a necessary prelude to inner, long-lasting, personal change, just as some structure is practical, effective, providing as it does that necessary supra-personal perspective and a tangible goal.

As mentioned in the essay Knowing, Information, and The Discovery of Wisdom,

” In terms of esoteric, Occult, matters, to know is both to learn from personal experience and to place what is so learnt in a particular context, that of one’s personal internal and external journey along the particular way or path that one has, by initiation, chosen to follow.”

The Ways of the ONA – our Dark Arts and methods, and thus our provided structure and rites, initiatory and otherwise – are simply our collective pathei-mathos, the results of our hereditary practical experience and learning, forming as this ‘ancestral pathei-mathos’ does the essence of our O9A esoteric culture, and a practical experience and learning, an Occult knowledge, which just is what it is: a tradition concerning a certain esoteric alchemy.

Pathei-Mathos

Our particular Occult style, our ethos, can be usefully and accurately described by one term: pathei-mathos. For us, pathei-mathos is a particular Occult method (one of the Dark Arts) and this Dark Art may be said to be the basis for all of the Ways – and for many of the techniques – we employ and have employed, from the Seven Fold Way to Insight Roles to adversarial action to grade rituals such as Internal Adept and the Camlad Rite of the Abyss.

Pathei-Mathos as a Dark Art involves the individuals in: (a) personal suffering, (b) a learning from adversity, (c) the development of certain Occult skills, and (d) acquiring practical personal experience.

As mentioned elsewhere, all these diverse experiences are meant by our use of the term pathei-mathos, and therefore all such experiences are necessary for interior, esoteric, alchemical, change within the individual. Not just ‘personal practical experience’; not just Occult skills, and not just a ‘learning from adversity/challenges’, but also and importantly a learning from personal suffering: from grief, severe trauma (physical and/or emotional), personal loss, and an encounter (or many encounters) with the imminent possibility of one’s own death.

Thus the Dark Art of pathei-mathos requires the individual to willingly experience/seek-out certain difficult practical experiences in order to test themselves and learn from such experiences, with each type of experience of necessity involving both the sinister and the numinous and of necessity being of several years duration. Why of necessity? Because of our nature, our physis, as human beings; a nature which it is one of the tasks of an initiatory Occult quest – where certain Occult skills are developed and used – to reveal, to discover. A human nature the inner changing/transformation of which – to be effective, to last – takes a certain duration of causal Time, amounting to years. A changing of which occurs and has occurred, in human beings, sometimes – though rarely – naturally; and a changing which Occult Ways and Dark Arts, and esoteric Orders, are designed to produce in more human beings in a somewhat shorter duration of causal Time.

Such willingly sought, decades-long, practical individual experiencing of ‘the dark’ and of ‘the light’ does not – should not – make the individual popular with the likes of Homo Hubris or the hubriati. Nor even understood by the majority of those who regard themselves as Occultists, ‘satanists’, or whatever.

Such years-long, practical individual experiencing, with the commensurate and necessary ‘rites of passage and learning’ – such as the grade ritual of Internal Adept – also produce an individual (whatever shapeshifting cloaking they may exteriorly employ in the world of mundanes) who is, interiorly, out-of-phase with the world around them, and who thus understands, who knows, who feels, who has felt, far more than the majority of human beings so that communication with ‘these strange others’, these strangers, this majority, such mundanes – trying to inform such strangers of such knowing, such feelings – is either an unwanted burden for one of our kind or, more usually, regarded as unnecessary, irrelevant, counter-productive. For the sinisterly-numinous has to be experienced to be known, breeding as such experience does discernment, a distaste for mundanity, and that Aeonic perspective that is disparaged by or unknown to those vulgar, plebeian, humans we describe by the term Homo Hubris.

Being Unpopular

Given the nature and aims of esoteric Orders such as The Order of Nine Angles, they are not concerned about mundane matters such as being ‘popular’ nor about being understood by mundanes. Our nature is to discover, by experience of the sinister-numinous, the Reality hidden by abstractions, beyond the illusion of opposites.

This discovery involves an esoteric – a living – alchemy, given that we, as human individuals, are nexions, a nexus between causal and acausal, with a living (a sinister-numinous) psyche capable of change and development. An esoteric alchemy – an initiatory Occult quest – where we become a new type of symbiotic life, part of a living cosmic matrix, and which symbiotic living, far beyond the ego, the unbalanced hubris, of mundanes, can, through our discovery of Lapis Philosophicus, gift us with our aims of wisdom and perchance the possibility of an existence beyond the causal death of the mortal self.

Thus our Order, our O9A, remains – of necessity, intentionally – small in numbers; discerning, and, through Dark Arts such as pathei-mathos, for and the genesis of the discerning minority among those beings termed human. Yet this very aristocratic intentionality, imbued as it is with our esoteric ethos and thus with the sinisterly-numinous, with archetypal mythos, is – over aeonic durations of causal Time – both affective and effective in provoking, being the genesis of, changes within a larger number of human beings.

Anton Long
Order of Nine Angles
123 yfayen

Note: These explanations are taken from various published ONA texts – including A Glossary of ONA Terms (v.3.07) – and also from some unpublished ONA texts dealing with alchemy.

Aeonic Perspective

The expression ‘the Aeonic perspective’ – also known as the Cosmic perspective – is used to describe some of our pathei-mathos, some of our experience; that is, to describe some knowledge we have acquired through a combination of practical experience, through a scholarly study, and through using certain Occult faculties and skills, such as esoteric-empathy.

This knowledge concerns several matters, some to do with how we understand the individual human being, some to do with our perception of Aeons, and some to do with our praxis and the purpose and effectiveness of our methods and techniques both exoteric and esoteric.

In terms of causal forms, there is the initiated understanding that what, for human beings, is esoteric, evolutionary – that what presences acausal energy and thus Life – is inner not outer change. That is, that no causal form, no non-Occult praxis, produces or can produce Aeonic change, although such forms, such praxis, may occasionally result in some, a few, individuals each century, via pathei-mathos, achieving a certain insight and understanding and thence becoming changed, more evolved, human beings.

Or, expressed differently, the changes wrought by causal forms – by wars, revolutions, empires, nations, and through means such as politics or social reform, or by governments – are transient, and do not, over centuries, affect human beings en masse. For humans remain and have remained basically the same; rather primitive beings, dependant on and in thrall to abstractions, to their emotions, to archetypal forces, and never developing their latent faculties, never fulfilling their Cosmic potential, with only a rare few human beings achieving wisdom.

Alchemy

al-χημία [ from χῡμεία ] – ‘the changing’.

According to aural tradition, esoteric alchemy – the secret alchemy – is a symbiotic process that occurs between the alchemist and certain living ‘things’/elements, the aim of which symbiotic process is to acquire or to produce Lapis Philosophicus, and which ‘jewel of the alchemist’ is reputed to possess both the gift of wisdom and the secret of a personal immortality.

Alchemy, correctly understood and appreciated, is not – as the mis-informed have come to believe or been led to believe – concerned with the changing, the transformation of inert, lifeless, substances (chemical or otherwise) but with the transformation of the alchemist by a particular type of interaction with living ‘things’, human, of Nature, and of the Cosmos, and of living ‘things’ existing both in the causal and the acausal realms. [Hence the old association between alchemy and astronomy.] This interaction, by its nature – its physis – is or becomes a symbiotic one, with the alchemist, and the substances/things used, being thus changed by such a symbiosis.

That is, it is concerned with what we describe as ‘the sinisterly-numinous’; with accessing and using/changing the acausal energies of living beings, and which acausal energies of necessity include the psyche of the alchemist.

Hence, esoteric alchemy is a particular type of ‘internal change’ within and of the individual as well as a practical esoteric Art involving the manufacture/use of particular types of esoteric – living – substances/’beings’/things.

A minor example of one such alchemical substance, symbiotically produced, is petriochor. Another is the particular type of energy produced when a human being or (more effectively) when a collocation of human beings in symbiosis among themselves, use particular esoteric chants in conjunction with a shaped crystal during a propitious ‘alchemical season’.

Esoteric

By esoteric we mean not only the standard definition given in the Oxford English Dictionary, which is:

” From the Greek ἐσωτερικ-ός. Of philosophical doctrines, treatises, modes of speech. Designed for, or appropriate to, an inner circle of advanced or privileged disciples; communicated to, or intelligible by, the initiated exclusively. Hence of disciples: Belonging to the inner circle, admitted to the esoteric teaching.”

but also and importantly pertaining to the Occult Arts and imbued with a certain mystery, and redolent of what we term ‘the sinisterly-numinous’.

Lapis Philosophicus

The jewel of the alchemist; the goal that the alchemist, through alchemy, seeks. Possession of this jewel is, according to aural tradition, sufficient to gift the alchemist with both wisdom and the secret of a personal immortality.

Occult

By Occult we mean both: (1) concerned with The Dark Arts, with what is esoteric, and (2) beyond the mundane, beyond the simple causality of the causal, and thus beyond conventional causal-knowing.

Psyche

The psyche of the individual is a term used to describe those aspects of an individual – those aspects of consciousness – which are hidden, or inaccessible to, or unknown to, the individual. Basically, such aspects can be considered to be those forces/energies which do or which can influence the individual in an emotional way or in a way which the individual has no direct control over or understanding of. One part of this psyche is what has been called “the unconscious”, and some of the forces/energies of this “unconscious” have been, and can be, described by the term “archetypes”.

In practical terms, the psyche of the individual is a nexus, between causal and acausal.

Sinister-Numinous

The term sinister-numinous is used to describe the living unity beyond the abstract, the lifeless, division and dialectic of contrasting/abstractive/ideated opposites. A division most obvious in the false dichotomy of ‘good’ and ‘evil’, and a division not so obvious in denotatum.

The Dark Art of pathei-mathos is one means to know, to experience, the sinisterly-numinous, and thus to discover the Reality beyond the illusion of opposites. What is uncovered is The Sinister-Numen, which is the genesis of that which, and those whom, re-present certain types of acausal energy in the causal.

Certain archetypes, and archetypal forms, are – exoterically – sinisterly numinous, and hence have the ability to influence and inspire human beings – as well as, in some cases, having the ability to direct certain individuals beyond the ability of those individuals to control such direction.

One of the most practical manifestations (the most practical presencing) of the sinister-numen in the causal realm is The Law of Kindred-Honour, and which Law serves to define, and to manifest, that which is not-mundane, and thus that-which-is-ONA.

Wisdom

By term wisdom we mean not only the standard dictionary definition – a balanced personal judgement; having discernment – but also the older sense of having certain knowledge of a pagan, Occult, kind to do with livings beings, human nature, and concerning Nature and ‘the heavens’. To wit, possessing certain faculties, such as esoteric-empathy, a knowing of one’s self; possessing an Aeonic knowing; and thus knowing Reality beyond, and sans, all causal abstractions.

Order of Nine Angles

Between us, we [of the O9A] have over fifty years – half a century – of pathei-mathos resulting from personal experience of adversarial action, ranging from political, religious, and social activism, to ‘criminal’ activities, to clandestine revolutionary and subversive deeds, to military, paramilitary, and law enforcement experience.

