The Order of Nine Angles (O9A/ONA) is an intellection: the particular understanding of one person, the pseudonymous Anton Long, who melded (i) inherited and learned ancient pagan, and occult, traditions – British, and Hellenic hermeticism/mysticism – with (ii) the pathei-mathos resulting from his own decades-long (1972-2011) anados (ἄνοδος) along the hermetic Seven Fold Way, and who thus produced a unique signification expressed by means of a new esoteric philosophy and by praxises that, esoterically and exoterically, presence that esoteric philosophy.

What, then, are the essence and the raison d’être of this esoteric philosophy?

1. The essence is a consciously undertaken pathei-mathos, and thus the personal learning, by individuals – with the consequent internal (‘alchemical’) change in (and evolution of) the physis (φύσις) of the individual – that can result from consciously undertaking both esoteric and practical exeatic experiences conventionally described as both ‘numinous’ and ‘sinister’. Thus, abstractions (which impute an illusive/pretentious ‘knowing’) are replaced by a direct and personal understanding sans denotatum.

2. The raison d’être is Aeonic: to, via a new logos, subvert (and eventually replace) existing causal forms (including the State) thus enabling new ways of living (and/or of a renaissance of older, more pagan and cultural, ways of living) with the consequent change (development and evolution) of the physis of human beings. A subversion and a replacement not for any altruistic or idealistic reasons, but because such subversion and replacement are a natural consequence of (inherent in the physis of) that logos, manifest as the logos is in the O9A code of kindred-honour.

Thus – given this essence and raison d’être, and given that the esoteric philosophy is manifest in the corpus of Anton Long’s writings from the 1970s to 2011 and not in any one or two, specific, works – it is hardly surprising that the O9A has been misunderstood and misrepresented (i) by the latter-day satanist {1} crowd, (ii) by the illiterati and the pseudo-intellectuals who infest modern occultism and especially satanism and the Left Hand Path (LHP), and (iii) by others who have only made a perfunctory study of the O9A corpus.

Aeonic, Esoteric, And Egocentric Apprehensions

The essence and raison d’être of the O9A make it quite distinct from all other manifestations of modern satanism and the LHP. For instead of their egocentrism (and the consequent egocentric predicament, and egoism), the O9A apprehension is fundamentally aeonic and esoteric: of (i) the individual in relation to an esoteric anados, with the consequent change – via a conscious pathei-mathos – in their physis, and (ii) of that anados and that individual change (the individual discovery of lapis philosophicus) in the context of the accumulated esoteric (‘initiated’, aeonic) understanding of millennia. For one important part of that understanding, that wisdom, is of ourselves as a nexion, as an esoteric symbiosis of past-present-future, and thus:

“that what, for human beings, is esoteric, evolutionary – that which 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.” {2}

Hence, while other modern satanists and followers of a Left Hand Path – taking their cue from the likes of LaVey, Aquino, Crowley, et al – pontificate about carnality, and/or about ‘might is right’, and/or about ‘the deification of the individual’, and/or about how they can ‘command the powers’, and/or about how “reality is what I make it or what others have made it, or perceived it to be”, and/or about ‘enlightened individualism’, and/or about ‘do what thou wilt’, and about other such egoical things – the O9A promote praxises that enable any individual to change their own physis, discover wisdom, and reveal for themselves the pretensions of a presumed objectivity and the limits of individual will, with such an individual enabling – by the practical nature of some of the occult techniques involved and the nature of the O9A logos – a subversion of existing causal forms and that necessary gradual ‘bringing into being’ of new ways of living and/or of a renaissance of older, more pagan and cultural, ways of living.

Which is why the O9A has, over decades, propagated certain things and incited individuals to undertake certain things. And why, of course, many latter-day satanists – and others – have mistaken such tactical incitement and such tactical propaganda for the essence and raison d’être of the O9A; for they have (mis)interpreted the O9A, and those involved with or associated with it, in accordance with their egocentric weltanschauung. Hence their tendency to reduce most things to either (i) the level of their mundane (mis)understanding of matters O9A based on an egoistic pretension to knowledge (with the consequent presumption of ‘the other’ having some ideated ‘personality’ flaw or being representative of some ideated ‘personality type’), or/and (ii) being some presumed ‘clash of egos’.

Hence, also, why some have misunderstood, both exoterically and esoterically, the mythos of the O9A.

