“Ecce homo,” behold the man! These words, proclaimed by Pontius Pilate when presenting a bloody and ravaged Jesus to an incensed crowd prior to his crucifixion (John 19:5), formed the title of one of Nietzsche’s last works. Of these, Walter Kaufmann has commented that “none has proved harder to understand than Ecce Homo.”[1] During his final days, Nietzsche is said to have written “a few mad but strangely beautiful letters” before “darkness closed in and extinguished passion and intelligence. He suffered and thought no more. He had burnt himself out.”[2]
Ecce homo. Behold the man. In choosing this title, Nietzsche was not suggesting a “close similarity between himself and Jesus” but nearly the opposite: “Here is a man! Here is a new, a different image of humanity: not a saint or holy man any more than a traditional sage, but a modern version.”[3]
Both characterizations are relevant to the current state of the o9a. Contrary to the seductive parachute-morality of the delightful blackguard Kurgan in Highlander, who declared that “it’s better to burn out than fade away,” I don’t think any of us want to see this tradition hornswoggled out of its inheritance, either burning out and extinguished from its “fruitless deeds of darkness” or fading away as a self-fulfilling effigy.
In a recent article titled “O9A: A Moral Dilemma?”, The Seven Oxonians insisted that the o9a should be considered defunct. I couldn’t disagree more. The issue of culpability and responsibility is a serious question considering the mendacious charges levied against the o9a by the media and renewed attempts to ban it as a terrorist organization. But I don’t think I’m alone in feeling rage, contempt, and disgust at the gaggle of moral mountebanks, psychopaths, degenerates, and pedophiles who have damaged the name of the o9a irrevocably.
Irrevocably? Maybe. But I think we all know better than to buy into the mendicant bullshit and skullduggery the media is selling us, outstretched and offered in obligation as a gift, as charity, while foiled and furled as a corpse and a curse, an ethical guillotine. Yes, we all know better. No one here is a stranger to tragedy. And the stories we hear in the media of the easy targets and impressionable lives ruined by callous disregard for the well-being of others is tragic. Unconscionable. Despicable. Who among us would sanction the kind of behavior we hear about the o9a daily in the media, let alone encourage it? Not anyone I would call my own. Time and time again, we’ve seen that opponents of the o9a aren’t interested in logic-chopping, fact-based argumentation, or any evidence it has to offer. They are interested in one thing: erecting a strawman in the mires of their moral Gethsemane worthy of chopping down.
But who can blame them? The Seven Oxonians are right in one important respect: the disavowal of any responsibility for said acts based on the o9a’s “anarchic nature” is completely disingenuous. For a tradition that prides itself on honor and the integrity required to uphold it, it’s disgraceful that anyone claiming association with this tradition can stand idly by and pretend the very real lives ruined, destroyed, and demolished by individuals who drew inspiration from their own radical misinterpretation of something so entrenched in enigmatic mystery and misdirection – “so well hidden by a ‘Labyrinthos Mythologicus’” – that only one or two individuals per decade can discern its hard-earned truths isnothing more than a theoretical pretext to eschew any responsibility! It’s shameful.
Yes, who can blame them? Who can blame the media for chopping down a strawman we provided? And who can blame anyone for insisting that the o9a should be considered defunct, that its “moral defects render it unsuitable as a modern practical guide to Lapis Philosophicus”? Some might say that it’s hard to find fault with either side. But viddy well, o my brothers and sisters, viddy well: find fault we must, and with both, for the o9a is very much alive.
Betwixt this bunker of suspicion and hostility there lies a deeper truth, a truer burden, a window of canteened doubt, charisma, and care. I care. We all do. Are we to just stand idly by and watch the holes we’ve bored at the base of this ship sink our kin and kith forever? Absolutely not. No, for all my years in academia studying philosophy, there’s one philosophy I live by: if there’s a chance, we have to take it.
So behold the man! What is needed now is not blame or random acts of cruelty, but decisive action, encouragement, clarity, precision, and a baseline of inspiration necessary to bring out the best in the o9a’s best and brightest. What is needed is a different image of humanity, a different o9a: “not a saint or holy man any more than a traditional sage, but a modern version.”
Now, in the words and moon-folk melancholic wisdom of Townes Van Zandt, who said all this better than I ever could: “Won’t you lend your lungs to me? Mine are collapsing.” If we’re banned, we’re banned; but at least we’ll tell the world that we tried.
Won’t you lend your lungs to me?
Mine are collapsing
Plant my feet and bitterly breathe
Up the time that’s passing
Breath I’ll take and breath I’ll give
Pray the day’s not poised
Stand among the ones that live
In lonely indecision
Fingers walk the darkness down
Mind is on the midnight
Gather up the gold you’ve found
You fool, it’s only moonlight
And if you stop to take it home
Your hands will turn to butter
Better leave this dream alone
Try to find another
Salvation sat and crossed herself
And called the devil partner
Wisdom burned upon a shelf
Who’ll kill the raging cancer
Seal the river at its mouth
Take the water prisoner
Fill the sky with screams and cries
Bathe in fiery answers
Jesus was an only son
And love his only concept
Strangers cry in foreign tongues
And dirty up the doorstep
And I for one, and you for two,
Ain’t got the time for outside
Keep your injured looks to you
We’ll tell the world that we tried
Nameless Therein
“Singing for the sake of the song”
March 8, 2023
[1] Walter Kaufmann, introduction to Ecce Homo, by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. and ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 202.
In the words of Jason “JD” Dean from the iconoclastic cult-classic film Heathers, I would like to wish our friends, idolatrizers, associates, apostates, and enemies alike a hearty “greetings and salutations” as we make our way into the spring season.
Amidst the usual intellectual hopscotch and foul-play we find levied at our invisible tradition by opponents, the reality behind these violent cognitive distortions is sadly not as exciting. No, behind renewed threats of banning the o9a and the Trojan hyperboles used to justify it, things have been relatively quiet in the o9a. Contrary to the usual smear-campaigns and low-hanging fruit the media is fond of plucking from the poisoned roots of their knavish distortions of this tradition, our obvious quest for conquest and global domination is in reality tempered by the ordinary and everyday: long evenings at home, family life, friends and work and the bonds that bind us through simple acts of kindness. No, not blindfolded heroin-readings of Evola in Blackmuir Wood while wearing the savage tears of our next sacrificial victim as a mask on the altar of Thulsa Doom; just ordinary, everyday living.
In many ways, the foundations of the o9a are ordinary and everyday. We hear the term “mundane” castigated and proclaimed like some kind of mortal victory over those who don’t share the same values, repeated like a prayer and elevated to sacrosanct status by those who both decry dogmatism and know better. But there is something to be said about finding beauty in the ordinary, the everyday, the commonplace. The ability to re-enchant our perception of the world through a quiet shade of light, a moment shared, a shadow cast, an unspoken word, an emotion, a thought, a contrary idea, a new way of repeating or seeing or speaking the same thing – this ability lies at the heart of the o9a as a kind of free-form alchemy: the ability to re-enchant the ordinary into the extraordinary, the sublunar into the lunar, austere and august, neverending.
The Fenrir team has received several emails from budding associates, many of whom appear sincere in exploring the sinister tradition and have asked for guidance. While appreciated and well-received, the truth is no one can provide that guidance. In my opinion, the lifeblood of this tradition doesn’t beat according to a series of “tests” to validate one’s existential “status” in an anonymous tradition populated by complete strangers who interact through self-made blogs on the internet. It’s founded on a core Satanic practice, one constituted not by primordial hatred but resolved in atavistic love through tremendous ordeals and overcoming. The ground of that overcoming cannot be provided, taught, or given: it’s hard-earned by each and every individual through ethereal loss, deep wounding, ecstatic grief, and long, long nights that beckon failure in the shadow of an indefinite destiny.
That ground is perennial. While it’s not ours to give, it is yours to stand on. And many who approach the o9a sincerely will find themselves standing on it already.
What then, weary wanderer? What will become of the o9a under threat of banishment, with all its devilry, sophistry, and miscreant illusion? Like each sincere individual, I believe the o9a has its own ground to stand on. For how long, who can say? But I don’t think its core tradition and values were ever expected to remain static, fixed, and unyielding, followed dogmatically and fideistically by a mob of unthinking fanatics. They were meant to be evaluated critically and adapted intelligently with deep and emergent empathy according to whatever the situation demands. This, in my opinion, is the basis for any tradition; and its everlasting practice, preserved in spirit with great care, is what distinguishes a living tradition from a dead one. In an effort to keep that tradition alive, I think something Bruce Lee said is helpful: “Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”
“And what is the point of this diabolical diatribe,” you ask, dear reader? If there is a point, let it be this: I once heard the president of the Søren Kierkegaard Society describe faith as risk with direction. Well, if risk without direction is stupidity, let us hope that the average o9a associate is smarter than they seem.
Meanwhile, it’s business as usual in the o9a. To our opponents: fuck you all.
Nameless Therein
In Hell
February 24, 2023
“And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.”
Just wanted to pass along some news. An associate named Nekro Kollektor is in the process of releasing a portable version of the Star Game. From what I understand, this is a physical edition printed on professional cardstock. The individual game boards are about the size of a tarot card. The game pieces are also printed on cardstock rather than as dice, cubes, etc.
Additionally, Nekro Kollektor has released an expanded edition of the sinister tarot deck by Christos Beest. This includes all 64 images rather than just the major arcana. From what I recall, this expanded tarot deck was previously released by the Black Glyph Society years ago as the “Emanations” deck. It has long since been out of print and is quite rare.
Nekro Kollektor is currently accepting pre-orders for the Star Game. I was told that the orders are expected to ship by April or sooner. The sinister tarot deck is available for immediate purchase.
Posted: November 28th, 2022 | Author:Chloe352 | Filed under:Gone Fishing | Comments Off on One Last Problem
.:.So now, there is one final problem in ONA that needs to be fixed, that Problem is: Me.
I’m a very honest person, with myself [self-honesty] and with others. I mean what I say. “Let your yes mean yes, and no mean no,” as Christ said. When I say that I believe and only recognize a leaderless ONA: I mean it. No one, certainly not me, should be any kind of leader [official, appointed, de facto, facto, symbolic, etc] of ONA, in ONA.
I’m not a dummie: I’m very observant, especially with ONA. I’ve been around ONA since 2006-2007, and so, like a street or section of a city, ONA is my Turf: like how a gang of people claim a street or section as their Turf. This ONA is Our Dreccian Turf, it’s our shit, Cosa Nostra as the Italians say it [Cosa means “Thing,” and “Nostra” means “Our”]. And in this Dreccian Turf which is the ONA: I know who comes and goes, I know who’s who, and so on.