For some of us, such practical experience was acquired before involvement with our esoteric Way; for others, such learning resulted from using and applying one of our Dark Arts, such as an Insight Role. Given that our base was and mostly still is in the Isles of Briton, perhaps the majority of this experience relates to events in these lands. From the protest movements of the 1960′s, to ‘the troubles’, to the social unrest of the 70′s and 80′s, to recent conflicts involving the alleged ‘clash of cultures’ between Islam and the West, there is a wide variety of experience. In addition, we have the mostly aurally related experiences and learning of several individuals – drawn to us decades ago and now no longer with us in the causal realm – whose pathei-mathos derived from major conflicts such as that commonly known as the Second World War, and which experiences of that conflict were of those who fought on both sides, allied and axis.

There is thus a diverse, rich, heritage here – an ancestral pathei-mathos of our new culture – from which we might learn, especially in regard to the effectiveness of adversarial action and regarding the use and manipulation of causal forms.

However, before proceeding further it might be useful to recall what we mean by ‘success’ and ‘failure’. For us, there are two criteria, individual and Aeonic; that is, whether such things have been shown, by experience, to work – to be effective – on the personal level and/or on the Aeonic level. The personal level obviously is that of a personal learning and development, and thus the alchemical, interior, change produced – in terms of esoteric skills, change in personal character, and so on – is often apparent, and often manifest by the progression of the individual along the Seven Fold Way. But the Aeonic level is often not so apparent, involving as it does an understanding and appreciation of our Aeonic aims and goals, and a shared desire, among us, to aid them. ^[1]

Personal and Aeonic Perspectives

In general, what we may with some justification call our ancestral pathei-mathos indicates that our particular adversarial praxis works both in respect of being a vector of alchemical, interior, change in our people, and in respect of testing and weeding out those lacking the character, the potential, to be of our kind. That is, it is and has been successful in breeding the requisite personal character and in enabling individuals, via their own pathei-mathos, to move toward the goal of wisdom. Or, understood in terms of our aims, goals, successful in producing and nurturing our new type of human.

But what of Aeonic change, our Aeonic aims and goals? There are, in my view, several questions, here. (1) Has the use of adversarial praxis by our people over some forty years achieved anything Aeonically? That is, in practical terms of undermining, replacing, The System and/or moving toward our New Aeon? (2) What does our ancestral pathei-mathos indicate in this respect; that is, the practical learning from experience of those whose learning was acquired before the foundation of the ONA and who subsequently became ONA? (3) What does a reasoned, scholarly ^[2], overview of the past thousand or two thousand years of human history reveal in respect of methods of human change?

I shall consider the last of these questions, first. Thus, what – to use a mundane cliché – do the past two thousand years of wars, revolutions, empires, conquests, tyrants, kings, insurrections, revolts, riots, religions and their schisms, propaganda, rallies, marches, demonstrations, speeches, political parties, and so on and so on, teach the sagacious among us? Or, expressed more precisely, what does the pathei-mathos of those who endured such things, who experienced such things, who participated in such things, who lived through such things, who learned from them, teach us, as recorded in their writings, their aural accounts, their lives, their deaths, their literature, their reflexions (philosophical or otherwise), their artistic, musical, emanations?

My own conclusion, derived intellectually nearly forty years ago, was that they reveal something important; and quite a lot of my life these past forty years has been devoted to testing this conclusion in a practical manner, often via my own pathei-mathos, as well as devoted to acquiring more intellectual knowledge that might prove or disprove this conclusion.

My conclusion was that all such external things have not in any significant way aided, changed, evolved, the majority of humans. That humans, in their majority, remain mundane, rather primitive, beings – in thrall to their feelings, desires, and addicted to and reliant upon causal abstractions; easily swayed and easily manipulated. That the cultured, the noble, the aristocratic, among us are and have remained a small minority, never more than five per cent, often less. That the potential which humans have, as a species of sentient living beings, has remained unfulfilled, and that as a consequence wisdom is still the prerogative of only a few human beings per century.

In brief, that as vectors of effective human change, such large-scale, supra-personal, events and means, just do not work; that all they do is add a few more to the roll of those distinguished by their personal learning from adversity, hardship, suffering, and the overcoming of challenges.

The past forty years of my living has, for me at least, revealed the veracity of that conclusion, and which conclusion then at that early time was one of the inspirations that led to the founding of our esoteric, our Occult, Order.

The answers to the other two questions I posited, previously, also – and again to me – support this conclusion. That is, that both our ancestral pathei-mathos, and the experiences of our people in using adversarial praxis Aeonically, have shown that such external means, and our adversarial praxis, have not affected The System in any significant way, and nor are they likely to in the near future.

In effect, our people – those with us for a decade or more – have, via their own experience and their own scholarly studies, learnt or come to learn what I myself have learned, and which learning has affected them, changed them, internally, alchemically, as indeed is right and fitting, and Occult ^[3].

Where then does this leave us? With what knowing? What knowledge?

Our Aeonic Perspective

It leaves us with our unique Aeonic perspective, and which perspective is, in my view, a part of wisdom; part of our esoteric tradition. An inner inspiration for our kind.

This is of two things. First, how real, genuine, change in individuals – of their physis, their nature – is a slow process, and while our Occult ways and our Order exists to aid and propagate this process of interior change, to affect/infect a significant number of humans will take long durations of causal Time, from a century to many centuries. Second, that our real work, both as individuals and as an Order – our Magnum Opus  – is genuinely esoteric and Occult, and thus concerned with lapis philosophicus and not with some purely causal self-indulgence, or some ephemeral outer change in some causal form or forms, or with using such forms to try and effect some external change. For it is this esoteric, this Occult, work which will, affectively and effectively, introduce and maintain the Aeonic changes we desire and plan for – in its own species of acausal Time.

Which leads us naturally on to two other connected, and important, matters concerning the nature of our Order – of our family, our culture – and concerning the nature of our own human lives and why we are part of and stay with our esoteric family.

Our Order is predicated on us as nexions. Of we individual human beings having both causal and acausal physis, and of there thus being things that are Occult; of us having the potential, the ability, to change, to learn, to adapt, to develop, to evolve in a conscious manner, by using certain faculties, and certain Dark Arts, and so developing other Arts, other faculties; and of our Order by its existence gradually increasing the number of human beings who do so change, evolve.

In practice, this means, as I mentioned just now, that our Order is in essence and intent an Occult one, devolving around the individual quest for lapis philosophicus and which individual quests, collectively, over durations of causal Time – and involving as such quests do adversarial praxis and a certain collective, family, co-operation – are our Aeonic sorcery and thus produce and will produce Aeonic change in an affective, a lasting, manner.

But this predication also means that such an individual quest does not necessarily end with the termination of the causal shell, our fragile microcosmic physical body, that contains the inner acausal physis; which is why of course the last stage of our Seven Fold Way, of our individual Magnum Opus, has no representatives, and can have no representatives, in the realm of mortals. Since it involves using lapis philosophicus to egress beyond the causal and into the acausal spaces. Which is to say that the few achieving this, while no longer dwelling in the causal – no longer ‘alive’, no longer having their old causal shell – become, by the very nature of their now acausal-being, ‘unseen’ vectors of human, Aeonic, change, and of the evolution of the Cosmos itself. A type of change, a type of existence, open to many many humans, were they only able to see beyond the veil of the mundane and free themselves from abstractions, from the desires of their primitive, illusive, self.

Conclusion

In peroration, it is such understandings, such arcane knowledge, such knowing, such ancestral pathei-mathos, which separate and distinguish us, our Order, from the many others – groups, individuals – who in these times of ours claim to be Occultists, or of the Left Hand Path, or who now proclaim to use some adversarial praxis or other.

For we view ourselves, and our Order, in a Cosmic way, in an Occult way; as nexions. Our aims, our goals – our physis – making us a family bound by loyalty and oaths of initiation, and which family, in its growing, its slow, natural growing, is becoming a culture, a tradition, with its own ancestral pathei-mathos. Our perspective thus and of necessity including not only our family, past-present-future, but also being of the acausal spaces, the existences, that await for us beyond our own individual causal ending.

Anton Long
Order of Nine Angles
122 yfayen

[1] These Aeonic aims and goals include breeding a new more evolved human species; developing new ways of living for this new type of human and thus replacing The System; and for our new species to leave this planet we call Earth (our childhood home), grow to maturity, and establish ourselves among the star-systems of our own Galaxies, and other Galaxies.

[2] By scholarly is meant both learned and having undertaken meticulous, unbiased, research on a specific subject over a period of some years.

[3] By Occult is meant The Dark Arts, and the sinisterly-numinous, and those matters and skills and abilities which are hidden from, or unknown to, or not possessed by, mundanes.

Order of Nine Angles

Knowing and Information

In my view, both the importance and the usefulness of the impersonal ‘world wide web’ for esoteric groups – for a living esoteric tradition – has been overestimated by many people. I remember growing up in an overseas land where there was no television, where news was received by short-wave radio, and where communication with friends and nearest neighbours meant either taking the trouble to visit them personally, as there were few telephones outside of the major cities or towns, or writing then posting a letter and awaiting the reply. Newspapers, when they were available, were generally a few days old.

Although perhaps difficult for many people, today, to appreciate and understand this meant that one acquired a particular way of viewing the world and of doing things. The personal way, that often of necessity involved a certain effort and a certain amount of waiting. For instance, I can remember, later on in another overseas land, waiting weeks or more usually several months, for a book to arrive; since acquiring knowledge meant finding and asking someone who knew, or visiting a (usually poorly stocked) library some distance away, or purchasing a book from the nearest bookshop (also usually some distance away) and often then waiting because the book was not in stock and had to be specially ordered. Once such information was obtained, available, there then followed a learning of and from it, which itself took a certain amount of time, followed, in turn, by a period of reflecting upon – and often enjoying – the new knowledge so slowly and with effort acquired. There was also the feeling that one was on a long journey of discovery and that there may well be, and probably was, more to be found on a particular subject ‘out there’ – in some books or books, to be learned from someone else, or found in some scholarly journal.

This personal effort, this wait, to find and then acquire knowledge was itself instructive, personally beneficial, although again many people, today, will not understand nor appreciate this older way; a way that, for centuries, formed the basis for traditional esoteric groups and a way I deliberately made part of The Order of Nine Angles.

This is why, for example, I consider and have always considered that the ‘world wide web’ is now, has been for a decade or so, and may continue to be for a while, basically just a useful, convenient, medium for personal communication, a means of dissemination of information among our people, and a useful accessible informational resource for our people and others. Anything else – such as incitement of others, the possibility of recruiting a few people using this new medium – is secondary to this, and always has been.

For example, from the beginning, and for over two decades, when some new ONA MS was written, or when an aural tradition was written down, it was by means of a manual typewriter, and the resultant sheet or sheets of typewritten paper had to be photocopied, and then circulated either by means of posted letters or by being personally handed-over to others.

Now, today, that type of process is used only occasionally, with many of our newer MSS being available and having been made available on our nineangles website, just as my own ‘weblog’ allows not only the dissemination of new MSS but also of occasional articles giving my personal view of certain matters. But what is presented by this new medium is information, not knowledge. Knowledge of some-thing is – as the Old Icelandic kunnleik suggests – an intimate, detailed, knowing of and acquaintance with that ‘thing’, whereas information (enformation) is merely a statement or a collection of statements about or concerning some-thing.

