Some caveats aside, there is – at least in our view – a fairly insightful analysis of the Order of Nine Angles published in 2017 in an article with the title Order of the Nine Angles and Supremacy of the Fringe.
Which item hints at what the ONA is really all about and just how it differs from the boring ‘satanism’ of Levey et al. Here are just a few of the interesting points made in that analysis.
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§        The popular notion of Satanism rarely lays stress on the political aspect of it. Seemingly, its radical individualism submits the ideological ambitions to the needs of individual self-expression – or self-indulgence – rendering it to a large degree a-political, at least at first glance. When we come to deal with the sinister dialectic of O9A, we are soon forced to realize that deep down the real stress is precisely on politics; the politics taken in the most radical sense of inciting the end of the present world (Aeon) and the creation of the new man and the new world.
§        The idea of influencing the broader society by subversion ranging from inducing moral depravity to terrorist acts is the nucleus of O9A metaphysics.
§       What really makes O9A stand out is how high it sets the bar: every other conceivable form of radical politics can potentially be assimilated, provided it is genuinely directed against the system, towards the creation of the new world and the new man. Through it all it is astonishingly truthful to the principles of modernity – radical subjectivity and dissolution of it in the further radicalization of freedom, evolutionary principle driven to the extreme and technical approach to human inner life.
§       The purpose of [the] trickster [insight] role playing game is to create strife, chaos, confusion and – Satan willing – bloodshed in order, not only to open oneself to the chaos of acausal, but also to create the same disposition in the social groups and society at large.
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Finally, perhaps the most interesting bit of all:
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§       In a strictly philosophical sense this truly is a form of Satanism. What makes it ominous is that, when you ponder about it a bit, it really isn’t detached from presuppositions of the mainstream, seemingly anti-metaphysical, notions about man and history. O9A has an ontology and metaphysics of Satanism, but it is fairly in accordance with both extreme empiricists and supposedly opposed Heideggerian understanding of getting over the metaphysics (überwindung der Metaphysik): rejecting the error of transcendence towards above. The only step needed to develop what would properly be called ‘subphysics’ is to draw the final consequences of this decision.
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For what the ONA really amounts to – in our view – is Chaos (χάος). Bringing the chaos of the acausal into our temporal (causal) world. By any means possible, and without any checks or balances, such as ‘God’ or even ‘Satan’ as described by both Nazarenes and by material egoists such as Howard Levey.
In this sense, the Order of Nine Angles really is nihilist, anarchic, and redefines what ‘modernism’ – metaphysically and in reality (esoterically and exoterically) – means, or perhaps should now mean.
I. The Tree Of Wyrd And The Star Game: An Overview.
Herewith a useful overview of some of the renaissance alchemical, and the ancient hermetic, roots of the Order Of Nine Angles.
The above is a Renaissance illustration of the septenary Tree of Wyrd, from the book Azoth Sive Aureliae Occultae Philosophorum published in 1613 CE, which illustration includes the three fundamental alchemical substances, Salt, Sulphur, Mercury, whose nine transformations form the “nine angles” of the O9A and which nine angles are represented by the pieces of the O9A’s Star Game thus:
Both of the above illustrations were included in the O9A text á¼€ÏÏενόθηλυς: Alchemical And Hermetic Antecedents Of The Seven Fold Way Of The Order Of Nine Angles. {1}
The Star Game itself is an esoteric representation of the septenary Tree of Wyrd. That is, of the nexion between the acausal and the causal and which nexion is also represented by our psyche as human beings, a complex psyche hinted at in many medieval and Renaissance alchemical texts {2} and in modern times – for example by Carl Jung, whose inspiration was Renaissance alchemical texts – represented in terms of archetypes, a collective unconscious, the anima and animus, and ‘a shadow aspect’. {3}
The septenary Tree of Wyrd also represents the anados (ἄνοδος), the hermetic journey or alchemical/occult quest up through the seven spheres, anciently described in the Poemandres tractate of the Corpus Hermeticum {4} and described in more recent times by the Seven Fold Way of the Order of Nine Angles {5}.