Since 2008, what I have interestingly observed is that whenever a person or group of people come to ONA to try to “take it over” I have never seen them plan and say to themselves: “We need to get rid of that pesky Anton Long in order to take over ONA…” or “We need to get rid of those pesky Old Guards so we can take over ONA!” It’s always been: “Chloe needs to go…” or “We need to get rid of her somehow so we can rule ONA!” And they all play power games with me.
There was even a time, many years ago, on the 600 Club, where that, in order to make their claim of Outer Rep legit, the ToB pretended to be me and wrote out a short thing saying that I endorse and support Jall as Outer Rep. And there are a few people who say things like: “Chloe made me the leader…” or “Chloe made me the new outer rep…” or “I had a conversation with Chloe and she subtly hinted to me that I’m the new leader because she said I was handsome and smart!” How come nobody ever says: “Anton Long made me the new leader…” or “The Old Guards made me the new Outer Rep.”
And so, when I said that other’s in ONA should take ONA, and run with it: I mean it. But, as I have observed over the years: I am a big problem.
When I left ONA early this year, I read a comment made by a ONA associate who said, paraphrased: “It’s good that Chloe has left, because it gives us a voice.” I can’t recall the exact things she said: but I honestly agreed with her sentiments, and understood what she was trying to say.
What I have seen is that when I leave ONA, lots of people come into ONA and they start writing and producing shit. Which I think is very cool. I come back and there’s all this activity and new thoughts and insights to read and learn from. And then when I come back: everyone scatters.
My presence in ONA just seems to drown everyone. I understand and see that now as a very big problem with future negative consequences.
I just came back because I felt guilty for abandoning the Spirit/Egregore of ONA during a time when it needed help struggling against some environmental conditions. The ONA seems fine now. It doesn’t need me anymore. I’ve said all I need to say, and my last bit of insight was given in the previous essay [The Evolving ONA]. And importantly to me: I’ve made my Peace with ONA. And so, I fix the last problem: and take my leave. I’m going to leave the online ONA world to go live my life in the Real World: because by next year I will have my own little family. And I will take my ONA with me: I will be a Rounwytha in the real world.
SHOUT OUTS
.:.Some shout outs to a few significant peeps:
Brett: You’re cool people. You’re writings are an inspiration.
OGs: Thank you for those many years of allowing me to make little alterations here and there in ONA, and for encouraging me to be myself [a Buddhist and so on]
Beast Xeno: I told you a very long a time, long ago, when you first began making youtube videos that you were handsome, and I meant it! Take care my friend!
Jason King: Andales pues mi Compa! You are by far: the most intelligent Satanist I have thus far met, since 2003. I never told you this: but your mind and person has had and will have a huge influence on me.
David Myatt: I am who I am today because of your thoughts and writings; I speak of all of them.
The Egregore of ONA: Te quiero mucho, mi amigo. Buena Noche, por que todo es cheche bacheche pa ti. Nzambi.
.:.”What does not kill, makes stronger.” –21 Satanic Points, Black Book of Satan, ONA
I’ve been around Satanism for a very long time. I like watching online Satanists. Since they had little fancy Satanic groups on MySpace and MySatan, most of those dummies attempted to “evolve” Satanism. Unfortunately, what they understand of evolution was learned from high school science class, in which class one can only assume they paid very little attention.
Those dummie Satanists on MySpace and MySatan usually, nearly 99% of the time, used the same exact equation/formula to “evolve” Satanism. The formula looks like this: Evolve Satanism = Make Better. And in practice, 100% of the time, the variable “Make Better” ends up meaning: “My Ideas.” In other words, what they believe is: “My ideas will make Satanism better, thus evolving it.”
That line of reasoning regarding how shit evolves is like saying: “Evolution is when God/Nature makes things better.” As if to suggest, using that same line of thinking, that Mother Nature one day had a great idea and she put webbed feet on a dinosaur and a billed beak, and came up with a duck.
The main problem with their dummie notion of evolution is that an idea, no matter how great such idea sounds and seems: is Conjectural. Conjectural in practice means that the idea has not yet been tested, that such idea has not yet produced “proof of concept,” that such idea has not yet made Fruit which you can judge. In other words, you have no idea what end results [cause and effect] your conjectured idea will actually produce.
And so, I’ve watched those dummies come into Satanism, with big titles, try to make Satanism better, by adding to Satanism their own “great” ideas: [re: their own opinions, beliefs, views, sentiments, “philosophy”]. And 100% of the time, even if on the rare occasion they even publish self-published books on Amazon or Lulu: they fail.
DEVELOPMENTAL EVOLUTION
In reality, in the Real World of Nature, developmental evolution happens in the matrix of an environment/ecosystem. Fractally: our own human species’ development from the primitive homo sapiens we were 300,000 years ago to the human beings we are today exclusively happened within the matrix of an environment we call “Civilization” [re: “society”].
And so, the universal principle of physical development/evolution is governed by two main factors that exists in a state of “tension” with each other. The first factor is that – as the Buddha taught – all things change and nothing is permanent. This means that the environment changes and its conditions/state is never the same. The second factor – by law of Nature – is that all living organisms have the instinctive impulse of self-preservation. And so, when those two factors are at play with each other, there arises a “tension,” a pushing and pulling of those two main factors.
And so, that “tension” looks like this: 1) An organism adjusts to its environment, 2) the environment changes, 3) the change in environment is an Challenging or Adversarial condition to the organism because that organism adjusted to the previous condition of the said environment, 4) the organism must try to adjust itself to the Challenging/Adversarial [the Force of Satan] condition, or die, 5) if the organism succeeds in adjusting itself to such new conditions it Survives, 6) but survivability is not the want or desire of Mother Nature, 7) Mother Nature needs Thrivability, 8) if an organism adjusts/adapts to such new conditions, survives, but also Thrives in that new condition: 9) then that organism’s genes drift, which incrementally produces new species genetically pre-programmed to function well in such new conditions of such changes in the matrical environment.
But you have to learn to view that process of developmental evolution not on a macrophysical level, but on a microphysical level. Why? Because the Reality [re: Realism] is that when we say “organism/creature” what we mean is a Complex System of Trillions of Cells [Cuz that’s what a fucking “multicellular” organism is]. In other words: the cells themselves, as well as the molecules and biochemicals, are what reacts and adjusts to environmental cues/pressures. A real example is when a human lives in a place like subsahara Africa for many epochs where ultraviolet radiation is high. And so the cells of the skin, the molecules in and around such skin cells, and the biochemicals and proteins, produce dark pigmentation to protect themselves from said high ultraviolet radiation. And we interpret those microphysical adaptations to be Negros developing dark skin to protect themselves from the light and heat of Africa. What should be noted is that such Negroes were not consciously aware or in control of the darkening of their own skin! When ducks became ducks: they were not consciously aware or in control of the webbing of their own feet. As you develop from a zygote to a fetus into a new born infant: you were not conscious or in control of that process. Simply because that process of fetal development is happening on a cellular and molecular level.
MEMPLEX EVOLUTION
A “meme” is to a memeplex what a “gene” is to a genome, what a “lexeme” is to a lexicon, what an “episteme” is to epistemology. Developmental evolution is a fractal pattern that governs all physical things in the universe. Everything which exists, gradually/incrementally develops over time because of its environmental conditions. That word “environment” is a Relative term. The matrical environment of a planet and the matrical environment of an atom are not the same things. For an atom, their environment mostly consists of Fields, Charges [electric and magnetic], force of attraction, etc. And so, when conditions in their atomic environment changes, they also change, accordingly. In that way, very gradually, carbon atoms, evolved into the many different carbon based molecules in the universe, which all carbon based things [like us] are made of.
Evolution is a fractal phenomenon, which can be seen in how languages evolve. Languages evolve/develop slowly/incrementally over Time, on a microphysical level: meaning the lexemes of the language’s lexicon alters, changes, adjusts, adapts, new lexemes are acquired from other languages [called “Horizontal Gene Transference” in biological sciences]. And so, in Reality, organismic evolution is the change or alteration or adjustment of genes and/or the acquisition of new genetic information via horizontal gene transfer; the change being influenced by conditions of environment.
In the same way, a memeplex evolves over time. Like how organisms have their own matrical environment, and like how language has its own matrical environment, a memeplex has its own environment. The Matrix of a Meme is made up of two overlapping things: 1) Socialscape & 2) Mindscape. Like how Landscape is the environment of animals/creatures/organisms; and how “cosmicscape” is the environment of planets, moons, galaxies, and stars.
By “socialscape” is meant “human society,” and the views, opinions, cultures, practices, people [and so also: races and ethnicities], nations, religions, etc, of a given human society. By “mindscape” is meant ideas, notions, concepts, beliefs, weltanschauungen, language, knowledge-base, sentiments in a person’s mind and in the collective public mind of a people of a given society.
Like how Landscape changes, the socialscape and mindscape of a Memeplex also changes and is never permanently the same. For example: the socialscape and mindscape here in America of the 50s and 70s were very different from each other, where conditions in the socialscape and mindscape of the 70s were challenging and adversarial to that of the 50s.
Like how an organism must adapt to the change in conditions of its environment: a Memeplex – if it desires to survive and even thrive – must adapt to the changes of its socialscape and mindscape matrix, and must survive Challenging and Adversarial forces in such environment that presents itself.
I will give three very brief examples of familiar memeplexes that have evolved to meet the changes in the socialscape and mindscape of Western Social Order. The first is Christianity. There was a time when Christianity was very doctrinally vocal about homosexuality being a damnable sin. Today, gay couples can be married by priests, gay people can join churches, and gay people can even be priests [of some denominations]. The second example is the dominating and ubiquity of Science/Scientism: all ancient religions today, from Buddhism to Christianity to Islam have changed where they have re-interpreted their doctrines and teachings to reflect what science teaches, where even the ancient Catholic Church acknowledges the theory of evolution. The third example is the ideology of Communism/Marxism: today that memeplex in the West has evolved to not be an ideology regarding the struggle of Class, but the struggle of Race [Wokism].
A memeplex must evolve to changes in conditions, pressures, of its Matrix [socialscape and mindscape] or it will die. Death for a memeplex is when the memeplex becomes irrelevant, when it goes away with an older generation and is forgotten by the new generation, when it loses cells/membership, and it atrophies. I can name a few dead memeplexes, as examples: 1) There was once a little memeplex called “Pet Rocks” which flourished in the 70s and 80s and today nobody keeps pet rocks; 2) Tamaguchi; 3) Pogs; 4) Diet fads nobody uses or remembers anymore, 5) TM [Transcendental Mediation], 6) Th British Empire, & 7) Forgotten conlangs from 100 years ago nobody can name or speak or cares about.