Or expressed in our now familiar terms, knowledge – as we understand it – is numinous, a part of one’s life, whereas information is lifeless, causal, an outer form. For in terms of esoteric, Occult, matters, to know is both to learn from personal experience and to place what is so learnt in a particular context, that of one’s personal internal and external journey along the particular way or path that one has, by initiation, chosen to follow.

What has thus occurred is that many people have or seem to have confused information – accessible and communicated by the medium of the ‘world wide web’ – for knowing. That is, they by means of some computer monitor or some other modern means read or access some information about, for example, the ONA and then presume they ‘know’ about the ONA or have knowledge of an esoteric topic written about by the ONA, whereas all they have done is make assumptions concerning or form a personal opinion about such matters, with some people even going so far as to then develop an opinion concerning the person they assume wrote such information.

For the meaning is in, acquired from, discovered by, the personal knowing. By taking the time, making the effort, to learn; to acquire a detailed, personal knowing of, and then to place that knowledge in the context of one’s own knowledge and that of knowledgeable others and which others one knows and respects personally or who have acquired respect by virtue of their practical experience and/or their scholarly knowledge [1]. The meaning, the knowledge, is not in the information; not in the medium that might be used to convey such information.

The reality is that the ‘world wide web’ encourages a pretentious, spurious, or illusory, ‘knowing’, the rapid communication of this, as well as a pretentious, spurious, ‘respect’ among and of anonymous others – something especially true regarding the relaying of messages by diverse people by means of some ephemeral ‘forum’ or ‘discussion group’ or something similar where those who do not know converse with, and argue with, others who either do not know or who pretend to know something about that which they have no direct personal experience of and have not spent years acquiring a scholarly, a detailed, knowledge of. In short, the ‘world wide web’, while having some advantages in respect of making information accessible, has the disadvantage of having become the medium of choice for a certain type of Homo Hubris and for the rapid circulation of their vapid, plebeian, opinions and assumptions.[2]

The Discovery of Wisdom

One of the main reasons for the existence of esoteric groups, a clan, such as The Order of Nine Angles is to be a living hereditary repository of a certain type of knowledge and to personally, directly, encourage some individuals to acquire the culture, the habit, of learning – practical, scholarly – and thus enable them to move in the traditional manner toward the goal of discovering and acquiring knowledge and thence wisdom [3]. In the process of this moving-toward, some of these individuals may or will be changed, and thus become a breed apart, one of our kind; indeed, over almost forty years, the ONA has had some success in producing some such individuals of our particular, peculiar, sinister kind.

All the ‘world wide web’ has done – as, previously, photocopied material posted to unknown others did – is enable us to present information, possibly incite some people, and provide an opportunity, to and for more unknown others. An opportunity, for some of these unknown others, of learning, and of using, applying, our Dark Arts such as that of Pathei-Mathos, and which opportunity some have availed themselves of, leading to a few – and only a few – becoming part of the ONA and thus beginning their own guided esoteric journey according to our sinister Way.

That some or many individuals – using the ‘world wide web’ to spew forth their opinions and assumptions – seem to have mistaken the presentation of such information, and such an opportunity, for the ONA reveals something about those individuals, especially when they congratulate themselves, and are congratulated by others of their ilk, for their pretentious, illusive, ‘knowing’ via some ephemeral aspect of something as ephemeral as the ‘world wide web’.

As I wrote over twenty years ago:

” Satanism is elitist. It does not compromise – its tests, ordeals, methods and character-building experiences are severe and will never be made easier to make them acceptable to more people or easier to undertake.” The Hard Reality of Satanism

For the discovery of wisdom, esoteric and otherwise, involves an arduous journey of decades, and which journey is replete with much practical, personal, learning and many dark experiences.

Anton Long
Order of Nine Angles
123 yfayen

Footnotes

[1] As mentioned elsewhere, by scholarly is meant both learned and having undertaken meticulous, unbiased, research on a specific subject over a period of some years.

[2] One distinguishing mark of such types of Homo Hubris is their arrogant unbalance, deriving from a lack of pathei-mathos, that is a lack of certain Occult skills and never having experienced grief, severe trauma (physical and/or emotional), personal loss, nor an encounter (or many encounters) with the imminent possibility of their own death, never mind never having experienced over years and in practical ways both the numinous and the sinister. Refer, for example, to Pathei-Mathos and The Initiatory Occult Quest.

[3] As mentioned elsewhere, by the term wisdom is meant not only the standard dictionary definition – a balanced personal judgement; having discernment – but also the older sense of having certain knowledge of a pagan, Occult, kind to do with livings beings, human nature, and concerning Nature and ‘the heavens’. To wit, possessing certain faculties, such as esoteric-empathy, a knowing of one’s self; possessing an Aeonic knowing; and thus knowing Reality beyond, and sans, all causal abstractions.

Pathei-Mathos

Pathei-Mathos is a term – appropriated from Myatt’s philosophy of The Numen – that we, the Order of Nine Angles, introduced a few years ago into Occultism in order to describe a certain internal (alchemical, esoteric) process, both individual and Aeonic. As occurred with the term Traditional Satanism, introduced by us some decades ago, it has been used and is now being used, and mis-used, by others, both in an Occult and a non-Occult context.

Therefore, as there does seem to be something of a mis-understanding as to what is meant and implied by the term pathei-mathos in both an Occult and a non-Occult context, some explanation of the term seems in order.

As Myatt has explained, pathei mathos -  πάθει μάθος – is a Greek term (used by Aeschylus in his Agamemnon) which can be variously interpreted as meaning learning from adversity, or wisdom arises from personal suffering, and/or personal experience is the genesis of true wisdom.

These, taken together, impute the correct esoteric meaning and O9A usage, which is that wisdom [1] – one goal of the Adept [2]; acquiring a true, balanced, understanding; the dis-covering/revealing of Reality – has its genesis in the combination of: (a) personal suffering, (b) a learning from adversity, (c) the development of certain Occult skills, and (d) practical personal experience. That is, that all these diverse experiences are meant by our use of the term, and therefore that all such experiences are necessary for interior, esoteric, change within the individual. Not just ‘personal practical experience’; not just Occult skills, and not just a ‘learning from adversity/challenges’, but also and importantly a learning from personal suffering: from grief, severe trauma (physical and/or emotional), personal loss, and an encounter (or many encounters) with the imminent possibility of one’s own death.

There thus arises, from such pathei-mathos, certain intense personal feelings, a certain insight, and thence, in many individuals, a certain knowing – of yourself, and of how finite, how microcosmic, the individual human being is and just how fragile the human body is. In essence, the individual is placed in context and, if they possess a certain potential, a certain character, are changed by – learn from – the experiences. Of course some humans dwelling on planet Earth – lacking a certain potential, and possessing an altogether different character – do not change, do not learn from pathei-mathos. Which is to say that pathei-mathos tests, selects, reveals, and can breed a somewhat different type of human.

In that sense, it is and has been a useful esoteric technique, a new type of Dark Art. Which is one reason why the ONA has such techniques as Insight Roles, grade rituals such as Internal Adept; an exoteric adversarial – heretical and amoral – praxis; and tough physical challenges. So that individuals can test themselves and be tested; can suffer, can endure hardship and triumph or fail; can shed affectations and come to know themselves for who and what they are; and can acquire the necessary esoteric, Aeonic, perspective, of themselves as a fragile mortal nexion.

For what pathei-mathos as a Dark Art does, has done, and can do is allow the individual to outwardly experience and to internally confront within themselves both the sinister and the numinous, the ‘light’ and the ‘dark’, and to thus learn from – or fail to learn from – such experiences, interior and exterior. Which is why Occult, initiatory, methods such as the Seven Fold Way and the Way of the Rounwytha exist and were originally devised, for they provide context, a living tradition (ancestral pathei-mathos/’guidance’) and form a tried and tested path toward the goal of positive, evolutionary, individual change and toward the goal of acquiring wisdom.

Lacking such methods, there is generally either failure or, more common, the delusion of attainment. For few if any of those trying to use pathei-mathos as a Dark Art – sans such structured methods – have (a) ever willingly or unwillingly experienced the imminent possibility of their own death; (b) ever suffered severe trauma (physical and/or emotional) and (c) ever willingly testingly betaken themselves into the realms of the numinous, content as they are with themselves and their prideful ego to such an extent that they adhere to the primitivism of ‘might is right’ and believe stuff such as the grandiloquent I command the powers or ‘I can and I will command the powers…’

Thus they remain unbalanced; incomplete; far from wisdom, never having – via πάθει μάθος – melded ἀρετή with their ὕβρις and thence betaken themselves far beyond both those imposters.

Which is why this particular technique of ours  – pathei-mathos as a Dark Art – has two distinct phases, conventionally represented by the attainment of Internal Adept and then by a successful Passing of The Abyss.

Which is not to say that such structured methods as our Seven Fold Way and the Way of the Rounwytha are the only means to wisdom, as we understand and appreciate wisdom. Only that they have proven effective in enabling some individuals to achieve that tertiary goal; an effectiveness that can be appreciated by a personal knowing of such individuals, and also by their creative effusions, be such Occult, or philosophical, or personal, or, in the case of a few individuals, musical/artistic, or scholarly [3], or pedagogic.

The Initiatory Occult Quest

Internal Adept – as is now well-known in part due to the availability of texts such as Naos – is the phase, the stage, the iteration, of our sinister initiatory Occult quest, where the external gives way to the internal; where a personal destiny can be revealed; and where a certain inner knowing, and thus balance, is attained. An inner knowing, a balance, similar to, though not identical to, the individuation described by Jung. A knowing which the new Internal Adept carries with them throughout their life and which makes them, when they encounter the mundane world again after their three months or so (or more) spent in solitude, feel somewhat misplaced, bringing as this feeling does in many a sense of not belonging in the present but rather to some distant past or to some distant, longed for, future.

But this new knowing – partly acquired as a result of the months of solitude in isolated wild places and often slowly, gradually, more generally acquired over subsequent months – is not itself wisdom, being as it is of a more personal nature. That is, of their feelings, their relation to Nature; of the things they themselves now do so desire to do: to create, to manifest, to perhaps explain.

Beyond all this is the rite of The Abyss, preceded – by those following a sinister initiatory way – with a lengthy and practical engagement with the numinous; and preceded – by those following a numinous initiatory way – with a lengthy and practical engagement with the sinister. That is, preceded by the experience of, and the living over a period of some three years or more of, the numinous/sinister aspect, followed by the integration of that aspect and a going-beyond – again, in practical terms – of the personal amalgam that results, a going-beyond that the rite of the Abyss is an integral part of.

This experience, this living of ways of life, of and for at least three years, of the apparent opposite from one’s initially chosen path [4], is very easy in theory but quite difficult and testing in practice, undermining and destroying as it does and must the self-image – the sense of Destiny, the self-importance, the pride – that the Internal Adept rite helped to reveal and then the Internal Adept strove for some years to manifest, to presence. For the new type of knowing, for instance in respect of someone following a sinister initiatory way, is of others, of empathy, of the connexions that bind them, beyond their self, to Life: to other human beings, to Nature, to the Cosmos. Of affective (acausal) and effective (causal) change.