Mythos

A mythos – μῦθος, mythicos, “a body of interconnected myths or (aural) stories or traditions, such as those belonging to a particular cultural tradition” – once presenced can develop an archetypal life of its own, after a certain point, especially if it has an ‘us’ and ‘them’ built into it and also resonates (to some, the intended audience) on a primal level. Hence why the O9A mythos includes such things as (i) aural stories relating to past performances of human sacrifice (for example, Hangster’s Gate, and The Giving), and an aural tradition regarding The Ceremony of Recalling and ‘a dark goddess’ to whom sacrifices were made; (ii) a pantheon of unique ‘dark gods'; (iii) the requirement for all initiates beyond a certain point to undertake a cull according to the particular guidelines of O9A culture and which guidelines {3} give the potential opfer ‘a sporting chance'; (iii) a particular, unique, adversarial, interpretation of satanism and Baphomet; and (iv) the division (via a logos) into ‘us’ and ‘mundanes’, with such a division aided by having a real life example in Anton Long who unambiguously outlined his sinister intent: “In my own life, I have tried to create some things which can disrupt our societies and which can lead to the creation of strong, really dangerous, ruthless individuals – some things which are so subversive that no laws could ever outlaw them, and that attempts to restrain them, to outlaw them, would only make them more attractive to some individuals.”

Thus, in respect of mythos, what matters is that a mythos links to a place and to a past, to ancestral traditions, legends, and stories; has a grounding in the present, having (in the matter of the O9A mythos) someone with a documented, and strange and ‘sinister’, life which perplexes many; and that – because of its mythic, occult, supernatural, and ‘sinister’, elements – it inspires, enthuses, captivates, entices, over decades and beyond. That is, in exoteric terms it resonates – captures the imagination – of a certain type of person. For a mythos presences an ‘esoteric truth’ (not a literal truth) and – in the case of the O9A – also presences a logos; which is why it is or can be aeonic sorcery and why it can continue to presence what it does through resonating with a particular type of person over a long period of time and which persons, of themselves and in a natural way, not only transmit it but add to and evolve it. For it becomes a type of being living in the psyche of certain individuals, and a psychic entity (or ‘demon’) which those individuals – by their lives or through their deeds or by means of their creations, artistic, literary, or musical – can pass on, knowingly or unknowingly, to others.

To understand a mythos is to understand the importance of imagination and inspiration, and what can result (or be presenced, manifest, created, and transmitted to others) therefrom. But the latter-day satanists, and their ilk, cannot so understand, for they – with their materialism and egocentric apprehension and pontifications about reason – eschew the supernatural, laugh at mysticism, and lack the imagination, the physis, and the insight of the aeonic perspective, to embark on a life-long occult quest.

For, in respect of the O9A, what matters is not the sheer number of those incited or enticed or assimilated or who endure to the very end and thus reach the goal of such a life-long quest, but rather (i) that a few – a creative, a small minority, over decades and longer – do so endure, and (ii) that many more are changed or inspired or affected in some way (however small) by that creative minority and by the mythos for however short or long a time. For it is such small changes and such inspiration and such affects (such mutations of individual character – of physis – and of psyche) that are, aeonically, cumulative, and thus which over centuries presence – and bring into being – the logos and thus new ways of O9A inspired living, and/or a renaissance of older, more pagan and cultural, ways of life.

Kerri Scott
2014

Notes

{1} The term ‘latter-day satanists’ is O9A-speak and refers to those who derive their understanding of satanism mostly from the Church of Satan (CoS) and/or from the Temple of Set (ToS) – and/or from some new fangled interpretation of one or both of those – and who, while pontificating about satanists being adversarial and antinomian, are – in contrast to the amoral O9A – law-abiding and thus hypocritical. As noted in the 2014 O9A text entitled What Makes The Order Of Nine Angles Unique,

“The O9A incite and legitimize what those other contemporary occultists and/or self-professed satanists do not, such as human culling, terrorism, involvement with political/religious extremism, criminality, practical physical challenges, and ordeals both esoteric and exoteric.”

Furthermore, ‘latter-day satanists’ believe in and propagate a certain ‘gospel’ about the O9A. This gospel, in respect of the O9A, is pejorative and means they often get upset – or become intolerant – whenever the O9A is mentioned or discussed in a rational, positive, way because they sincerely believe that they, with their egoistic pretensions to knowledge, know everything there is to know about the O9A.

{2} Anton Long: The Aeonic Perspective of the Order of Nine Angles. e-text, 2011.

{3} qv. the O9A compilation The Culling Texts: The Theory And Practice of Sacrificial Human Culling.

Editorial Note, by RS

Regarding the author’s phrase The Order of Nine Angles (O9A/ONA) is an intellection. The definitive definition of the word intellection, as given in the Complete Oxford English Dictionary (20 volumes, second edition, 1989) is an follows: ” Etymon classical Latin intellectiōn-, intellectiō (in rhetoric) synecdoche, in post-classical Latin also signification (late 2nd cent. in Tertullian). (a) The faculty of understanding. (b) The action or process of understanding; the activity or exercise of the intellect; specifically, apprehension, as distinct from imagination. (c) Meaning, intention, purpose.”

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