THE EVOLUTION OF ONA
And so, in the same way, as a memeplex, ONA evolves. We, ignorantly think or believe that ONA evolves when we add new texts and new ideas to ONA to make it better and cooler, to make it more attractive, more evil, or hardcore, more intellectual, or whatever. As if the monstrosity of the ONA Corpus [5000 pages] needs more pages and texts of conjectural ideas that look great and awesome in writing and on blogs.
Like any living organism [to which we are its cells] the ONA develops slowly and incrementally over Time when conditions in its matrix [its socialscape and mindscape] changes and/or when Challenging/Adversarial factors present themselves as environmental pressures. Most people don’t understand the concept of Developmental Evolution as it happens in the Real Natural World, and so when they look at ONA over the years, they don’t see evolution: they don’t recognize what they are looking at.
One real example of an environmental pressure in ONA’s matrix was the “Blackwood Problem,” which was a Challenging condition where people claimed to be ONA’s grandmaster, leader. In order to adapt to that Challenging condition, the ONA had to change somehow – anyhow – in order to survive. It was successful at adapting to that environmental pressure, and ONA actually ended up Thriving for a decade.
Like the evolution of organisms: when we talk about ONA evolving, what we really mean to speak of are the changes that happen on a microphysical level: the level of individual memes, or individual cells [ONA associates]. And so, on a Microphysical level, the Adaptations of ONA back then to the said Challenging environmental factor looks like this: 1) Memes had to be altered slightly where ideas and texts change, 2) People associated with ONA who wanted ONA to be led by a leader gradually atrophied [they left], 3) People who liked ONA and liked the idea that ONA should be leaderless came to join ONA: and so, as Time passed, the ONA “changed” where it became a leaderless subculture. The reality is that when we say “ONA” what we mean to speak of are the people associated with ONA, because ONA is not an object proper that you can point at or touch. Those people who wanted leaders simply got replaced by people who did not need or like leaders.
Just like how each day your own skin cells die off and are replaced by new skin cells. Just like how a football team of 30 years ago compared to the same football team today, with the same name and logos, have had its football players replaced by new ones. Just like how your own mind of a childhood self had its knowledge, ideas, views, opinions, replaced by new ones. Like the Buddha said: all Things in this physical universe are Aggregate Beings/Phenomena: the key concept is “Aggregation.” An aggregate entity changes by having its aggregate units replaced: and we call that process of replacement “Evolution.” This is exactly how Mother Nature herself has been continuously in physical existence and Evolving for 4.5 Billion years. It is Fractally how this entire universe/cosmos itself has been in continuous existence and evolution. An aggregate entity dies/decays when it can no longer aggregate/accrete new units/parts to replace its old ones. In the same exact way, by the same Fractal Principle: a Nation/Civilization develops and evolves and continuously exists for hundreds even thousands of years.
THE GIFT OF SATAN
Satan as it is spoken about in ONA MSS is the Challenging raw Force of Nature. Satan is the causal Seed of evolution itself. It is a blessing in disguise when Challenging and Adversarial conditions and factors present themselves in ONA’s environment [its socialscape and mindscape]. And so, understood in this Luciferian [a nod to The Lucifer Principle] Light: the recent Challenging and Adversarial factors ONA had recently met up with is a Satanic Blessing: I speak of agents infiltrating ONA, things agent provocateurs did in ONA. Why are they blessings? Because ONA should learn to adapt to such adverse and challenging factors or die: and if it doesn’t die, it will become stronger. What does not kill us makes us stronger. And the recent challenging events did not kill ONA. ONA quickly adapted to the change in its environment. Like The Borg quickly adapts to a phaser gun: you might be able to shoot the Borg once or twice, but they adapt and become stronger.
But that adaptation, on a microphysical level is and will be a gradual process of where many ONA people who don’t like boundaries and ethics will atrophy away, and new people who possess noble ethos/wyrd will gradually be drawn to ONA. The new replaces the old. It’s how everything in this universe evolves. It’s how ONA evolves. And, if you understand the essence of this essay: you will have what you need to work on the process of evolving Satanism.
How do you Fish for men? With nets made of memes. Every word we speak and write, every story we tell, every myth and mythos, are like fibers that entwine to make a fishnet which attracts a certain type and kind of fish: and so it’s necessary to know what type of fish you want [to whom do you speak / who or what is your audience / who was Christ speaking to when he spoke], in order to make the proper nets. As genes dictate and build the proteins, memes dictate and build the Aura. As proteins organize to become cells so the Aura of ONA collects types and kinds of people. And evolution is the process of an aggregate entity continuously replacing its aggregate units, in tandem to the constant changes in its matrical environment, in order to not only struggle to survive such changes, but to Thrive, wyrd willing.
Back in Cali, an older regular customer of mine who was Vietnamese often complained about a subject matter most White people have never even heard of. The Vietnamese man complained about how the Chinese were engaged in what he called “Under The Table Imperialism.” How he explained what under the table imperialism was, wasn’t exactly what we in the West understand by the word “imperialism.”
The Vietnamese man complained that China sends hundreds of students into Vietnam to go to colleges there, and sends Chinese women into Vietnam to marry Vietnamese men. The end goal is to procreate halflings [children who are half Chinese and half Vietnamese]. The Vietnamese guy complained that such halflings would grow to identify as Chinese and be loyal to China and Chinese culture, thus: 1) slowly breeding the Vietnamese race out of existence, 2) gradually infiltrate Vietnam with loyalists [the halflings], & 3) gradually gain more control of Vietnam with each progressing generation.
As a White person, you might be able to dismiss that Vietnamese man’s complaints as some kind of bitter animosity or even racism against the Chinese, being that, in your White America, no such under the table imperialism seems to be happening.
But that pattern repeats: China has been not only doing the same thing in Tibet with the Tibetan people, but also with the Uyghurs in northern China. The end aim is to gradually breed those races into genocidal extinction.
If you are clever and pay careful attention to how China performs its game of racial genocide you will see the number of causal steps they use.
The first causal step is to impede and attack the culture of the target race. You can see this in the case of Tibet, where China antagonizes the Dalai Lama, doesn’t allow Tibetans to pick his successor, flood the youth of Tibet with Chinese culture.
Why this first step? Because old people die and the young people take the place of those old people: thus, with each new generation, you destroy more and more of that race’s culture and traditions.
Culture is the primeval social glue which holds a folk/ethnicity/race together, as a coherent racial entity. When you destroy that culture, the target ethnic race becomes weak, loses its ethnic/racial identity, and begins to dissolve.
The second step is to give [or force unto] such target race state sanctioned ideology and superficial idiotic substitutes for their destroyed culture and traditions. In place of Traditional Tibetan Buddhism, you give to those Tibetans secularism, materialism, and ideological communism. In place of that destroyed Tibetan culture you give them idiotic substitutes such as Chinese pop music, Chinese fashion, Chinese TV shows, Chinese supermodels, Chinese movie stars, etc.
The third step is to use finance and the economy to divide the Family Unit. Meaning that not only do you attack their culture, but you divide them by attacking their family unit [divide & conquer]. Make both parents need to go to work 40-50 hours a week, 8-10 hours a day. That makes it so that the children of such undesirable races are then raised and reared by the Chinese State. Make it cool to want to chase after money and material goods and material comfort [i.e: make individualism and the desires of the individual into a religion]: which causes young people in that undesirable race to not desire to have children, since having a child costs too much money, which money you can spend instead on cool things for yourself. No children: no future population for that undesirable race.
The fourth and overt step is to constantly antagonize their race, to attack them, and make them believe that something is wrong with their race. It’s called “dehumanization.” We dehumanize a people in order to make it more emotionally acceptable to then abuse and mistreat them.
If you can see those steps China is using to commit racial genocide: you as a White American will see the same steps being used by the Left against your own White race.
You no longer have a Culture. Being White and being proud of your Culture makes you a “racist.” You no longer have any Tradition, besides the superficial idiotic substitute traditions that they have given to you: Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Amazon Thursday, Facebook Saturday, Apple Wednesday, TikTok Tuesday, Instagram Sunday.
You no longer have any semblance of Traditional Religion. In the place of Traditional Religion you are given Scientism, Materialism, Secularism, Individualism, Egalitarianism, LGBTQETC rights, Shemale rights, transvestite rights, genital mutilation rights [telling children they are transgender and can get gender re-assignment surgery to “correct” shit].
You no longer have any meaningful semblance of family. Look at the divorce rate, and the number of people who who desire to not get married. Look at the single parent households. Look at how, since the passing/death of the 1950s [the last Great American Era] you kick your kids out of the house when they are 18 and they kick you into a nursing home when you are old. The destruction of White people’s Family unit and family value is an epidemic in White city-folk. Things are actually different in the rural countryside. A simple interesting example: out here where I live, about 10 miles from here, there is a vast field/land of about several hundred acres entirely owned by one family, and on this land, 90% of the houses are owned by members of this single White family [they live in those houses].
They flood America with third world races, who out breed White people, who all vote Left, who will gradually procreate with Liberal young White people to make future generations of halflings.
You White city people are very ignorant about what is happening and being done to your race.
.:.Maybe vacillation is an o9a trait? The Old Guards told me long, long, ago, way back in 2010ish that they were going to leave cyberspace… and they are still around 12 years later. And… I’m still here. Unfortunately, I have emotions. My emotions are what makes me come back and forth to ONA. One emotion is “long-time” sentimental attachment, like how you get sentimentally attached to a certain heirloom your late grandmother may have given to you… or like how as children we were sentimentally attached to teddy bears and dolls… or like how you grow attached to an old pair of faded jeans with holes in them but you can’t throw them out because you’ve had those jeans for so long, despite the functional fact that such holely [holy? holey? Idk how spell it ((the adjective of “hole”))] don’t function properly in a practical way. ONA is like an old pair of my favorite jeans with holes in them which I can’t seem to throw away.
It would have been easier for me to throw these old jeans away and sever my sentimental ties with ONA, if things were left the way they were, and no new writings or blogs presented themselves. Unfortunately, after clicking on links at theo9away.wordpress.com site, I stumbled upon a new o9a archive, addressed as [gawathan.wordpress.com]. My emotions changed after I read the PDFs on that gawatham blog, one of those PDF’s is an interview of Anton Long dated 2021 called “An Aristocratic Ethos.” The other PDF that influenced my emotions was one called the “Boundaries of O9A Philosophy.”