The rite of The Abyss – as manifest in the Camlad Rite with its dark simplicity, its stasis, its dangerous requirement of confinement for a whole lunar month – is where the old pathei-mathos before and following the rite of Internal Adept is melded with the new pathei-mathos of those recent three or more years. For the candidate has nothing else to do but dwell upon such matters, and to try and simply be, to be what they are and always were, one microcosmic connexion, suspended between causal and acausal Time. In addition, and crucially important and necessary, the candidate has to implicitly trust someone; trust them to leave food and trust them to reveal when their lunar month of isolation has ended. [5] In effect, they entrust their own life to someone else, for a whole lunar month.

Conclusion – The Breeding of A New Race

All this garnishing of experience, by the Dark Arts and by the Dark Art of pathei-mathos, is difficult and takes a certain duration of causal Time, of the order of decades, and of necessity involves not only exeatic, adversarial, and Occult experiences, but also learning from personal suffering: from grief, severe trauma (physical and/or emotional), personal loss, and an encounter (or many encounters) with the imminent possibility of one’s own death.

Therefore show me someone claiming to be wise, claiming to have gone beyond the stage of Adept, who is younger than a certain age, who has not endured grief, severe trauma (physical and/or emotional), personal loss, and an encounter (or many encounters) with the imminent possibility of their own death, and I shall show you a liar, a fraud, a charlatan, a poseur, or someone so deluded they actually believe the fantasy they have created for themselves and maybe also for others.

Conversely, not everyone beyond a certain age, claiming to follow or who actually has followed an initiatory Occult quest, is or might be wise, or even an Adept. For wisdom is either a profoundly rare wyrdfully-given gift – obvious by the personality, life, and works of the mature individual – or the result of someone successfully following, over several decades, an initiatory Occult quest to its exalted ending, a success again obvious by the life, the personality and the works of the individual [6]. For both types – those wyrdfully given the gift and those acquiring it by Occult, alchemical, means – are harbingers of a new human race and, from this race, this new breed, of a new human species.

Of the wyrdfully-given there are, perhaps and despite what mundanes desire to believe, only three or so per century. Of those who acquire it, for themselves, there are, as yet, only slightly more than that small number, per century. Which is why such initiatory Occult ways, and the Dark Art of pathei-mathos, exist: to bring-forth, to breed, more and more such beings in ever increasing numbers.

The way, the means, to wisdom exist; but so far humans have shown little inclination to follow the way, to use the means, preferring as they so obviously do ease to difficulty, lives of self-delusion, of subservience to causal abstractions, and of slavery to their lowly human desires and/or to others.

Anton Long
Order of Nine Angles
123 yfayen

Notes

[1] By term wisdom is meant not only the standard dictionary definition – a balanced personal judgement; having discernment – but also the older sense of having certain knowledge of a pagan, Occult, kind to do with livings beings, human nature, and concerning Nature and ‘the heavens’. To wit, possessing certain faculties, such as esoteric-empathy, a knowing of one’s self; possessing an Aeonic knowing; and thus knowing Reality beyond, and sans, all causal abstractions.

[2] The other goal is immortality, which for us means a new existence in the acausal.

[3] By scholarly is meant both learned and having undertaken meticulous, unbiased, research on a specific subject over a period of some years.

[4] The pdf compilation Enantiodromia – The Sinister Abyssal Nexion gives some general guidelines for such ways of living.

[5] This trust, being a hitherto aural tradition, was deliberately omitted from the details of the rite published in the aforementioned text.

[6] As we have emphasized many times over the years – and as our Code of Kindred Honour demands – we, our kind, judge a person by, and only by, a personal knowing of them, and of their deeds, extending over a certain duration of causal Time. Anything else is the mark of a mundane.

In many Order of Nine Angles texts mention is made of ‘the Aeonic perspective’ and since this perspective is an important feature of ONA esoteric philosophy, and thus part of O9A culture and our aural tradition, some explanation should be of interest ^[1].

The expression ‘the Aeonic perspective’ – also known as the Cosmic perspective – is used to describe some of our pathei-mathos, some of our experience; that is, to describe some knowledge we have acquired through a combination of practical experience, through a scholarly study, and through using certain Occult faculties and skills, such as esoteric-empathy.

This knowledge concerns several matters, some to do with how we understand the individual human being, some to do with our perception of Aeons, and some to do with our praxis and the purpose and effectiveness of our methods and techniques both exoteric and esoteric.

An understanding and appreciation of this knowledge in all its aspects is part of the learning, the knowing, of those who are part of our culture and thus who are ONA.

The Individual

In our esoteric philosophy the individual human being is regarded as a nexion. As having both an acausal and a causal nature, and as possessing, or being imbued with, a certain amount of acausal energy and which acausal energy is what animates physical matter making it ‘alive’. In one sense, the psyche of the individual is how some of this energy is naturally manifest in us, and an esoteric praxis such as our Seven Fold Way – or our Way of the Rounwytha – are a means whereby we can rationally apprehend and thus come to know and understood and control such energies/forces, some of which are archetypal in nature, when perceived exoterically ^[2].

In addition, the nexion that is the individual is part of the matrix of all living beings, human, of Nature, of the Cosmos. That is, the individual is a connexion to all other Life, terran and otherwise, although this connexion is dormant and undeveloped in most human beings. That is, a latent faculty. One of the aims of many Occult ways – be they termed of the Left Hand Path or of the Right Hand Path – is to make the individual aware of this connexion that they are, open it, and develop it, and certain esoteric techniques have been developed in order to try and accomplish this, with Initiation often being regarded as the beginning of this process. Our techniques to open and then develop this inner nexion include Insight Roles, the adversarial praxis of the Niner, the Grade Rituals (especially Internal Adept and the Camlad Rite of The Abyss) and the acquisition of skills developed by techniques such as The Star Game and Esoteric Chant.

In esoteric terms this means that we, the O9A, are concerned with:

(1) Both Wyrd and destiny. That is, with the development of our Initiates and Adepts (their destiny) and with the development of Aeons, and thus with how the individual relates to those energies/forces which are beyond the individual and which effect them until they have completed a successful Passing of The Abyss when they emerge with wisdom: that is, with a knowing, skills, understanding, and experience sufficient to enable them to synchronize with, and then later on manifest, Wyrd.

(2) Both the sinister and the numinous – the sinisterly-numinous. That is, with the knowing, the experience, the understanding, of both and then a moving toward and a living involving the Reality beyond such apparent opposites.

In practical terms this means that the individual perceives of themselves as such a connexion, balanced between all of the following: (1) their own individual past; (2) the past of their own ancestors; (3) the past of Nature; (4) the past of Cosmic life; and between the present and the futures of all those emanations of being. Part of this perception is thus of the nature of Aeons and how they themselves are part of an existing Aeon, an existing presencing of wyrdful energies on Earth. This perception can then – and according to their newly dis-covered and understood personal nature/character – enable the individual to choose a way of living which further aids their own personal development and which enables them to presence acausal energies in order to affect what is Aeonic, with such ways of living including that of the (often reclusive) Occult Adept, that of the Rounwytha, that of a clan/tribe/gang, that of the adversarial Niner, and that of the Balobian.

The Understanding

Having such a perception, the individual understands causal forms, and esoteric praxis, as a means, and a means both personal and Aeonic. That is, as a means to aid their own personal development and to participate in Wyrd and thus participate in the change, the development, the evolution, of life itself, both as manifest on our current home, terra firma, and elsewhere in the Cosmos.

Other esoteric groups, especially of the LHP, do not present them with this understanding and thus cannot offer them the opportunity of such a wyrdful participation, concerned as such LHP groups are with guff such as the ‘deification of the self’ and the perpetuation of primitive human beings by means of a belief such as ‘might is right’ ^[3].

In terms of causal forms, there is the initiated understanding that what, for human beings, is esoteric, evolutionary – that what presences acausal energy and thus Life – is inner not outer change. That is, that no causal form, no non-Occult praxis, produces or can produce Aeonic change, although such forms, such praxis, may occasionally result in some, a few, individuals each century, via pathei-mathos, achieving a certain insight and understanding and thence becoming changed, more evolved, human beings.

Or, expressed differently, the changes wrought by causal forms – by wars, revolutions, empires, nations, and through means such as politics or social reform, or by governments – are transient, and do not, over centuries, affect human beings en masse. For humans remain and have remained basically the same; rather primitive beings, dependant on and in thrall to abstractions, to their emotions, to archetypal forces, and never developing their latent faculties, never fulfilling their Cosmic potential, with only a rare few human beings achieving wisdom.

This is why initiatory Occult groups and orders of our kind exist – to manifest and maintain such understanding over centuries; to produce and encourage, over centuries, Aeonic changes, and to develop, evolve, human beings by means of Occult Arts and thus in the only effective way: from within; esoterically; by changing their character, their nature.

This is also why we insist on a personal knowing, on inner alchemical change; on individuals learning from practical experience, both sinister and numinous and both exoteric and esoteric. Why we are organized as we are, as kindred families and nexions, as a kindred collective, and as a culture with traditions both esoteric and aural. And why we take a long-term view of matters both exoteric and esoteric – for our perspective is that of centuries, of Aeons.

The Order of Nine Angles

The ONA is thus not some ‘causal form’, but rather a type of nexion; a collocation of human beings connected over durations of causal Time in particular ways who, by virtue of being kindred both esoterically and exoterically maintain and expand their acausal presencing over such long-durations of causal Time. A causal form is just that: causal, denuded of or not possessing wyrd/acausal energy; a manufactured, lifeless, thing, a tool. A nexion is redolent of Wyrd, and is alive, a type of living entity, be such an entity an individual or a collocation of developed individuals manifest as an esoteric Order.

An esoteric Order with an Aeonic perspective produces both internal and external change in an affective, sinisterly-numinous, way. That is, we not only change a limited number of individuals, personally, individually, by our Occult Arts, over long-durations of causal Time, but also – because we are redolent of Wyrd – directly and indirectly influence others, greater in number than the number of our initiates, by our very existence, by our ethos, our methods, our philosophy, our mythos, with some for example adopting and adapting some of our praxis, some of our Occult Arts, some of our esoteric philosophy.

Thus does such an esoteric Order as the ONA provoke an evolutionary, a sinister-numinous, change in some of those so influenced, whether or not they know it and whether or not they try to hide it from themselves and others.

As I wrote in another recent essay:

” We grow and have grown slowly, as befits our Aeonic perspective. Slowly, through personal contact, a personal knowing, pledges of duty and loyalty based on our code of honour…It means we are something of a large, growing, unconventional family, whose relations and relatives are becoming dispersed around the Earth, and who – unlike many extended natural families – have a shared, supra-personal, purpose and a shared culture.

Naturally, like all families, sometimes there are disputes, as sometimes a young son or daughter leaves home to adopt another culture or none. But by and large the family stays together, because of our culture, our traditions, our practices, our Occult abilities and faculties, our very long-term esoteric aims and goals.