Which overview reveals that the Occult tradition of the O9A is independent of, different from, and an alternative to the Qabala based tradition used by the majority of modern Occultists. {6}
{2} See, for example, (i) Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, published in 1652 CE, (ii) Theatrum Chemicum Praecipuos Selectorum, published in 1550 CE, and (iii) De Alchimia Opuscula Complura Veterum Philosophorum, published in 1613 CE.
{4} See Myatt’s translation of and commentary on the Poemandres tractate, available at https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/corpus-hermeticum/. Printed version: David Myatt, Corpus Hermeticum: Eight Tractates, 2017, ISBN 978-1976452369.
{5} Regarding the O9A Seven Fold Way, refer to the á¼€ÏÏενόθηλυς text, such as the chapters titled Perusing The Seven Fold Way, and Alchemy And The Sinisterly-Numinous Tradition.
II. Extract from the 2013 text Originality, Tradition, And The Order of Nine Angles. {1}
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A study of O9A [Order of Nine Angles] texts reveals that, from the 1970s on, their ‘nine angles’ refer to the nine combinations – the “numinous symbols of cliology†(qv. the 1990s text ‘Aeonic Magick: A Basic Introduction’) – of the three basic alchemical substances (Mercury, Sulphur, Salt) which are represented in the pieces of the 1970s vintage O9A Star Game. These nine angles/combinations were first outlined in the 1974 text Emanations of Urania, and which nine combinations can be used to symbolize how the the causal and the acausal are manifest to us, as for instance in our psyche (in the nexion of causal/acausal that we are) via archetypes, ‘personality types’, and the esoteric correspondences of the O9A Tree of Wyrd.Furthermore, according to Anton Long his inspiration for this 1970s theory of cliology – of nine alchemical combinations or emanations – was an ancient Arabic manuscript, of a few folios, he read while travelling and studying in the Middle East and Asia in 1971, and to which MS some scribe had added some scholia and the title Al-Kitab Al-Alfak (which translates as The Book of The Spheres), for in ancient Muslim alchemy and cosmology there are nine cosmic spheres or ‘supernatural’ realms. {2}
The most distant of these spheres or realms is falak al-aflak, the ‘primary of the spheres’. Below this (and thus nearer to us) is al-kawakib al-thabitah, the realm of the heavenly fixed stars. Next is Zuhal, the sphere of Saturn. Then there is Mushtari, the sphere of Jupiter, followed by Marikh (Mars); Shams (the Sun); Zuhrah (Venus); Utarid (Mercury); and finally Qamar, the sphere of the Moon.
{2} Editorial Note: The Arabic MS Kitab al-Aflak (Book of the Spheres) should not be confused with a book with a similar name – Kitab Ta’dil hay’at alâ€aflak – written by Sadr al-Sharia alâ€Thani in 1346 or 1347 CE. See below, Part Four: Kitab Al-Aflak
Contents: ° Preface ° The Nine Angles – Beyond The Causal Continuum ° The Nine Angles of Sinister Change ° Sorcery and the Esoteric Nature of The Acausal ° The Physics of Acausal Energy ° Some Notes On The Text The Physics Of Acausal Energy
°°°°°°°°°
Part Three:
The Order of Nine Angles Rite of The Nine Angles A Comparison with the Ceremony of Nine Angles by Aquino And A Brief Study of The Meaning of The Nine Angles
A study of Order of Nine Angles texts reveals that, from the 1970s on, their ‘nine angles’ refer to the nine combinations – the “numinous symbols of cliology†(qv. the 1990s text ‘Aeonic Magick – A Basic Introduction’) – of the three basic alchemical substances (Mercury, Sulphur, Salt) which are represented in the pieces of the 1970s vintage O9A Star Game. These nine angles/combinations were first outlined in the 1974 text Emanations of Urania, and which nine combinations can be used to symbolize how the the causal and the acausal are manifest to us, as for instance in our psyche (in the nexion of causal/acausal that we are) via archetypes, ‘personality types’, and the esoteric correspondences of the O9A Tree of Wyrd. Furthermore, according to Anton Long his inspiration for this 1970s theory of cliology – of nine alchemical combinations or emanations – was an ancient Arabic manuscript, of a few folios, he read while travelling and studying in the Middle East and Asia in 1971, and to which MS some scribe had added some scholia and the title Al-Kitab Al-Alfak – which translates as The Book of The Spheres.