It’s hard to explain my emotions I feel after reading those PDFs. The emotions are a mix of Sympathy and Guilt. I will explain both feelings one at a time.
By the emotion of Sympathy, what I mean is that I like “Anton Long,” or the person behind that penname. As a human being, I have a certain aspect of my personality and characteristic where I just like helping people out with whatever they are doing, like projects, brainstorming, homework, research, whatever; even if they don’t directly/specifically ask me for help. If they don’t stop me, I will just keep trying to help them. And that aspect of my personality comes from my Brain’s need for stimuli. I just simply love to solve problems and mysteries. It’s the underlying reason why I spend so much time doing Natural Philosophy and studying Nature: because its a huge Mystery that can be solved.
And so its because of that dharma I have for wanting to stimulate my brain by solving problems and mysteries that gives me the emotion of Sympathy for Anton Long. He seems to be wanting to do something or go somewhere with the ONA. I get that impression because: why on earth would a human being from England, on this earth, which is in the middle of nowhere special in the universe, spending so much of his mortal time on such an earth [50 years and counting] putting in the time and effort to make ONA and write ONA shit? It must mean something to him? He must be going somewhere with it? There are so many things a elderly human being can spend their mortal time on earth doing, like find a ladyfriend, travel the world, garden, but Anton Long seems to have a thing for this ONA thing? What’s he trying to do, I wonder? Whatever he’s trying to do: I can help in my own ways by looking for problems and malfunctions, and figuring out how to work out those bugs… “debug” ONA as the computer jocks would say [there are bugs in ONA memeplex: unless you are suggesting to me that Anton Long is – like the Pope – perfect and infallible]. My Sympathy for Anton Long is rooted in Curiosity: I’m just curious what he is doing, when he dedicates 40-50 years of his human life manifesting ONA.
And so, in that curiosity, over the years, I mis-interpreted what Anton Long was trying to do. In the past, during the early years [2007-2009], I thought Anton Long was trying to make ONA into a satanic cult. And so, what I did was write a bunch of stuff about ONA that pulled all of the Satanic stuff to the foreground and pushed all of the other stuff to the background. But Anton Long wasn’t making a satanic cult. And so, I later thought that maybe – given his early years – that Anton Long was trying to make a Nazi cult. I can help with that too. I’m not White or a Nazi… but who cares, I can swing way Far Right rhetorically and talk Hitler shit. But I learned that he wasn’t trying to make a Nazi cult either. Maybe he’s trying to make a philosophical thing? Like his own school/denomination of philosophy? I can help with that too. And so I talk a lot about Buddhism and Natural Philosophy.
And so, that’s what I mean by my emotion of Sympathy for Anton Long. I don’t mean that a pity him.
What I mean by my emotions of Guilt… there are many reasons why I feel guilty. I make mistakes in/with ONA since 2006/2007. I failed many times in my attempts and endeavors to do certain things. For the past year, I have been thinking: ‘If me and all those ONA people [Old Guards and so on] did not (1) talk Anton Long into retiring & (2) did not make it open source… would everything that happened since 2018 ever happened?’
I feel Guilty, because I said that ONA was liberal in neutering and getting rid of Anton Long. The truth is, because of my helpful nature, I had a lot to do with that. The reasoning – back then, as I shared with the Old Guards – that I believed that Anton Long should retire, was that ONA needs to be weened from an ideological source and that ONA should not be become a personality cult. Because if ONA remains dependent on Anton Long to keep feeding them/us “official/authoritative” manuscripts, and if ONA becomes an Anton Long worshiping personality cult and the person behind Anton Long passes away of old age [as we all do in Time], then: ONA will die with him. If you go back and re-read the poem I wrote called Caladrius, which I wrote way back in 2009, before Anton Long retired: you can see where my mind was and that even back then, I saw a problem with Anton Long being the head of ONA. In that Caladrius poem, I said: “So dependent on your nightingale that you become sick and lost without her.” And so, in order to heal the King: you have to remove the King’s dependence on that nightingale.
But, when ONA became leaderless and open source, new problems arose: people randomly, from time to time, began to claim to be the new leader or the new outer rep of ONA; and entryism took place. The most significant entryism in ONA’s recent history would be agents acting thru telegram and the ToB manipulating people. I feel Guilty because I was, and still am a huge proponent of a leaderless and open source ONA. Back in 2013, in my resignation paper I turned into the Old Guards, I specifically wrote, defying growing sentiments in ONA at that time, that the only ONA I recognize is one that is leaderless.
Was this a big mistake I had made? I feel very bad inside, because all those years, I was only trying to help Anton Long grow ONA, and I helped cause big problems.
That feeling of Guilt from making mistakes in the past, gives birth to another Guilt I feel: I feel Guilty for leaving/abandoning a big mess I helped make, and not trying to clean up after myself. It’s like me saying: “So yeah… ONA seems to be fucked up… I don’t like it no more… see ya! You guys can fix it!”
And so in my feelings of Guilt, I came back to try to fix problems I see, which I helped make: the problem of ONA needing ethical boundaries, or needing to get rid of that document “authority of individual judgment.” [*]
Which is when I called a Truce to have an open discussion.
COMPROMISES & CONCESSIONS
I’m familiar with negotiations. Mostly from my many years as a tagger, and working the political side of tagger crews with our shot callers. Rival crews “battle” each other for things like territory, their members, spray cans, weed. After the battle/war, we hold Negotiations. A “negotiation” just means when two rival crews/nations sit down to make Compromises and Concessions, in order that BOTH sides benefit somehow. That’s the Honorable way to do things as the winner of a war: you are considerate of your rival’s needs and wellbeing. It’s dishonorable as the winner to just take everything: it makes you look bad to everybody, and exposes your ignoble character.
For example, this one time, our crew had won a battle with a rival crew. The stipulation of the battle was that the losing crew gives up their best tagger to the winning crew. We won, and so we initially demanded that the losing crew give up their best tagger, per stipulations. The losing crew said: “Come on… he’s our best dude. If we lose him, then how are we going to win battles with other crews?” And so, our crew made a Compromise, we said: “Okay… you keep him. But you give us your spray cans, and Green River street as part of our turf, and if our crew gets into a battle your crew helps us and vise versa. Deal?” The rival crew agreed, and so they made the Concession of: giving us all their spray cans and one of their streets they controlled and promising to help us in future battles.”
And so Compromise just means that you understand that you cannot always have things your way, that you must give up certain demands, that you must meet the other party half way. And Concession means to understand that you need to give the other party things. The honorable end goal is: mutual benefit, which is the desired end result where peace and harmony can arise.
And so, those two concepts [Compromises and Concessions] came to my mind when I read the several PDF’s at the Gawatham O9A Archive blog. It fix problems in ONA, Anton Long and the Old Guards made Concessions, where they brought all the boring stuff of ethos and ethics to the foreground of ONA… made such concept of ethics relevant again. They also, via those PDFs, made it known that ONA is not socially liberal because ONA is still about its Traditions.
Because of those Concessions, which I really like, I feel Guilty for abandoning ONA [the spirit/egregore of ONA], and am happily willing to make Compromises: I understand that ONA can’t and shouldn’t give me all of my demands, just to make me happy. I’m only one person of many ONA associates. I am not an individualist [re: individualism]: my own single person’s contentment is small and subordinate to that of the Collective/Whole Organism [the living entity that is ONA, of which we are cells]. The spirit of ONA was willing, via its OG cells, to meet me in the middle, and I will oblige by meeting the spirit of ONA half way, in that middle ground, and will – if I may – continue to help it in my own ways, as I have been doing.
Neither swinging to the Left or the Right. Neither extremism or extreme intellectualism. Buddhistically: sukkha [peace] is the Natural state of equilibrium where the Pendulum comes to rest. Ultimately, ONA must learn to neither swing in either direction, but to find its center: its natural state of peace and equilibrium. As a memeplex and social order [subculture, school of philosophy], ONA is still young, and has a lot of time to make mistakes, errors, and eventually find its Sukkha.
The various PDFs at Gawatham O9A Archive honestly makes me proud to be associated with ONA. I am hoping that new, future generations of ONA initiates/associates read and study those documents: because every thing that ONA writes [our words] are like fishnets that are cast out [as Christ taught]. And those fishnets bring in fish such fishnets are Designed to catch. Because Realistically [re: Realism] when we say “ONA” or “Order of Nine Angles” we are talking about a reific entity which is an abstract noun that isn’t real [can’t be pointed at or touched]. In Reality [re: Realism] what exists are people who are influenced by or identify with ONA. To catch Honorable fish: you need fishnets that are imbued with concepts of honorable behaviour and aristocratic/noble ethos. Those things need to be brought into the foreground, and what elements of ONA that got us into this mess [since 2018] need to be pushed to the back of the stage.
The Truce was fruitful. Now we can all return to status quo.
[*] My personal opinions/views about this document [the authority of individual judgment] – and this is purely my own fallible opinion – is that the said document was not written by Anton Long in the first place, and so, it is not primary source, and thus, is not even binding. But, at the same time, and in contrast to my individual opinion, a subculture and culture and Tribe has Elders, and such elders [especially in my strict Asian culture] and their elderly views [wise and experienced] are to be honored/respected by those younger [in age or in wisdom or in experience] than they. Our English word “Senator” does come from a certain Latin word with a topical meaning. And so, regarding that text of authority of individual judgment, my personal position is that: it is not primary text, not binding, or defining, but out of respect/honor [one who has the capacity to Honor/Respect/Venerate], being an Elder in this ONA subculture, the author’s text should be held in significant cultural/subcultural regard and thus adhered to.
Any crewmen who ate the lotus, the honey-sweet fruit,
lost all desire to send a message back, much less return,
their only wish to linger there with the Lotus-eaters,
grazing on lotus, all memory of the journey home
dissolved forever. But I brought them back, back
to the hollow ships, and streaming tears – I forced them,
hauled them under the rowing benches, lashed them fast
and shouted out commands to my other, steady comrades:
‘Quick, no time to lose, embark in the racing ships!’ –
so none could eat the lotus, forget the voyage home.
They swung aboard at once, they sat to the oars in ranks
and in rhythm churned the water white with stroke on stroke.