Which is one reason why many of our people have been with us, part of our family, for ten, twenty, thirty years and more, and why we have slowly grown through assimilating their friends, their sons, their daughters, their relatives, their colleagues. And why we have recruited, we still recruit and will continue to recruit, in the old-fashioned way.”

Anton Long
123 yfayen
Order of Nine Angles

[1] For us, culture implies five important qualities, and these qualities are (1) empathy, (2) the instinct for disliking rottenness, (3) the faculty of reason, (4) pathei-mathos; and (5) a living aural tradition. It is these qualities that not only distinguish us from other animals – and from Homo Hubris – here on terra firma but which and importantly enable us to consciously change, to develope, ourselves and so participate in our own evolution as beings.

For us, the cultivation and development of empathy is a Dark Art, part of the training of the Initiate. This particular Dark Art is a skill that rites such as that of Internal Adept develop. See, for example, the ONA text Dark-Empathy, Adeptship, and The
Seven-Fold Way of the ONA.

In respect of ‘the instinct for disliking rottenness’ see the ONA text Concerning Culling As Art (122yf).

[2] A very basic overview of causal and acausal is given in the ONA text A Brief Guide to The Esoteric Philosophy of The Order of Nine Angles.

For how we use particular terms, refer to v. ≥ 3.07 of our A Glossary of Order of Nine Angles Terms.

The Seven Fold Way (also known as the Seven Fold Sinister Way) is outlined in the text The Complete Guide to the Seven Fold Way, contained in the ONA pdf compilation The Requisite ONA.

The training of the Rounwytha is mentioned in the text The Rounwytha Way: Our Sinister Feminine Archetype.

[3] Refer to texts such as The De-Evolutionary Nature of Might is Right

Order of Nine Angles

There are two things concerning The Order of Nine Angles which may be said to express our raison ‘d’etre and which two things some people seem to have overlooked, in the past year or so, with all the talk and fuss and misunderstandings about collectives and adversarial, purely sinister, individual action.

The first is that our primary aim is to breed, to develop, a new type of human being with such new beings establishing new ways of living for themselves. The second is that we are now and always been an esoteric association ^[1].

The first means that we possess an Aeonic perspective, beyond the life of the individual. That we understand the achievement of our aims and goals in terms of long durations of causal Time, of centuries and more. That we know that changing an ordinary human into one of our kind is a slow, difficult, testing, process involving as it does such things as exeatic experience, practical challenges, and pathei-mathos, as well as a coming-to-live both the sinister and the numinous. Thus our kind develop an awareness and a knowing of themselves as a nexion balanced between causal and acausal and of possessing within them – latent, then discovered, then developed and then lived – the sinisterly-numinous. For such a knowing and then a living of the sinisterly-numinous is an essential part of the development, the breeding, the emergence, of our new kind.

The second means not only that we have certain Dark Arts, certain skills, certain Occult methods and techniques, as well as an esoteric aural tradition, but also that one of our tasks is to recruit some suitable individuals and for such initiates to begin to follow the Adeptus way, since we know, from experience, that such a practical and Occult way is most efficacious in producing the new breed of human.

Thus what has tended to be overlooked -  especially by those concentrating on using outer causal forms and upon immediate adversarial action – is the need to be, become, to live, to learn from, the sinisterly-numinous, and the importance we attach to the Adeptus way.

The Adeptus Way

The Adeptus way – the way of our adepts – is manifest both in our newer Seven Fold Way and in our more traditional Way of the Rounwytha.

The Adeptus way is a distinct way of life, involving a life-time commitment, so that our Adepts often feel and know how different they are from most other humans. Different in terms of personal character; in terms of faculties; in terms of knowing; in terms of experience; in terms of feelings, aims, and goals. And also in terms of how – even now in this Aeon where most human communication is still by words, written and spoken – they are able to communicate with their own kind and often with other humans sans words.

This communication of ours is not only the use of ONA-speak and of an esoteric langage or two – such as The Star Game ^[2] – but also the result of using and developing Occult faculties and skills such as esoteric-empathy and thus becoming empaths, and possessing talents such as foreseeing. Which skills and talents and faculties are muliebral ^[3] and which developing and possession and use of such muliebral qualities are one presencing of the numinous within a human man, with such a presencing necessary for that sinister-numinous balance which it is one of the aims of an Adept to cultivate and to live.

It is these qualities – and the type of character, the type of person they breed – that manifest the Adept and marks us as markedly different from the majority who apply to themselves, or to their beliefs, terms such sinister, satanist, and Left Hand Path, even though we ourselves are all those things and in many ways by our living define or redefine such terms.

For our Way is primarily esoteric and therefore is concerned with all of the following: (1) wyrd – the numinously archetypal; (2) with a type of learning that involves the arts of human culture, the Occult arts, and the pathei-mathos of Occult and exoteric experiences; (3) with developing certain faculties, such as esoteric-empathy; (4) with the sinisterly-numinous.

Thus, our Adepts are esoteric even when they are shapeshifting or living in the world of ordinary humans – such as when garnishing exeatic experiences or undertaking an Insight Role or living as an outlaw, a heretic, or are part of or leading a gang. Esoteric as not only in being secretive, but also as in learning, developing, esoteric skills and as in having within them a certain perspective, a certain knowledge, that places their own life and deeds into a wyrdful, an Aeonic, and thus into a Cosmic, perspective.

The Sinister-Numinous

The term sinister-numinous is employed by us – part of our esoteric ONA-speak – to describe the living unity beyond the abstract, the lifeless, division and dialectic of contrasting/abstractive/ideated opposites. A division most obvious in the false dichotomy of ‘good’ and ‘evil’, and a division not so obvious in denotatum and thus in both Magian religions with their god, prophets, scriptures, and in occultisms and religions devolving around named ‘deities’ ^[4].

As mentioned above, a knowing and then a living of the sinisterly-numinous is an essential part of the development, the breeding, the emergence, of our new kind, whether the individual be following the traditional Occult way of the Adept or using our newer sorcery of the way of the tribe/gang/clan and the way of the lone adversarial O9A operative (the Niner).

For such a knowing and such of living of the sinisterly-numinous – and the personal learning, the pathei-mathos, that results – is the means to know, to live, to be, the natural balance, the Life, beyond abstracted opposites and all abstractions, and it is this natural, wyrdful, Cosmic balance, that is the quintessence of our new type of human being, and makes us and marks as a breed apart, as quite different from Homo Hubris and all other manifestations of human life on this planet. That the necessity of this knowing, this living, this type of learning, has been overlooked or forgotten by many interested in the Order of Nine Angles is both interesting and indicative.

To experience, to live, the sinisterly-numinous and then learn from such living, is easier for the Adept than it is for those using our newer sorcery, since the Adept has a structured path to follow, particular Occult rites, and more often than not some guidance from one of our kind who has ‘been there, done that’.

In terms of the way of the Adept, an experience and thence a wordless personal knowing of this living unity is the purpose of the Camlad Rite of The Abyss ^[5] and of the living that precedes it, and forms part of the training of the Adept. Part of this personal knowing is of Wyrd, and thence of the Aeonic perspective beyond a personal destiny; a knowing, experiences, that move – that develop – the individual far beyond the attempted deification of the ego, the self, and beyond the hubris, arrogance, posturing, lack of self-honesty, and self-delusion, that are the basis of all Magian occultism, whether such occultism be described as RHP, LHP, or satanic.

This can be expressed in a simplistic, exoteric way, and which exoteric expression gives an insight into how those using the way of the clan or the way of the independent O9A operative might discover and then live the sinisterly-numinous ^[6]. In brief, our Occult kind, our Adepts, have: (1) a type of pagan knowing and understanding of the natural world ^[7]; (2) a certain sensitivity and empathy; appreciate such muliebral qualities in others, and thus appreciate, understand, women and their potential; and (2) a certain culture, where by culture here is meant the arts of life made manifest by living by our code of kindred-honour, having a living (and thus numinous) tradition, having self-control, self-honesty, having a certain learned knowledge of the Arts, literature, and music of their own ancestral culture, and having the all-important knowing of themselves as but one nexion between a causal past, their present short-lived life, and the wyrdful futures that will exist after their causal death.

Therefore one exoteric, and old, archetype which still usefully expresses something of the sinisterly-numinous for those of the male human gender is the chivalrous warrior of stories such as Le Morte d’Arthur but where the supra-personal ‘numinous’ element is not the religion of the Nazarene but rather our code of kindred-honour or something similar. Or, if one desires a more modern, heretical, and somewhat more accurate (but still incomplete, imperfect, exoteric) archetype, there are the warriors of the Waffen-SS, and what they were, of course, rather than what propaganda and lies about them have made them appear to be ^[8].

Anton Long
Order of Nine Angles
123 yfayen

Notes

[1] As I have mentioned elsewhere, by esoteric we mean not only the standard definition given in the Oxford English Dictionary, which is:

“From the Greek ἐσωτερικ-ός. Of philosophical doctrines, treatises, modes of speech. Designed for, or appropriate to, an inner circle of advanced or privileged disciples; communicated to, or intelligible by, the initiated exclusively. Hence of disciples: Belonging to the inner circle, admitted to the esoteric teaching.”

but also and importantly pertaining to the Occult Arts and imbued with a certain mystery, and redolent of the sinister, or of the numinous, or of what we term ‘the sinisterly-numinous’, and where by Occult in this context we mean beyond the mundane, beyond the simple causality of the causal, and thus beyond conventional causal-knowing.

[2] For the basic texts about the Star Game, refer to the ONA Star Game archive, currently (December 2011 CE) available at http://nineangles.wordpress.com/about/star-game-archive/

[3] As with many terms, we use this particular one in a precise and esoteric way. By muliebral we mean: of, concerning, or relating to the ethos, the nature [physis], the natural abilities, of women. From the Latin muliebris.

[4] See, for example, the text Denotatum – The Esoteric Problem With Names, and the pdf compilation Marcheyre Rhinings.

[5] The Camlad Rite is given in full in the pdf compilation Enantiodromia – The Sinister Abyssal Nexion.

[6] Some practical guidelines as to how to live the sinisterly-numinous are given in Enantiodromia – The Sinister Abyssal Nexion.

[7] By pagan here is meant the knowing and the appreciation of the natural world that is germane to the Rounwytha, for which see, for example, Marcheyre Rhinings.

[8] An excellent personal example here is Léon Degrelle. A good and truthful over-view of the Waffen-SS can be obtained by reading Degrelle’s account of his combat experiences in his book Campaign in Russia: The Waffen SS on the Eastern Front.

Order of Nine Angles

Marcheyre Rhinings is a useful pdf compilation of published essays about the ONA Rounwytha tradition, and is available here:

Marcheyre-Rhinnings
(pdf 231 kB)

Note that Rhinnings is also spelt Rhinings and Rhynnings. The standardization of English spelling is a fairly recent innovation, and sometimes such standardization both obscures and is unnecessary.

From the Introduction to Marcheyre-Rhinnings:

[quote]

This collection of essays is concerned, in the main, with part of the aural Rounwytha (or Camlad) tradition of the esoteric association known as The Order of Nine Angles. The recent essays by me included in this compilation had their genesis in questions asked of me by some academics interested in the ONA and our aural traditions, and also in the desire by some long-standing ONA folk for me to pen some scribblings about the Rounwytha tradition itself thus making this tradition more known, especially given the world-wide expansion of the ONA itself over the past decade or so.

In one or two of these essays – for example, the one entitled The Rounwytha Way – Our Sinister Feminine Archetype – suggestions have been made as to how this tradition might usefully be developed.

The Rounwytha Tradition was and is part of the aural tradition of a few pagan individuals – mostly women – who had their rural living in the border area between England and Wales, and in particular in parts of rural South Shropshire, and areas around the Camlad and Trefyclawdd.

According to aural accounts, in origin this tradition – which tradition it should be remembered was that of a small local area – dates to before the Roman conquest of Albion; to the tyma of small clans and tribes, and small rural communities of ‘free men and women’. It was, however, not a static but a dynamic tradition, slowly changed in some ways over millennia but retaining its esoteric, pagan, essence.

The Rounwytha (var. Rhinwytha) was an individual, regarded as wise, who was skilled in certain common esoteric matters, such as foreseeing, charms, and curing ailments – especially those attributed to what came to be called effluviums [1] - but who and importantly was also considered as an essential and balancing link between the seen (the ordinary) world and the strange world or worlds beyond the seen (the known). Thus it was the Rounwytha who knew the propitious tyma for certain communal celebrations and propitiations.  And all this because they were naturally gifted – or had developed – the skill, the secret, of empathy: of sympatheia with fluxions [2]; that is, they possessed an acausal-knowing of all Life: human, animal, of Nature, and of ‘the heavens’ (the Cosmos).

As mentioned in one of the essays included here:

” The Rounwytha needs no props, no outer causal forms, no esoteric ceremonies, rituals, chants, or whatever. They just are – they just are uniquely themselves, with their gifts, their abilities, their foibles, their knowing and their skills.” The Rounwytha Way – Our Sinister Feminine Archetype

In addition, as I wrote elsewhere:

“Our esoteric aural traditions are just that: aural, with few if any explanations or elucidations, aural or written. In many instances, these aural traditions are just stories and tales, akin to folk myths and legends, and [...] they are to be accepted, or rejected, on that basis, with their being no demand that our people ‘must believe’ in them or that they are accurate and/or describe historical events.”

Thus we make no claim as to the veracity of such traditions, historical or otherwise, it being for each individual to assess and thence to accept or reject such aural traditions. All we claim is that they are our aural traditions; are esoterically interesting, and – for us – are esoterically relevant and Aeonically important. They also in many instances are somewhat heretical, challenging as they do Magian archetypes and abstractions, Magian Occultism, and also the beliefs and assumptions of the Occulte status quo.

A few other non-Rounwytha essays – such as The Noble Guide To The Dark Arts – have also been included here, for context.

In addition:

” The ONA employs a variety of specialist esoteric terms, such a nexion, presencing, acausal, Tree of Wyrd, and so on. It also needs to be understood that the ONA uses some now generally used exoteric terms – such as psyche, and archetype – in a particular and precise esoteric way, and thus such terms should not be considered as being identical to those used by others and defined, for example, by Jung.”

Thus those unfamiliar with ONA terms are advised to consult A Glossary of Some ONA Terms, ≥ v. 3.03

Anton Long
Ane Orible Dragone
Order of Nine Angles
123 yfayen

Notes:

[1] That is, the egress into and out from the body of some imperceptible and harmful ðing or ðingges; what today we might describe as ‘energies/emanations’ and what more Nazarene-inclined folks might describe and have described as ‘demons’, but which in olden times were just viewed as ‘unlucky’ wyrd, often considered caused by some deed or by some transgression.

[2] Fluxions are described in the essay, included here, entitled Alchemical Seasons and The Fluxions of Time.

[end quote]

Order of Nine Angles

Introduction

Most of the following axioms and brief elucidations form part of the Camlad aural tradition that was, some forty years ago, incorporated into the esoteric association The Order of Nine Angles. The remainder are my own elucidations and development of the tradition, with some of these elucidations of mine using the terminology and ontology of causal, acausal, and nexions. ^[1]

In the text Auf dem Wasser zu singen: Yet Another Interview with Anton Long – first distributed 114yf/2003eh – I briefly mentioned alchemical seasons in reply to a question asked of me:

“An alchemical season is a natural process which occurs in Nature, and also in we ourselves, who are beings of Nature. They are Change; a natural dialectic… There are also, of course, Cosmic alchemical seasons, some of which we know – in terms of their beginnings and their ending – by various observed astronomical events, often relating to star or planetary alignments…”

Both before and after the distribution of that text – as now, and especially since the publication of Naos in 1989 ce – there was and is much speculation about, and some misunderstandings concerning. alchemical seasons; speculation and misunderstandings which this new text should go some way toward dispelling.

The particular/peculiar numbered layout of the axioms and elucidations in this text is my own, and which layout is much less formal in the section concerning Alchemical Seasons, since there I have often simply recounted or retold the aural tradition itself. The particular/peculiar numbered layout was originally employed by me, decades ago, as a personal aide-mémoire.

I have included an un-numbered section of my own devising which gives some explanation of alchemical seasons.

It should be noted that by alchemical here is meant the esoteric science associated with azoth and other such esoteric ‘things’. This is the science of the changing/alteration/understanding of living beings, and other substances, by a symbiosis/interaction between alchemist and such beings/substances. Which is ‘the forbidden alchemy’ of some Occult traditions, and which type of alchemy, and such symbiosis, has been the subject of, or mentioned in, several ONA MSS during the past forty years. For instance:

” The secret of the Magus/Mousa who lies beyond the Grade of Master/LadyMaster is a simple unity of two common things. This unity is greater than but built upon the double pelican being inward yet like the stage of Sol, outward though in a lesser  degree. Here is the living water, azoth, which falls upon Earth nurturing it, and from which the seed flowers brighter than the sun. The flower, properly prepared, splits the Heavens – it is the great elixir which comes from this which when taken into the body dissolves both Sol and Luna bringing Exaltation. Whomever takes this Elixir will live immortal among the fiery stars…”

Which in essence means that “from the double pelican comes Azoth”.

One particular example of such a symbiosis – of such alchemy – is the esoteric ‘perfume’ Petriochor [qv. Sinister Tradition - Further Notes published in Fenrir Vol.3 #2]. The production of this ‘perfume’ during a particular alchemical season is difficult, and takes a certain duration of causal Time, but what imbues the final product, after distillation, with esoteric worth – with acausal energy/the sinisterly-numinous – is the interaction/symbiosis that occurs between the alchemist and the substances, and which substances are all part of the living being that is Nature..

Time

1. Time is Numinous ^[2] – that is, of living beings, and thus biological not linear (of-causality). Therefore Time cannot be re-presented or measured by a fixed causal calendar, solar, lunar, or otherwise.

1.1 Thus, Time varies according to Physis. That is, varies according to the nature, the character, of the living entity that manifests – presences – it.

2. There are a variety of different species of Time.

2.1 Thus, our species of Time differs from that of the other living entities/beings/emanations, Earth-dwelling or otherwise.

3. Time is a Fluxion ^[3]. That is, Time is already inherent in living beings, part of their physis.

3.1 Each living being has a Fluxion appropriate to – which re-presents/manifests/presences – its physis and thus which is appropriate to/manifests its type/species of life.

3.1.1 Thus, linear time – as measured by a fixed causal calendar and/or as defined by such things as the ratio of distance and velocity of a physical object – is Appearance/Abstraction not Reality.

3.1.2 Such linear time thus re-presents only the causal physis/nature of material objects/matter and thus manifests the physis/nature of the causal.

3.2 A Fluxion manifests what is a-causal. That is, how a particular living being changes/develops/manifests.

3.2.1 A Fluxion has an outer (exoteric) appearance and an inner (esoteric) nature/physis.

3.2.1.1 The outer appearance is how the being is perceived to change/develop/grow/decay.

3.2.1.2 The inner nature is how the being may, might, or could, change/develop/grow/decay by the use of traditional/esoteric/alchemical arts/skills.

3.2.1.2.1 A knowing of this inner nature is a gift of the Rounwytha.

3.2.1.2.1.1 This gift can be cultivated by the development and use of esoteric-empathy.

3.3 Since Time is a Fluxion, and alchemical, a Rounwytha may be able to alter/change/manipulate/weave Time.

Alchemical Seasons

4. An Alchemical Season is a means of measuring/determining/knowing fluxions, and thus a means of knowing living beings and how they change or could be changed.

5.1 Thus, an Alchemical Season is often what is the best/appropriate ‘season’ to know/get-to-know/celebrate particular emanations presenced to us as living beings, or particular collocations of such beings, and/or the ‘season’ to initiate a particular change or changes.

6. This ‘season’ varies according to the nature/species/type of being/living-entity/emanation, and often differs from individual emanation to individual emanation of each type/species.

7. Knowledge of Alchemical Seasons is both traditional/aural and found/discovered by each Rounwytha.

8.1 It is for each Rounwytha to determine the veracity or otherwise of such aural tradition by their own personal knowing.

9.1.1 This knowing derives from esoteric-empathy.

10. One such collocation of emanations/living-beings is Nature.

10.1 This particular collocation contains a wide variety of types of being.

11. Another such collocation of emanations is the Cosmos.

11.1 This particular collocation contains entities/life having acausal emanations/acausal-being, entities having causal-acausal emanations/being, and entities manifesting causal emanations (a causal-being).

11.1.2 Acausal-causal beings/emanations are nexions between causal and acausal.

12. The beginning and the ending of certain Alchemical Seasons are often associated with, or intimated by, certain observed natural or cosmic phenomena.

12.1 These associations and intimations are often locale-dependant and usually subject to Cosmic and Aeonic drift.

12.2 Such observed phenomena include those connected with Nature and those connected with ‘heavenly bodies’, that is, with the Cosmos.

12.2.1 Those connected with Nature include the behaviour of Earth-dwelling living beings, sentient and otherwise; the fluxion of Nature’s seasons, and certain patterns of or certain phenomenon of ‘the weather’.

12.2.2 Those connected with the Cosmos include the observed rhythm of star-collocations (constellations); the occultation of Sun by Moon, and of certain stars by Moon; the observed rhythm of observable planets; and the first rising of certain stars above the horizon of the Rounwytha as determined by the fluxion of Nature’s seasons.

12.3 Such associations with observed natural or cosmic phenomena do not mean or imply that such phenomena cause or are the origin of the changes, the fluxion, of living-beings.

12.4 Associations/intimations connected with Nature are sometimes known as Earth Tides.

12.4.1 Associations/intimations connected with the Cosmos are sometimes known as Cosmic Tides.

13. Certain Alchemical Seasons form the natural calendar used by the Rounwytha.

The Nature of Alchemical Seasons

It will be thus be seen that Alchemical Seasons are of various kinds, and serve or may serve different functions.

For instance, certain Alchemical Seasons are and were how the Rounwytha determined – knew and understood – the changes of Life around them. That is, how they reckoned Time, and the fluxions of Time that were made manifest as living beings – for instance, the life, the ailing, the foreseeing of death, of humans; and the natural rhythms of Nature and the Cosmos.