Auribus teneo lupum: I hold a wolf by the ears. The proverbial expression comes from the Carthaginian-born Roman playwright Publius Terentius Afer, better known as Terence. As one of the originators of European comic drama, Terence’s six comedies are based on Greek models known as “fabulae palliatae,” or “plays in a Greek cloak [pallium].”[3] Among these, we find the expression “auribus teneo lupum” in his fourth comedy Phormio, which is based on the lesser-known play The Claimant by Apollodorus of Carystus.[4] At lines 506-507 in Phormio, Antipho, the son of Demipho, says to the slave-trader Dorio: “auribus teneo lupum: nam neque quo pacto a me amittam neque uti retineam scio.”[5] This can be translated as “I’ve got a wolf by the ears, as they say, can’t let go and can’t hold on.”[6] An alternative translation renders this as “I’m holding the proverbial wolf by the ears. I don’t know how to let go or how to hold on to her.”[7][8]
Indeed, much like the title of the Fenrir journal, the “proverbial wolf” points to a duality present at various levels of complexity, one that deepens its meaning as it returns to a dynamic point of self-reference. Commonly understood, the duality of holding a wolf by the ears is illustrated by a twofold risk: in either case, letting the wolf go or continuing to hold it by its ears will prove fatal. One is thus paralyzed by inaction and yet must act, torn between two polarities that will ensure harm regardless of one’s action.
We can trace this cursory understanding of the aforesaid duality of the wolf to deeper levels of complexity. At one level, we find a similar dynamic paralleled in many of Terence’s plays. As John Barsby notes with respect to Phormio, “As with most of Terence’s plays, the plot is double, involving two fathers and two sons; the two halves are united by the close associations of all of the characters.”[9] Beyond the text, we find this theme paralleled in relation to the Fenrir journal through its allusion to the climate of opposition, emergent potential, and creative momentum that prompted the journal’s revival. At another level, we can trace it to the broader historical horizon of Fenrir as a whole, from past to present. In some sense, this duality has functioned as a healthy catalyst for the journal’s survival, directing it into a domain of opposition that has motivated its reception. At another level, it has served that role with respect to the Order of Nine Angles itself, pointing to the latter’s Labyrinthos Mythologicus. This is not, however, a childish sense of the reactionary. Rather, as a twofold risk resting on primal adversity, we find that the wolf is as beholden to us as we are to it.
More than beholden, the possibility of death from holding the ears of the wolf points to a shift from duality to relationality. We find this shift centered in a long-standing dialogue within twentieth-century Continental thought, most notably in the fields of phenomenology, relational ontology, existentialism, deconstruction, and theology. In the phenomenological and ontological vein, we find figures like Alfred Schutz, Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Jean-Luc Nancy; in the existentialist vein, Martin Buber has made notable contributions; in the deconstructionist camp, Jacques Derrida explores this issue in terms of the [O]ther or alterity; and in the theological vein, Jean-Luc Marion draws this out in his own way. In an effort to recontextualize this dialogue within the tradition of the Order of Nine Angles, the purpose of this article will be to examine the shift to relationality in the work of Emmanuel Levinas, specifically with respect to his analysis of our relation to the [O]ther[10] as a response to Heidegger’s ontology. Here, as in the work of Levinas, our relation to the [O]ther concerns what is referred to as alterity, which has to do with otherness and the [O]ther in general as something that is in some sense “more” or “other” than the self. For Levinas and in response to Heidegger, this relation constitutes the most fundamental level of human experience, constitution, and identity, one that precedes ontology.
What follows is an examination of some of the dynamics and tensions Levinas brings to light concerning this relation, especially in works like Totality and Infinity. I attempt to illustrate how these dynamics and tensions are operative at the heart of the Order of Nine Angles in a hidden and more or less unexamined way. In hermeneutic fashion and in a spirit appropriate for Fenrir, I center this under a hermeneutic theme I refer to as the dyssolving of the duality of the wolf. That theme involves an interplay between Terence’s “auribus teneo lupum” and the notion of lupus non mordet lupum – how a wolf does not bite another wolf. I attempt to demonstrate how the two can be paired through Levinas’ analysis of relationality and alterity, thereby dyssolving the duality highlighted by Terence and revealing it to be an artificial construction or illusion to begin with. I then center this within the Order of Nine Angles to make visible certain features of a deeper lens of reality at its core, features which remain invisible, hidden, opaque, and unseen.
In drawing out these dynamics and tensions, I would like to note that my approach – in terms of writing, language, and analysis – is consistent with a style of French Continental and hermeneutic thought that was resistant to what is sometimes referred to as parisianism. Parisianism is related to a style of philosophy that emerged from the Annales school of thought in early twentieth-century France. It is characterized by treating argument as a series of assertions and counter-assertions, paired with hyperbolic, fact-based claims pushed to great extremes. By contrast, my approach resists a structured, fact-based argument in favor of hermeneutic analysis, which is meant to illuminate certain truths that are not directly expressible in propositional terms. This hermeneutic approach operates by forming a healthy rather than vicious circle – much like the primordial ouroboros – through a movement beyond strictly logical or rational thought. By drawing out hidden paradoxes and aporias and then using their tension to reveal a hidden resolution, I attempt to disclose the relation to alterity that Levinas brings to light. In this lighting up of world, this savage visibility, I aim to help others make the invisible visible within themselves, within the world, and within the ONA.
Levinas, Ethics, and the Face of the Other
Whether considered in the phenomenological, ontological, existentialist, deconstructionist, or theological schools of twentieth-century Continental thought, the issue of the [O]ther is perhaps most pronounced in the work of Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas was one of the most important French thinkers of the twentieth century and was deeply indebted to the work of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, and Martin Heidegger, who worked as Husserl’s assistant for a time. He played a major role in the transition of phenomenology from Germany to France. Having taken courses with Husserl and Heidegger, his first published textbooks were devoted to the work of both these thinkers. With respect to Heidegger, Levinas described Being and Time as “one of the greatest books in the history of philosophy.”[11] With respect to Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, Levinas “[described] himself as a phenomenologist and as being faithful to the spirit of Husserl.”[12][13] Although in early writings like Totality and Infinity Levinas incorporates the ontological language of Heidegger’s Being and Time in order to exceed those ontological categories and overturn ontology,[14] he nevertheless argues in favor of something that is more fundamental than ontology, something which he calls “ethics” – ethics as first philosophy.
Levinas’ use of the term “ethics” differs from its traditional moral sense.[15] Here, ethics “is neither a code of rules nor the study of reasoning about how we ought to act.”[16] Rather, it concerns a fundamental relationship with alterity, a relation to the [O]ther that is more fundamental than ontology, understood as “a relation of infinite responsibility to the other person.”[17] Although ethics for Levinas is not “a theory of justice or an account of general rules, principles and procedures that would allow us to assess the acceptability of specific maxims or judgements relating to social action, civic duty or whatever,” he may have been trying “to give an account of a basic existential demand, a lived fundamental obligation that should be at the basis of all moral theory and moral action.”[18] The point here is that while Levinas’ use of “ethics” does not concern morality or a moral sense, our relation to the [O]ther is so fundamental that it can be thought to serve as a condition for the possibility of all moral theory and moral action. “Ethics” in terms of morality, right and wrong, or normative action – what we should or should not do – is essentially an epistemological domain, which concerns knowledge and the conditions for knowledge. Ontology on Heidegger’s account, which concerns [B]eing, precedes epistemology. It is more fundamental and serves as a condition for the possibility of knowledge.[19] Heidegger’s overturning of the historical priority given to epistemology over ontology is one thing that makes his seminal work Being and Time so important and revolutionary. It is also why Levinas calls it “one of the greatest books in the history of philosophy.”[20] However, Levinas’ thought was just as revolutionary. He demonstrates how “ethics” as a fundamental relation to the [O]ther precedes even ontology. It precedes epistemology and ontology. Thus, if there is any moral sense to Levinas’ use of “ethics,” it is only in terms of our fundamental relation to the [O]ther serving as the potential basis for the formation of any moral theory or moral action as the deepest level of human constitution. My usage of “ethics” regarding the ONA is consistent with this non-moral and constitutive sense. Levinas describes his usage in the following way, which concerns the relation between what he calls the Same[21] or the self and the [O]ther:
A calling into question [mise en question] of the same [or self] – which cannot occur [se faire] within the egoistic spontaneity of the same – is brought about [se fait] by the other [l’Autre]. We name this calling into question of my spontaneity by the presence of the Other [Autrui] ethics. The strangeness of the Other, his irreducibility to the I [Moi], to my thoughts and my possessions, is precisely accomplished [s’accomplit] as a calling into question of my spontaneity, as ethics. Metaphysics, transcendence, the welcoming of the other by the same, of the Other by me, is concretely produced [se produit] as the calling into question of the same by the other, that is, as the ethics that accomplishes [accomplit] the critical essence of knowledge.[22]
Here, ethics as the “calling into question of my spontaneity by the presence of the Other” is tightly linked to what Levinas calls “metaphysics,” which he also uses in an unconventional way. Whereas ethics is the “calling into question,” metaphysics is the “welcoming of the other by the same” or the self. Just as Heidegger overturned a traditional and positivistic model that prioritized epistemology over ontology, so too did Levinas overturn ontology with ethics and metaphysics, defined in relation to the [O]ther so described. Once again, whereas Heidegger shows how ontology precedes epistemology, Levinas shows that ethics and metaphysics precede ontology. As Levinas says, “And as critique precedes dogmatism, metaphysics precedes ontology.”[23] Our relation to the [O]ther, both with respect to the “calling into question of … [our] own spontaneity by the presence of the Other” in the case of ethics and with respect to the “welcoming of the other by the same” in the case of metaphysics, constitutes one of the deepest domains of human identity and reality.