This knowing ‘of propitious times’ aided, and often enabled, their sorcery; their use and manipulation of certain energies – emanations, or fluxions – for a variety of purposes, as it also enabled them to use their skills in respect of such matters as ailments and their cures.

For example:

” A certain knowledge of herbs was/is a useful Rounwytha skill, and some of this knowledge could be, and sometimes was, acquired from an older Rounwytha. But in essence such knowledge is a knowing arising from the development and use of skills such as esoteric-empathy so that such learned knowledge (causal knowledge) would only and ever compliment the personal knowledge (the acausal knowledge) such skills imparted. Esoteric-empathy, combined with the ability of intimation, would enable the nature, the character [the physis, the essence] of living-plants to be dis-covered and thus their personal qualities known and appreciated. Similarly, a knowing of what might ail some person is, for the Rounwytha, just such an acausal knowing – arising from employing the skills, abilities, and qualities, of a Rounwytha, and not something learned from someone else or from books.

Hence, the Rounwytha needs no props, no outer causal forms, no esoteric ceremonies, rituals, chants, or whatever. They just are – they just are uniquely themselves, with their gifts, their abilities, their foibles, their knowing and their skills.” The Rounwytha Way – Our Sinister Feminine Archetype

Like such skills, the calendar of the Rounwytha – their weaving of the seemingly disparate fluxions together, their accounting of fluxions – was derived from their personal esoteric-knowing, their empathy with the beings of Nature, with the being of Nature, and with the being of the Cosmos, and by their connexion to their local rural community. That is, of those whom and that which, they personally know, and of that which they personally observe and experience.

Thus – given that the Rounwytha tradition was germane to a certain area of what is now known as Britain – some of the most important alchemical seasons, and thence their seasonal (‘yearly’) calendar, were those connected with the flux, the rhythm, of Nature where they dwelt, since the season of daily and communal and local life – the life of small, rural, kindred, communities where the skill and knowing and advice of the pagan Rounwytha found favour and was often relied upon – would be one where such matters as the seasons of growing and finding food were important, as were the stages of life of an individual, as were certain celebrations and propitiations.

The favoured ‘time’ in Spring, for instance – the traditional seasonal time of sowing, seeding, and planting – would be known, discovered, locally by the Rounwytha using their skill, their empathy, and, being a fluxion of Nature in their locale, such a favoured ‘time’ would in its arrival vary from year to year. Similarly with the seasons beginning/ending with what are now known as Summer and Winter Solstice, the longest and the shortest days in such northern locales. They would not be found – ‘known’ – by some causal calculation or by watching the Sun alignment with some stones in some circle (or whatever) but rather would be what they naturally are, which is mid-Summer and mid-Winter, and which vary according to when Spring arrives, and Summer arrives, and Autumn arrives in a particular locality. ^[4]

Similarly with a celebration such as The Gathering, which would mark a successful harvest:

” The celebration – the gathering, remembrance, and feast – that is now often known as Samhain (and which according to the Rounwytha tradition was simply called The Gathering) varied from year to year and from locality to locality, its occurrence determined by when what had to be gathered-in and prepared and stored in readiness for the coming days of Winter had been gathered-in and prepared and stored. That is, the day of its occurring was to some extent dependant on the weather, on the health and time and numbers of those so gathering in the harvest and storing produce, and on such important matters as what crops were grown, what fruits were available, what livestock were kept, and what fuels were available ready to be stored for the needed fires of the coming colder season. Communities reliant on fishing or those who relied on hunted game or required such game or fish to supplement an otherwise meagre diet would naturally have somewhat different priorities and so their date for such a communal Gathering might differ from other communities.Hence the date of The Gathering would vary from year to year and locality to locality, and sometimes be toward what is now termed October and sometimes toward the end of what is now termed September, or somewhere inbetween. It was only much much later with the arrival of the organized and alien moralizing religion of the Nazarene, with its solar calendar system (deriving from urbanized hierarchical imperial Rome) and set celebrations of the deaths of certain sanctified or important Nazarenes (mostly in far-away lands), that a particular date would be used, at least in such communities as had succumbed to the abstractions of such a religion and thus had forsaken their ancestral culture and folk traditions and ways.” Denotatum – The Esoteric Problem With Names

What all this means is that Alchemical Seasons are a way of ‘seeing’ the world; of understanding, knowing, Nature, ourselves, and the Cosmos. Of understanding our various connexions. As well as a knowing of when certain actions, activities – such as sorcery – may have a better chance of success, given how such actions, activities, are just aspects of the flux of Nature, of Life, of the Cosmos: are emanations of our own microcosmic nexion. Or Alchemical Seasons reveal when it is wise – a balanced deed – to celebrate some-things.

There is thus a very pagan – a quite natural and traditional – way of knowing devoid of linear, limiting ‘time, and devoid of abstractions.

Anton Long
Order of Nine Angles
123 yfayen

Notes

[1] My elucidations are mainly of terminology or word-expression. Thus, I have substituted some old/vernacular/obscure and occasionally alchemical terms terms for Greek or later English ones, a case in point being my use of a Greek term such as Physis. I have however retained several older terms.

My axioms are as follows: 3.1.1, 3.2, 3.2.1.2.1.1, 9.1.1, 11.1, 11.2

Incidentally, as mentioned elsewhere, Rounwytha – as its etymology makes clear – was just a local, dialect, word for a type of hereditary sorceress: for ‘the wise, cunning, woman’ of British myth and legend.

[2] Despite the now common belief that the use of the word ‘numinous’ is fairly recent, deriving from the writings of Rudolf Otto, its first occurrence in English – so far discovered – is in a religious tract published in London in 1647 ce, entitled The simple cobler of Aggawam in America. Willing to help mend his native country. The author, Nathaniel Ward – a scholar at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, an English clergyman, and a Puritan supporter – emigrated to Massachusetts in 1634 ce.

[3] The term fluxion dates from the sixteenth century (ce) and implies both a change that occurs naturally and one that arises from or because of itself, i.e. an effluvium.

“If the fluxion of this instant Now Effect not That, noght wil that Time doth know.” John Davies: Mirum in Modum, 1616 ce. John Davies was a scholar at Queen’s College, Oxford; an antiquary, and a professor of Law.

[4]  Exact causal calculations of such phenomenon were irrelevant to such ancient rural communities, and the belief that they were important or necessary is just retrospective re-interpretation and the projection of modern causal abstractions onto such communities.

Such communities did not dwell in a world determined by fixed, measured, durations of causal time; but rather by fluxions. By the natural flowing of a living, numinous, Time which dwelt with them, and within them and their own local communities. Thus their work began when it began, and ended when it ended, determined by weather, daylight, what needed to be done, or what was required, in that particular fluxion, that ‘season’. Thus their ‘year’ was marked by the flux of seasons, so that for example they might refer to their age in terms of how many harvest gatherings they had known, or how many Summers had past since their birthing.

It was that other un-numinous world – of empires, of tyrants, of kings, of governments, of abstractions, of planning and supra-personal organization, of hierarchical dogmatic religions – which brought fixed, measured, durations of causal time as a means of control, regulation, conformity, and to unnaturally apportion life and living.

Order of Nine Angles

As mentioned in some early Order of Nine Angles texts – now several decades old – our esoteric aural traditions are just that: aural, with few if any explanations or elucidations, aural or written. In many instances, these aural traditions are just stories and tales, akin to folk myths and legends, and – again, as mentioned in early Order of Nine Angles texts – they are to be accepted, or rejected, on that basis, with their being no demand that our people ‘must believe’ in them or that they are accurate and/or describe historical events.

One of these aural traditions is of The Dark Gods; another is ‘the septenary system of correspondences’ as transcribed in Naos; another concerns alchemical seasons; another tradition is Esoteric Chant; another concerns the esoteric use of a quartz crystal. Yet other traditions concern ceremonies such as The Giving (as outlined toward the end of the text The Giving) and the training of the Rounwytha (of the hereditary and English sorceress). And so on.

These traditions all add to, and have added to, the Occult mystique – to the sinister-numen – of The Order of Nine Angles, as was intended, and thus they are interesting and, in some ways, are and were esoterically significant.

Nearly all of these traditions were related to me in a short duration of causal Time by a certain lady and her daughter, and then – following their departure to the Antipodes – by the two members of the Shropshire Camlad group I had been introduced to. [As I was to learn, there were only three members of that group in total.] A few traditions, however, derived from other sources, such as the Yorkshire-based Temple of The Sun group.

With the exception of a few brief notes and diagrams, from the Camlad group, and a handwritten copy of The Black Book of Satan, from the avowedly satanist Temple of The Sun, all these traditions were aural.

In the 1970′s CE, I spent a long time transcribing and sorting through these traditions, adding to and extending the then rather meagre ONA corpus, and experimenting with and refining various Occult techniques – some of this tradition, some of my own devising – as well as recruiting some suitable individuals. Thus, and for example – and as mentioned elsewhere – I revised, through trial and error, the traditional three months (the one alchemical season) alone in the wilderness to allow candidates in places such as England the use of a tent and purchasing local victuals in place of the traditional way of building one’s own shelter and living in an isolated forest (or in the mountains) by hunting/gathering, a tradition somewhat impractical in England (and even in Scotland, Wales, or Ireland) in the 1970′s but still possible in some other places, such as parts of America and Russia.

By the early 1980′s, some – although not all – of this work of mine was made more generally available, for instance in (1) The Black Book of Satan (Part One) – which derived from the Temple of The Sun but to which I added a few additional chapters; (2) in various articles about The Dark Gods mythos in Occult zines, such as The Lamp of Thoth, and Nox; (3) in some of the stories I told to and read aloud in Shropshire nexions and which stories later became part of The Deofel Quartet; (4) in ONA xeroxed bulletins and newsletters such as a Exeat, and Azoth; and (5) in MSS compilations such as early (private) editions of Hostia and Naos. [1]

In respect of the aural traditions, in nearly all instances I just recounted what I myself had been told, without embellishment. For instance, as in the ‘names’ of the various Dark Gods and their ‘meanings’ and origins (as now available in published works such as Naos) and as in stories regarding a possible Shropshire connexion to the legend of King Arthur.

There was in those now distant years an intention by me to research, in a scholarly manner, various aspects of this aural tradition – in particular the origins of The Dark Gods mythos, the origins of the ‘nine angles’, the origin of Esoteric Chant, and the origins of the Septenary System – and thus add the results of such research to the ONA corpus. But exeatic living – and Wyrd and some other stuff – got in the way with the result that I only seemed to have causal Time sufficient to delve into the origins of ‘the nine angles’, and which delving took me, with the assistance of a gay lady friend, on various travels to the Middle East and beyond, to thus discover and study MSS such as Al-Kitab al-Aflak and Shams al-Ma’arif wa Lata’if al-’Awarif.

Thus there were and are many things left unexplained, and several esoteric subjects which someone or some many, sufficiently motivated and interested enough, might usefully research.

Yet, in respect of mythos and Occult mystique, it should be noted that:

” Mythos is affective, esoteric, and numinous. That is, it inspires, it provokes, it motivates, enthrals, and presences acausal energy. It is wyrdful – a means of change for human beings, and outlines or intimates how such wyrdful change can be brought-into-being.

The so-called objective, cause-and-effect, “truth” of a mythos – stated or written about by someone else – is basically irrelevant, for a mythos presences its own species of truth, which is that of a type of acausal-knowing.

Thus, to seek to find – to ask for – the opinions, views, and such things as the historical evidence provided by others, is incorrect. For that is only their assessment of the mythos, a reliance on the causal judgement of others; whereas a mythos, and especially an esoteric mythos, demands individual involvement by virtue of the fact that such a mythos is a type of being: a living presence, inhabiting the nexion that is within us by virtue of our consciousness, our psyche.

Hence, the correct judgement of a mythos can only and ever begin with a knowing of, a direct experience of, the mythos itself by the individual. To approach it only causally, inertly, with some arrogant presumption of objectivity, historical or otherwise, is to miss or obscure the living essence of a mythos, especially one derived from an aural tradition. It is to impose, or attempt to impose, a causal (temporal) abstraction upon some-thing which has an acausal (that is, non-temporal) essence.

Such a presumption – and even worse, the demand for it to be shown to have “objective evidence” in its favour – reveals a lack of initiated, esoteric insight. For the real “truth” of an esoteric mythos lies in what each individual finds or discovers in it – and thence within themselves. In simple exoteric terms, a mythos can not only re-connect the individual to both the numinous and to their own psyche, but it can also lead them to an individual, and an initiated (esoteric), understanding, of themselves: to a dis-covering of what has hitherto been hidden, especially by un-numinous, causal, abstractions.” Lovecraft, The Dark Gods, and Fallacies About The ONA  (121 yfayen)

Quite recently – initially as a result of discussions with various ONA people (most from traditional nexions) and then with a few academics and because I am now a few years beyond three score – I revealed some information about some hitherto still esoteric aural traditions, since:

“…for the global Order a lot of our aural traditions are important, partly because they provide perspectives, esoteric information, and advice, that are unavailable by means of the printed (and now, viewed) word. Therefore, I decided to directly write about, or hint at, some of these traditions in a few articles and in some correspondence with certain individuals.” Presencings Of A Hideous Nexion (122 yfayen)

However – and as befits and becomes an Occult group where there are traditional, secretive, nexions whose members still follow the initiatory Seven Fold Way – there are some matters still transmitted and discussed aurally, as there are a few MSS still publicly unavailable. Those who understand, who appreciate, what is sinisterly-numinous, ancestral, and genuinely esoteric, will know and feel why this is so and necessary, and why revealing the majority of these by a mundane medium such as ‘the world wide web’ is just something we are not prepared to do.

Anton Long
Order of Nine Angles
123 yfayen

[1] Some of these early (uncorrected) MSS are included in a late 1980′s microfilm compilation, copies of which film were given to two academics, one of whom was Professor Kaplan.

The Rounwytha Way
Our Sinister Feminine Archetype

The way of the Rounwytha is the way of the independent, strong, empath: of those who have developed their natural, their latent, their empathic and muliebral, abilities, qualities, and skills, both exoteric and esoteric [1].

Given the nature of these abilities, qualities, and skills, the overwhelming majority of individuals who follow the Way of the Rounwytha are women – who thus embody our sinister feminine archetype – although a minority are men who, following The Seven Fold Way into and beyond the Abyss, have successfully melded the sinister with the numinous and who thus embody and are that rare archetype, The Mage, with such archetypes, by the nature of such entities, being in constant fluxion. Or, expressed exoterically, being an expression of the uniqueness of such esoteric individuals.

Among these muliebral abilities, qualities, and skills are: (1) Empathy; (2) Intuition, as a foreseeing – praesignification/intimation – and as interior self-reflexion; (3) Personal Charm; (4) Subtlety/Cunning/Shapeshifting; (5) Veiled Strength.

Rounwytha skills and abilities were evident, for example and in varying degrees, in the Oracle at Delphi, in the Vestales of Rome; in the wise, the cunning, women of British folklore and legend; in myths about Morgan Le Fey, Mistress Mab, and Ἀμαζόνες; and in historical figures such as Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia, and Boudicca.

It is these skills, abilities, and qualities, and the women who embody them, that the Magian ethos (and its abstractions) and religions such as as Nasrany, Islam, Judaism, and the patriarchal nation-State, have suppressed, repressed, and sought to destroy, control, and replace. It is these skills, abilities, and qualities, and the women who embody them, that the distorted, Magian-influenced and Magian-dominated, Homo Hubris infested, Occultism and ‘Satanism’ of the modern West – with their doctrines such as the patriarchal ‘might in right’ or the vapid ‘harming none’ of modern wicca – have also suppressed, repressed, and sought to destroy, control, and replace.

Esoterically, these skills, abilities, and qualities, were celebrated and maintained by the pagan aural tradition of the British Isles, a tradition mentioned in the ONA text, Denotatum, The Esoteric Problem With Names (ONA Esoteric Notes – Rounwytha 3)

Traditional Rounwytha Rites and Training

According to ONA aural tradition, the Rounwytha way – as the etymology of Rounwytha suggests – is the way of a few wise women who dwelt and who dwell in the Marches areas of the British Isles, and in particular in rural South Shropshire and areas around Trefyclawdd and the Camlad.

There are only three rites of this tradition: one celebratory [2], and two to train, to breed, the Rounwytha. The training is and was simple, and involves the candidate in living, for two whole alchemical seasons [3], alone in an isolated area, as per what is now known as the Rite of Internal Adept, followed – some unfixed causal Time later (sometimes a year later, sometimes longer) – by undertaking the Camlad Rite of The Abyss, and which Rite lasted for a whole lunar month [4].

To these three traditional rites, the ONA added – nearly four decades ago – another, in order to train candidates in certain necessary Martial skills, with this training lasting from six months to (more usually) a year. [5]

Thus, this simple training of the Rounwytha develops in the candidate the necessary esoteric and exoteric skills, abilities, and qualities, and breeds the women (and the few men) who embody them.

To give one, often misunderstood, example. A certain knowledge of herbs was/is a useful Rounwytha skill, and some of this knowledge could be, and sometimes was, acquired from an older Rounwytha. But in essence such knowledge is a knowing arising from the development and use of skills such as esoteric-empathy so that such learned knowledge (causal knowledge) would only and ever compliment the personal knowledge (the acausal knowledge) such skills imparted. Esoteric-empathy, combined with the ability of intimation, would enable the nature, the character [the physis, the essence] of living-plants to be dis-covered and thus their personal qualities known and appreciated. Similarly, a knowing of what might ail some person is, for the Rounwytha, just such an acausal knowing – arising from employing the skills, abilities, and qualities, of a Rounwytha, and not something learned from someone else or from books.

Hence, the Rounwytha needs no props, no outer causal forms, no esoteric ceremonies, rituals, chants, or whatever. They just are – they just are uniquely themselves, with their gifts, their abilities, their foibles, their knowing and their skills, and a knowing how to use all these, in either a numinous or a sinister way, or in a sinisterly-numinous way.

The Future Rounwytha

The traditional Rounwytha, pre-ONA and as manifest in many traditional Order of Nine Angles nexions, can and should be the inspiration for new esoteric and thus archetypal forms. That is, a guide and inspiration for women who desire to or who have liberated themselves from the restrictions of Magian abstractions and Magian-Nasrany made archetypes, and which abstractions include political feminism, since such ‘feminists’ for example almost always act within ‘the law’ as made by The State and often demand more State-made laws to ensure ‘their rights’ (political, social, economic, religious) and which notion of ‘rights’ is itself an abstraction.

In contrast, our new female esoteric and archetypal ways of living derive from four important things:

(1) Women of our kind living by our code of kindred honour who thus are ready, willing, and able (trained enough) to defend themselves and rely on themselves and thus who possessed attitude, and skill enough, and/or carry weapons enabling them to, defeat a strong man or men intent on attacking or subduing them.

(2) Women of our kind placing this personal code of honour before any and all laws made by some State, and thus replacing supra-personal authority (of, for example, some State or institution) with their own self-assured and individual authority.

(3) Women of our kind relying on their own judgement, a judgement developed and enhanced by pathei-mathos, by learning from direct practical experience, from tough challenges, and one’s mistakes.

(4) Women of our kind developing and using their natural, their latent, their empathic and muliebral, abilities, qualities, and skills – such as empathy and intuition.

It is no co-incidence that these express the unique, living, sinisterly-numinous ethos of our unique living adversarial, defiant, and anti-State, kulture.

Anton Long
Order of Nine Angles
123 yfayen

Notes

[1] By the term muliebral we mean: of, concerning, or relating to the ethos, the nature [physis], the natural abilities, of women. From the Latin muliebris. We use this particular term in a precise and esoteric way, as we do with many other terms which also have or have acquired a common, exoteric, meaning – for example, the terms psyche and archetype, qv. A Glossary of Some ONA Terms.

This use and definition of such terms, together with ONA-unique terms and sometimes our unique spelling of some words, means that ONA people sometimes speak and write a language (ONA-speak) that is often – and intentionally – obscure or confusing to outsiders, and often – and intentionally – leads such outsiders to make certain unwarranted assumptions.

[2] The traditional celebratory rite was the rite which formed the basis for the ONA’s Ceremony of Recalling with opfer ending. The traditional rite was often called The Giving and often formed part of The Gathering, and is and was simple, involving no Occult or magickal aspects, and consisted of an extempore communal celebration and feast, in the Autumn and generally around a bonfire, at which a chosen young male candidate (willing or unwilling) would be sacrificed and some of their blood sprinkled on the surrounding land to ensure the health and fertility of livestock, crops, and community.

Two fictional portrayals of this traditional rite are in the short-story Hangster’s Gate, and in the instructional text The Giving.

For context, see the Order of Nine Angles text, Denotatum, The Esoteric Problem With Names (ONA Esoteric Notes – Rounwytha 3).

[3] The rite is usually begun on the Spring Equinox and ends on the following Winter Solstice (occassionaly begun on the Summer Solstice and ending on the following Spring Equinox).

It should be noted, however, that these ‘alchemical seasons’ are not – as mundanes suppose – determined by fixed calculation deriving from a fixed solar calander. Thus, the Spring Equinox (or rather the alchemical season whose beginning/ending is associated with what is termed Spring Equinox) is not when some fixed solar calender determines it is (a certain causal Time on a certain day in March) but rather when the Rounwytha considers mid-Spring (which is what the Spring Equinox is, esoterically, alchemically) arrives, having already and locally known when Spring begins in that particular year. Similarly for what is termed the Summer Solstice. For context, see the ONA text, Denotatum, The Esoteric Problem With Names.

Hence, alchemical seasons are not determined by a fixed solar or lunar calender – or by calculations based on such – but rather individually, according to locality.

[4] That is, for one menstrual cycle of the woman undertaking it. The Camlad Rite of The Abyss has been published in the pdf collection Enantiodromia – The Sinister Abyssal Nexion.

[5] Many, although not all, ONA Rounwytha nexions are Sapphic in nature, and thus celebrate the type of sorcery mentioned in ONA texts such as Sapphic Sorcery – In Praise of The Feminine.