For Levinas, the ethical subject is “an embodied being of flesh and blood.”[24] Ethics as a relation to the [O]ther is thus not an abstraction but “lived in the sensibility of an embodied exposure to the other,” whereby the “deep structure of subjective experience … is structured in a relation of responsibility or … responsivity to the other … [which calls] me to respond.”[25] Levinas’ main idea is that our relation to the [O]ther cannot be reduced to comprehension or understanding. The strangeness of the [O]ther must be preserved in its strangeness without being reduced to the “I” (the self) or what Levinas calls the “Same.” As an ethical relation, it structures the experience of our sense of self or subject.[26] For Levinas, an ethical relation “is one where I face the other person.”[27] In turn, his task to describe a relation to the [O]ther that “cannot be reduced to comprehension” is found in what he calls a “face-to-face” relation. On this point, Levinas says that “[t]he way in which the other presents himself, exceeding the idea of the other in me, we here name face.”[28]
Speaking, Seeing, Silence
For Levinas, this “face-to-face” relation with the [O]ther “is not a relation of perception or vision, but is always linguistic.” That is, “The face is not something I see, but something I speak to.”[29] It is an irreducible relation that “makes possible the pluralism of society.”[30] Levinas thus emphasizes sound over light and sight in this relation. On this point, Derrida notes that “Levinas places sound above light” specifically in the sense in which Levinas views thought as language, one that “is thought in an element analogous to sound and not to light.”[31] Elaborating on the relation between the eye and sight in juxtaposition to Levinas, Derrida quotes an incisive passage from Hegel:
If we ask ourselves now in which particular organ the soul appears as such in its entirety we shall at once point to the eye. For in the eye the soul concentrates itself; it not merely uses the eye as its instrument, but is itself therein manifest. We have, however, already stated, when referring to the external covering of the human body, that in contrast with the bodies of animals, the heart of life pulses through and throughout it. And in much the same sense it can be asserted of art that it has to invent every point of the external appearance into the direct testimony of the human eye, which is the source of soul-life, and reveals spirit.[32]
In contrast to Hegel, Levinas’ emphasis on speaking rather than seeing the [O]ther reveals a potential connection to Martin Buber’s description of “a silence which is communication.”[33] Buber notes that silence can take the form of speaking, where a conversation can be had without a sound or gesture: “[s]peech can renounce all the media of sense, and [yet] it is still speech.”[34] This, he says, is not the “lover’s tender silence” or a mystical silence whereby we “[take our] stand in the reflection of the divine Face”;[35] rather, this silence takes shape as a silence that one “bears … to his neighbour”:[36]
Unreservedly communication streams from him, and the silence bears it to his neighbour. Indeed it was intended for him, and he receives it unreservedly as he receives all genuine destiny that meets him. He will be able to tell no one, not even himself, what he has experienced. What does he now “know” of the other? No more knowing is needed. For where unreserve has ruled, even wordlessly, between men, the word of dialogue has happened sacramentally.[37]
We thus find that the face of the [O]ther is spoken to, not seen; and in speaking, one engages in a relation to the [O]ther that is not a stance “in the reflection of the divine Face”[38] – Levinas is not claiming that the [O]ther is God, but in fact substitutes the [O]ther for God[39] – but a concrete act or practice, where one does not contemplate but converses, focusing on “the particular individual in front of me.”[40] Buber’s account demonstrates how this conversation can occur silently, where silence becomes our way of speaking. In conversing with our neighbor through silence, one comes to “speak” without speaking. Likewise in Levinas, in speaking to the face rather than seeing it, one comes to “see” without seeing. Where no more knowing is needed, as a dialogue happening sacramentally – as “‘expression’, ‘invocation’, and ‘prayer’”[41] – and in the call of the [O]ther to respond, we reach acknowledgement.[42] It is in this seeing without seeing, this speaking without speaking, that we come to speak not just face-to-face but see eye-to-eye. This acknowledgement unfolds primally into empathy, and there the duality of the wolf dyssolves. It dyssolves into a relation. And in the reception of all genuine destiny that meets us, this relation always already was and always already is: Wyrd. No longer do I hold a wolf by the ears. Now lupus non mordet lupum: a wolf does not bite a wolf. We become more than a neighbor to the [O]ther; we become a brother and sister, a father and mother, a son and daughter, extending our dynamic point of self-reference to a relation of infinite responsibility.
Alterity, Diastasis, and Dyssolving in the Order of Nine Angles
In some respects, the Order of Nine Angles has lost touch with this conversation, this sacramental dialogue, impaled on the horns of a dilemma: on the one hand, the irreducible and incomprehensible transformations that Hebdomadry and the Seven-Fold Way are capable of catalyzing connect us through living action to the “speaking or calling or listening to the other” Levinas describes.[43] Even as a solitary path, our “[O]ther” finds its voice in physis, where nature’s solemn triumph becomes the banner upon which that calling occurs – and not as mere reflection or mere abstraction, but as an active and existential engagement in a “non-subsumptive relation.”[44] On the other hand, as a solitary path this engagement resembles the silence Buber describes – a silent communication where the voice of the [O]ther in physis takes on the voice of destiny through Wyrd, and where the silence of our conversation reaches a depth where it cannot help but be spoken and yet cannot be fully heard: Wyrd rather than word describes it, and its utterance is ineffable.[45]
The Wolf, Physis, and Wyrd in the Empire of the Same
The aforesaid dilemma thus rests on a kind of diastasis or separation. Transformation involves a relation between this seeing eye-to-eye without “speaking” (where silence becomes our way of speaking) and speaking face-to-face without seeing (where sound is emphasized over light and sight). However, the two are inadvertently pulled apart with respect to how the ONA engages in conversation. Much like the duality of the wolf described above, where in holding a wolf by the ears we attempt to reduce the wolf to the self (attempting to understand, evaluate, and comprehend what the wolf may or may not do from the vantage point of the self), so too does the ONA create an artificial duality in separating the solitary act of transformation from the ethical act of conversation. In both cases, we attempt to preserve the [O]ther as [O]ther – as an object of knowledge or experience – where that knowledge “is always my knowledge” and where experience is “always my experience.” That object, whether as wolf or physis or Wyrd, “is encountered only in so far as it exists for me,” which immediately diminishes its alterity.[46] In the ONA, there may be conversing but seldom conversation. This is a problem, because conversation as a relationship with alterity, an opening to the enigmatic world, and an acknowledgement of the strangeness of the [O]ther is the condition for all transformation. It is the basis for the self to encounter something other than itself. Along these lines and in contradistinction to the typical usage of terminology within the ONA, we might thus say that the terror of the alienness and strangeness and alterity of the [O]ther – the acknowledgement when face-to-face and eye-to-eye with the wolf that neither she nor the danger she poses can be comprehended or reduced to the self – may be properly called the “sinister” in the ONA; while the sense of “something-outside-everything” as transcendence, exteriority, or what Levinas calls infinity in relation to the [O]ther may be properly called the “numinous.”
Contrary to what is commonly thought in many esoteric traditions, this “pulling apart” or diastasis does not result in dyssolving. It results in an artificial duality. Regardless of whether we attempt to substitute the wolf, physis, or Wyrd for the [O]ther, insofar as they are always an object of my knowledge and my experience, encountered only insofar as they exist for me,[47] we are reducing the [O]ther to the Same (or self). Here, the [O]ther appears as “a temporary interruption to be eliminated as it is incorporated into or reduced to sameness.” [48] The Same essentially attempts to “incorporate … that which lies outside it.”[49] Whereas Husserlian phenomenology “establishes the Ego as the source of all meaning and knowledge,” and whereas in Heidegger the relation of “beings to Being entails the exclusion of anything that might lie outside that relation,” Levinas was working against the idea of philosophy as an “egology,”[50] one that acknowledges the [O]ther only in order to suppress or possess it, “asserting the primacy of the self, the Same, the subject or Being.”[51] Though the ONA also works against this sense of “egology”, so long as the [O]ther is still operating “within the empire of sameness,” there remains a sense in which “the Other is only other in a restricted sense,”[52] as in the case of the wolf, physis, and Wyrd.
Contra Egology: Empathy and Pathei-Mathos as Ethical Relation to the [O]ther
Although the ONA falls victim to the reduction of the [O]ther to the Same in certain respects, at its heart it does attempt to resist this reduction. In its transformative underbelly, its receptivity to nature, its overarching openness, its dynamic malleability, and its emphasis on empathy it attempts to restore that sense of thinking the [O]ther as [O]ther, reaching an acknowledgement and recognizing its strangeness without reducing it to comprehension. Though it does place emphasis on the individual in several respects – individual experience, individual transformation, individual authority, and pathei-mathos as a learning from personal experience – it does so with respect to the cultivation of empathy as a relation to the [O]ther. Empathy is the primary way one relates to the [O]ther in the ONA, and pathei-mathos plays a role in informing how one directs oneself with respect to that relation. This relation is so fundamental that without it there would be no possibility of transformation or even the possibility of a relation to the self.[53] The ONA’s emphasis on empathy aims at “discovering the irreducibility of the alterity of the Other” as the only means through which I can come to understand that “I am neither solipsistically alone in the world nor part of a totality to which all others also belong.” Nothing can precede or take priority over the ethical relation to the [O]ther because it “characterizes human relations at their most basic level.”[54] That the ONA is aware of this, and that empathy steered by pathei-mathos is a crucible upon which so much hangs, points to its underlying core as deeply ethical in nature. It is unfortunate that so many individuals associating with the ONA have misunderstood this point at the most basic level.
Enantiodromia, Dyssolving, Revealing
Here again we find a parallel to the hermeneutic theme of the dyssolving of the duality of the wolf, one that references and deepens itself across a recurrent matrix of meaning. On the one hand, the ONA emphasizes pathei-mathos with respect to the individual and personal experience. But it does so in conjunction with empathy, where pathei-mathos is a form of empathic living.[55] Pathei-mathos thus targets our “separation-of-otherness” or our separation from the [O]ther, and along with empathy attempts to restore our relation to other human beings.[56] David Myatt describes the process of enantiodromia as a revealing of the separation-of-otherness returning to the wholeness or unity it came from.[57] Anton Long describes this as “a type of confrontational context whereby what has been separated becomes bound together again [united] enabling the genesis of a new type of being.”[58] The ONA’s emphasis on the individual and solitary practice thus does not point to a clear division between the self (or Same) and the [O]ther – not a duality – but rather a way of preserving their independence while still maintaining an irreducible and fundamental relation to one another.[59]
Here, we find a deeper esoteric sense of the dyssolving of the duality of the wolf: what “dissolves” is neither the self nor the [O]ther, as the two are not simply annihilated, abolished, or reduced to one another in order to eliminate their duality. Rather, the mystery lies in their coming together as a relation through the dissolution of their exclusive separation. The [O]ther is revealed but not reduced, acknowledged as “the other within the same, in spite of me, calling me to respond.”[60] We find this mystery paralleled in the philosophy of pathei-mathos, where what is revealed by enantiodromia[61] can be connected to the Levinasian acknowledgement of the ethical relation to the [O]ther. The irreducible strangeness of the [O]ther, for example, may be revealed in that acknowledgement rather than comprehended or understood. This connects to Buber’s silent communication, where what is communicated silently may require a revealing rather than understanding or comprehension, involving as it does something that “escapes the cognitive power of the subject.”[62] This connection to Levinasian acknowledgement and Buber’s silent communication points to the depth of the mystery of dyssolving – which, like the dyssolving of the duality of the wolf developed in this article, can neither be understood nor comprehended. It requires a different approach, one which the Order of Nine Angles attempts to explore through a spiritual cartography designed to navigate the unseen, unknown, and unexplored.
Conclusion: The ONA and the Preservation of the Other
Whereas the Western tradition has been characterized by the reduction of the [O]ther to the Same, the ONA is a living example of a tradition that attempts to preserve the enigma of the [O]ther. We can observe many examples of this, both directly and indirectly. One indirect example can be found in the etymological relation between “weird” and “Wyrd,”[63] which hints at a being who is not self-contained but “understood as inseparable from temporality and historicity.”[64] Here, Wyrd marks an encounter with something other than the self (as a “pull” or “push” of fate or destiny “outside” the self), where self-presence is broken out of its imprisonment toward an enigmatic world in all of its strangeness and “weirdness.” In this directedness and “breaking-out-of” toward that which lies outside us, we no longer try to grasp, represent, understand, or comprehend in an effort to return that strangeness to “the hegemony of the Same”; rather, in preserving that sense of “outside ourselves” as “an exit from oneself,” we attempt to acknowledge our relationship with alterity.[65][66]
Much like Levinas’ goal then, the ONA’s rests on the establishment of a relationship between the Same (or self) and [O]ther, one “which does not entail the dissolution of either.”[67] In calling the Same into question and acknowledging the [O]ther in all of its strangeness, we do not simply push for a dislodgment of the primacy of the Same by the [O]ther, where, in Levinasian terms, “infinity abolishes totality.”[68] The difficulty rests on producing a sense in which both self and [O]ther are “preserved as independent and self-sufficient, but in some sense in relation with one another.”[69] Colin Davis notes that “[t]he ontological imperialism of Western thought manifests itself in different forms, but the hidden purpose is always to find a means of offsetting the shock of alterity.”[70] I have attempted to illustrate how the Order of Nine Angles does not want to offset the shock of alterity but acknowledge it. In fact, I claim that it wants to recall it. As Odysseus indicates when he and his men reach the land of the Lotus-eaters described in the opening quote of this article, we must not just speak but shout to the [O]ther – to our other comrades, the rest of the enigmatic world, and our opponents – “so none … [can] eat the lotus, forget the voyage home.”[71] From our forgetting – from a conversation that has by and large been forgotten, reduced to the Same, lost, and distorted – we must recall. That recalling is not the anamnesis of Plato, which “asserts that I already know what I seek to know, all knowledge is already contained within myself.”[72] Our recalling rests on the fundamental relation to the [O]ther, juxtaposed from a self “‘tethered to itself [rive à soi–même]’ … trapped and longing for escape.”[73] In conversing and recalling as we make the voyage home, the following questions thus splinter with urgency from their need for resolution: with whom are we conversing? With whom are we having a conversation?
The task now is to break open the ONA’s emphasis on solitary practice and experience toward an openness and relationality that goes deeper than ontology. Although the ONA does reduce the [O]ther to the Same in several respects, these points of tension can reach a productive resolution if re-worked into a relational framework along these lines. I believe Anton Long would be the first to acknowledge some of these limitations, in addition to recognizing the need for ethical conversation so described. What I have written in this article is meant to illuminate some of those tensions with an eye toward their resolution. It is my hope that addressing this in terms of our ethical relation to the [O]ther will offer something of value to the reader in assessing how they approach the ONA, other associates, other people, and the rest of the world.
Levinas endeavored to “protect the Other from the aggressions of the Same, to analyse the possibilities and conditions of its appearance in our lives, and to formulate the ethical significance of the encounter with it.”[74] I believe the Order of Nine Angles and its preservation as a living tradition involves much the same goal, whether we are talking in terms of concrete objects, domains of reality, other life forms, or other people. But preserving this tradition requires more than conversing; it requires conversation. It requires ethical relation. Time will tell whether the ONA’s interior soliloquy has the resolve to evolve into a call – one which, as a living tradition, is “lived in the sensibility of an embodied exposure to the other,” and where the “deep structure of subjective experience … is structured in a relation of responsibility or … responsivity to the other … [which calls] me to respond.”[75] Whether associates will take this to heart or merely keep it in mind remains to be seen. I, however, remain optimistic.
[H]ere we landed, and surely a god steered us in
through the pitch-black night.
Not that he ever showed himself, with thick fog
swirling around the ships, the moon wrapped in clouds
and not a glimmer stealing through that gloom.
Not one of us glimpsed the island – scanning hard –
or the long combers rolling us slowly toward the coast,
not till our ships had run their keels ashore.
Beaching our vessels smoothly, striking sail,
the crews swung out on the low shelving sand
and there we fell asleep, awaiting Dawn’s first light.
Nameless Therein
November 23, 2022
2775 ab urbe condita
In loving memory of Allan Holdsworth.
Notes
[1] The term “diastasis” comes from Emmanuel Levinas’ Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence. His use of this word is complex, sometimes used in relation to identity or the “diastasis of the identical,” elsewhere in relation to “temporal diastasis.” The way I use it in this article is meant to suggest a general sense of separation. The title of this article,“Avribvs Teneo Lvpvm: Alterity and Ethical Diastasis in the Dyssolving of the Wolf” refers to diastasis as a separation or breakdown in our relation to the [O]ther. As I note throughout the article, Levinas uses the term “ethical” to describe that relation. His use of the term does not refer to its traditional “moral” or normative sense. That is, it concerns our relation to [O]ther, not what we ought to do or what is considered right or wrong. For Levinas, ethics refers to a “calling into question of my spontaneity by the presence of the Other [Autrui],” which I describe later in this article. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (1969; repr., Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2007), 43. In turn, alterity refers to this sense of otherness and concerns the [O]ther. If you put these together, you get something like: otherness and the separation, breakdown, or “coming apart” of our relation to the [O]ther, which is indicated and reiterated throughout this article in the form of a paradox or aporia I call “the duality of the wolf.” I see that duality as artificial – something that does not exist, something erected and created in an artificial manner. “Dyssolving” is meant to indicate how that aporia is resolved in the context of the Order of Nine Angles. I develop these themes hermeneutically, which concerns a healthy circle of descriptive and recurrent meaning rather than a fact-based argument involving assertion and counter-assertion.
For more on Levinas’ use of “diastasis,” see Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1974; Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991). The term appears in the Kluwer Academic edition on, e.g., pages 29, 30, 34, 36, 42, and 115. For an overview of hermeneutics and my approach to it, see Nameless Therein, “The Star Game, Chess, and the Nine Angles: An Introduction to Chess Hermeneutics,” Lux Lycaonis, Fenrir: Journal of Satanism and the Sinister, April 13, 2022, https://luxlycaonis.com/index.php/2022/04/14/chess-hermeneutics/.
[2] Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Robert Fagles (1996; repr., New York: Penguin Books, 1997).
[3] Terence, Terence: The Comedies, trans. Peter Brown (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), xii.
[4] Terence, xii. See also Terence, Terence in Two Volumes, trans. John Sargeaunt, vol. 2 (1912; repr., London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1959), 2-3.
[7] Terence, Phormio, The Mother-in-Law, The Brothers, trans. and ed. John Barsby, vol. 2, Loeb Classical Library 23 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 69.
[8] “Traduire, c’est trahir,” as Levinas was fond of pointing out. To translate is to betray. See Simon Critchley, “Introduction,” chap. 1 in The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, ed. Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 18.
[10] Regarding my usage of [O]ther throughout this article, Levinas makes a distinction between the personal Other (“autrui”), which is capitalized and which refers to “the you” or another person, and the lowercased other (“autre”), which refers to the other generally and not necessarily to another person. It could, for example, refer to an object such as “the other bookshelf” or “the other glass of water.” The capitalized Other, however, refers to a person. My use of [O]ther throughout this article merges the two; because within the context of the ONA, [O]ther refers to the other person as much as it does to other life forms and objects. I leave it as [O]ther to keep this adaptive and open-ended, taking whichever reference necessary for the context it is found in. See Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 24. The footnote at the bottom of that page explains this distinction.
[11] Emmanuel Levinas, Entre nous: Essais sur le penser-à-l’autre (Paris: Grasset and Fasquelle, 1991), 255, quoted in Colin Davis, Levinas: An Introduction (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996), 9.
[13] In contrast to Heidegger and Husserl, Levinas thought the relation to the other person was not phenomenological – “not a phenomenon but an enigma,” and thus “not a matter for [intentional] thought or reflection,” where “intention” in this phenomenological sense refers to an object of consciousness rather than something like a motivation or volitional act. Critchley, “Introduction,” 8. Additionally, though Levinas was familiar with Heidegger’s later work, he was indebted to the early Heidegger – the Heidegger of Being and Time. Critchley, 10.
[14] See Davis, Levinas, 38: “Levinas acknowledges that Totality and Infinity continues to use the language of ontology … even though the arguments advanced in that book aspire to overturn ontology.” Derrida critiqued this in his work, “Violence and Metaphysics.” See “Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas,” chap. 4 in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (1978; repr., London: Routledge, 2001). On this point, Critchley notes that “[Derrida] argued that the attempt to leave the climate of Heidegger’s thinking was doomed from the start because Levinas still employs Heideggerian categories in the attempt to exceed those categories. Derrida extended the same argument to Levinas’s critique of Hegel and Husserl.” Critchley, “Introduction,” 17. Critchley additionally points out that Levinas was tormented by the questions Derrida raised in “Violence and Metaphysics.” In response, Levinas acknowledged that he was trying to move away from that ontological terminology in his later work.
[15] I want to emphasize again that the way I am applying “ethics” to the ONA in this article does not involve a traditional moral sense. It has to do with our relation to the [O]ther, with alterity. It is not normative or proscriptive, does not concern questions of right or wrong, and has little to do with the traditional philosophical field of ethics in any straightforward sense.
[19] In Heidegger’s language, the mode of being-in-the-world called knowing is anterior to ontological being-in-the-world.
[20] Levinas, Entre nous, 255, quoted in Davis, Levinas, 9.
[21] Though Levinas makes a distinction between the personal Other (“autrui”), which is capitalized in English, and the other generally (“autre”), which is lowercased (see note 10 above), my capitalization of the word “Same” here (used to refer to the self) is a matter of personal taste. Davis, Critchley, and translators of Levinas have their own conventions regarding the capitalization of this term. I have opted for capitalization only as a matter of consistency throughout this article.
[22] Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 43, quoted in Davis, Levinas, 36. Davis’ quote of this passage uses slightly different capitalization for certain words. I have retained the capitalization of the edition of Totality and Infinity listed in the bibliography for this article.
[25] Critchley, 21. Note that Levinas’ departure from Heidegger’s analysis can be illustrated in the following way: “Levinas claims that Dasein’s understanding of Being presupposes an ethical relation with the other human being, that being to whom I speak and to whom I am obliged before being comprehended. Fundamental ontology is fundamentally ethical.” Critchley, 10.
[32] G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Fine Art, trans. F. P. B. Osmaston (London: C. Bell and Sons, 1920), 1:206-7, quoted in Derrida, “Violence and Metaphysics,” 122-123.
[33] Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, trans. Ronald Gregor-Smith (New York: Routledge, 2002), 3. It should be noted that Levinas had problems with some of the work of Martin Buber and mysticism generally. One must be careful in drawing a connection between their thought, in addition to exploring Levinas’ thought in the context of this article, whose frame of reference he almost certainly would have opposed. His ideas nevertheless cast important implications over a shadow of discourse surrounding the ONA, which could benefit from this line of development.
[38] Levinas is not claiming that the [O]ther is God. Critchley emphasizes this point: “[Nor] is … [Levinas] claiming that the other is God, as some readers mistakenly continue to believe.” Critchley, “Introduction,” 14.
[39] See Davis, Levinas, 40: “So Levinas transforms Descartes’s infinite God into his own Other.” See also Critchley, “Introduction,” 14 and Hilary Putnam, “Levinas and Judaism,” chap. 2 in The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, ed. Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 42. With respect to the relation between Descartes’ res cogitans and God, Putnam says: “It isn’t that Levinas accepts Descartes’s argument, so interpreted. The significance is rather that Levinas transforms the argument by substituting the other for God.”
[42] Regarding acknowledgement, Critchley says the following: “That is to say, there is something about the other person, a dimension of separateness, interiority, secrecy or what Levinas calls ‘alterity’ that escapes my comprehension. That which exceeds the bounds of my knowledge demands acknowledgement.” Critchley, “Introduction,” 26.
[45] And yet we hear it and are called to respond. However, we may have trouble “listening” to that call, because although we sense it intimately its utterance is so ungraspable and incomprehensible that we only “see” its contours – and blindly, at that. We must make out its shape in an impenetrable darkness, one without light or sight. So there is a kind of “hearing” without hearing to go with our seeing without seeing and speaking without speaking. The point is that this relation cannot be reduced to comprehension. It cannot be reduced to the self, to the “I,” to the Same. This is what Levinas means by “a relation that is not a relation,” from which the phrases I am employing here – “seeing without seeing,” “speaking without speaking,” and “hearing without hearing” – are derived.
[48] Davis, 3. The full quote on the same page elaborates on this point: “In Levinas’s reading of the history of Western thought, the Other has generally been regarded as something provisionally separate from the Same (or the self), but ultimately reconcilable with it; otherness, or alterity, appears as a temporary interruption to be eliminated as it is incorporated into or reduced to sameness. For Levinas, on the contrary, the Other lies absolutely beyond my comprehension and should be preserved in all its irreducible strangeness; it may be revealed by other people in so far as they are not merely mirror images of myself, or … by religious experience or certain privileged texts. Levinas’s endeavour is to protect the Other from the aggressions of the Same, to analyse the possibilities and conditions of its appearance in our lives, and to formulate the ethical significance of the encounter with it.”
[49] Davis, 40. On the same page, Davis notes: “The ontological imperialism of Western thought manifests itself in different forms, but the hidden purpose is always to find a means of offsetting the shock of alterity.” See also Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 43: “Western philosophy has most often been an ontology: a reduction of the other to the same by interposition of a middle and neutral term that ensures the comprehension of being.”
[50] A simple way to think of this: my egology is your ontology.
[55] On this point, Myatt says that “[t]he Way of Pathei-Mathos is an ethical, an interior, a personal, a non-political, a non-interfering, a non-religious but spiritual, way of individual reflexion, individual change, and empathic living, where there is an awareness of the importance of virtues such as compassion, humility, tolerance, gentleness, and love.” David Myatt, “I. Morality, Virtues, and Way of Life,” in The Numinous Way of Pathei-Mathos, 5th ed. (CreateSpace, 2018), https://www.davidmyatt.info/numinous-way-pathei-mathos.pdf.
[58] Anton Long, “Enantiodromia: The Sinister Abyssal Nexion,” Lapis Philosophicus (blog), https://lapisphilosophicus.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/enantiodromia-the-sinister-abyssal-nexion.pdf. In the first endnote of the article entitled “The Abyss” in this collection of articles and notes, Long directs us to David Myatt’s essay, “The Abstraction of Change as Opposites and Dialectic,” which details the origin of the term “enantiodromia.” See David Myatt, “The Abstraction of Change as Opposites and Dialectic,” The Philosophy of Pathei-Mathos (blog), https://perceiverations.wordpress.com/change-opposites-and-dialectic/. Long notes how, according to Myatt, the word is “a transliteration of the compound Greek word ἐναντιοδρομίας and which word first occurs in Lives of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius.” According to Myatt, Diogenes is thought to have paraphrased Heraclitus in saying: “πάντα δὲ γίνεσθαι καθ᾽ εἱμαρμένην καὶ διὰ τῆς ἐναντιοδρομίας ἡρμόσθαι τὰ ὄντα,” which Myatt translates as: “All by genesis is appropriately apportioned [separated into portions] with beings bound together again by enantiodromia.” This idea of apportioning or separating into portions “with beings bound together again by enantiodromia” bears some resemblance to the idea of ethical diastasis described throughout this article – the idea of a separation or breakdown in our relation to the [O]ther, then dyssloved through the elimination of an artificial duality (here, the duality of the wolf). Though there are differences between this sense of enantiodromia and Levinas’ ethical relation to the [O]ther, this is a line of inquiry worth exploring.
[59] For Levinas, this refers to the sense in which our ethical relation to the [O]ther plays a defining role in the identity and constitution of the human being. In the ONA, this marks the genesis of a new being. Insofar as the ONA and Levinas find a point of overlap here, it may be that this is not the genesis of a new being but an ancient one. Furthermore, this being may be an ethical synonym for the human being (ethical in Levinas’ sense of a relation to the [O]ther). It would appear then that the adept and human being are not so different after all. Here again we find the theme of the dyssolving of the duality of the wolf. Here again we find the need to engage in ethical conversation. Combined, one begins to see the contours of a different sense of “mundane” when considering that the adept and human being are not so distinct. At their heart, both are striving to speak to the [O]ther, to listen, to hear the call. Here they find an important point of commonality, one that constitutes the core of their identity and reality, even if those differ radically.
[63] For more on the etymological connection between “weird” and “Wyrd,” see Nameless Therein, “‘Where’s Your Will to Be Wyrd’: An Examination of Wyrd in the Anglo-Saxon Religious Imagination,” Lux Lycaonis, Fenrir: Journal of Satanism and the Sinister, March 28, 2022, https://luxlycaonis.com/index.php/2022/03/29/will-wyrd/. Also see F. Anne Payne, “Three Aspects of Wyrd in Beowulf,” in Old English Studies in Honour of John C. Pope, eds. Robert B. Burlin and Edward B. Irving (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974), 15. There, Payne says the following about this connection: “The adjective ‘weird’ and the noun slang term ‘weirdo’ describe an event or person whose attributes are suddenly discovered to be outside the bounds of normal expectation and arouse an experience that an observer contemplates with uncomprehending but compelling uneasiness. This combination of attraction and awe in the face of an event in a space whose dimensions are undefined and uncontrollable hovers about the meaning of Old English Wyrd.”
[65] Davis, 21. On this notion of “an exit from oneself” and “the relationship with alterity,” see Emmanuel Levinas, En decouvrant I’ existence avec Husserl et Heidegger (1949; repr., Paris: Vrin, 1974), 139 and 145.
[66] Indeed, this points to the deeper levels of the mystery of dyssolving in the ONA, in addition to the dyssolving of the duality of the wolf described in this article. Both concern a sense in which dyssolving does not involve the abolishment of self or an annihilation of the aforesaid duality. The key and mystery lie in the opening as an exit from oneself through the acknowledgement of our relationship with alterity. The relationship involved in this sense of dyssolving, or at least what it “opens” us to, can be characterized by a relation between the face-to-face (speaking without seeing) and the eye-to-eye (seeing without “speaking”) described above. Both additionally concern what I have described elsewhere as “making the invisible visible.” See Ariadne and Nameless Therein, “Arcadian Truth & the Instar Emergence: The Task of Outer Representative,” Lux Lycaonis, Fenrir: Journal of Satanism and the Sinister, November 5, 2022, https://luxlycaonis.com/index.php/2022/11/05/alea-iacta-est/. Nexion of Ur also develops this point in “Burial Night,” Nocturnal Reflexions, November 11, 2022, https://nocturnalreflexions.wordpress.com/2022/11/11/burial-night/.
Buber, Martin. Between Man and Man. Translated by Ronald Gregor-Smith. 1947. Reprint, New York: Routledge, 2002.
Critchley, Simon. “Introduction.” Chap. 1 in The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, edited by Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
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For this preliminary article, I’d like to expound on the information presented on the topic of the Tree of Wyrd (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqxiA2emM3o) by correlating the spheres with the antecedent gods and goddesses from the Greek mythos, along with their meanings. I will be pulling mainly from Ellynor Barz’s masterful work Gods and Planets: The Archetypes of Astrology, a work that synthesizes astrology, symbology, and Jungian psychology. This article will focus on the symbology of these old gods apropos of the spheres, and in which symbols should be understood as:
Something which points to a ‘thing’ beyond itself, and that ‘thing’ being unable to be grasped either immediately, as a whole, or at all.
Something which has no significance by itself, but rather participates in the reality of that ‘thing’ which it points to.
Something which opens up dimensions of reality which were previously closed, or rather, “concealed by the predominance of other dimensions” which can now be comprehended and potentially apprehended, and which subsequently opens up dimensions of the soul as it corresponds to reality.
Something which cannot be created intentionally, but rather develops out of an individual or collective unconscious and cannot function without being accepted by the individual or collective unconscious.
Something which possesses both a constructive, ordering power and a disintegrating, destructive power; in terms of our Tradition, that which can be, or is, both ‘numinous’ and ‘sinister’.
.:.The snapshot is taken from the ONA MS “Authority of Individual Judgment.” There are 3 [three] points about that axiom which all ONA associates should understand and remember:
There is no such thing as an “official” or “genuine” ONA. No official interpretation of ONA which is the only correct and acceptable Order of Nine Angles.
You first must be an ONA Adept [able to answer 10 esoteric questions] and be a member of the Inner O9A before you have the proper wisdom and experience [via Pathei-Mathos] to make an interpretation of ONA.
There are no leaders or outer representative of the Order of Nine Angles.
[Negotiation = Compromises + Concessions >-> Agreement/Peace/Mutual-Benefit]
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