.:.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.
.:.A response to the Fenrir Team and a general thinking out loud to the general ONA audience:
I personally like Nameless Therein a lot. In more ways than you think. He is a “sight for soar eyes,” as they say. I made my first post here in nearly a year on November 8th about a pendulum swing for a reason.
The reason being that ONA also has gone thru a pendulum swing. What I’m talking about, and let’s just get down to business: Agencies working thru the Tempel ov Blood have fucked shit up for ONA. The ToB has pulled ONA into a very extremist and radical direction, which eventually harmed its public image and spirit. On top of that, because the general public and junk journalists can’t tell any difference between the ONA the ToB fabricated and the ONA Anton Long fabricated, those journalists since 2018 have been killing the ONA. Which is why it’s now publicly dead: which is why you see the Old Guards take all of their websites and blogs down, and they have vacated.
Nameless Therein, represents the total opposite swing of the pendulum. I want nothing more than for him and all of you guys on the Ferir Team, Beast Xeno et al, than to see you guys go with that dialectical pendulum swing and take ONA into a place that is more intellectual, more philosophical, more spiritual, more Pagan [re: more meaningful and edificatious ((having the quality of Edification))].
But if such a pendulum swing calls for the need of a leader or an Outer Representative: then don’t just take that post/office/title. There is a right and proper way to get that office and title as a descent and honorable human being. Descent people don’t take what does not belong to them. Ask the Old Guards or Anton Long for it, if such is what you desire. Since Anton Long stopped being Grandmaster of ONA, there will always be a power vacuum. I understand that such a vacuum will be filled by somebody. But there is an honorable and right way to fill that vacuum: just ask. Don’t ask me though, I am nobody to give or offer titles and leadership positions in ONA.
I find myself back where I started in 2013. Back then, I resigned as Outer Rep because of the ToB. 2013 was when the ToB began their entryism. At that time, a book author had published a fiction novel which used the ONA as a story prop. In that novel the ONA was some organized crime cult which went around committing murders and so on. The Old Guards bemoaned amongst themselves how ONA was all soft and how it would be great if the real ONA was like the one in fiction.
That bemoaning set the stage for the entryism, where the ToB [I shouldn’t say “ToB”, to be more accurate: ToB was acting under influence of professionals] began talking about how the ONA needs a leader, and one that is hardcore and dangerous; certainly not some outer rep like me who spent time softening ONA with essays on Buddhism and Natural Philosophy.
And so at that time there grew in ONA two opposing factions: 1) one faction wanted ONA to be leaderless & 2) the other faction wanted a hardcore leader in order to make ONA hardcore.
The unfortunate thing about all of us human beings is that we learn to acquire our organic intelligence the hard way: I wanted to tell the Old Guards and general ONA population back then that if you guys follow the example of David Myatt and C18 and become hardcore radicals with radical political views, that you will reap the same exact end results as David Myatt and C18 did in the past.
Any group of people who demonstrates that they will use lethal violence in order to push their radical political beliefs will be perceived as a threat to the State. And so therefore the State will send its agents provocateur into such threats to disrupt your group, cause internal strife and distrust, in order to break that group up and neutralize it. Having a leader makes the job of such agents even more easy because you simply have to decapitate that group of its leader, and the group resultantly falls apart thereafter. It’s this stupid and silly mistake the Far Right has been making for 70 years.
But people don’t listen. They need to learn their lessons the hard way. And so fast forward to today and what happened? Thru the ToB, young kids got radicalized, they couldn’t tell the ToB’s fabricated ONA apart from Anton Long’s, the kids were manipulated to commit violent crimes, they went to jail, agents got promoted, journalists sensationalized this shit: journalists got paid, that nut case from Hate not Hope furthered his political ambitions of gaining further influence, George Soros danced around gleefully: they’re all happy and well off now, and ONA went to shit. They’re just looking for the Next Boogyman to use to further their careers and profits/power: and ONA was a good boogyman. So I left ONA back then in 2013. If they want to take ONA into that direction: fine, but I’m out. And so we all learned our lessons didn’t we? It only took a decade. Which all brings me to why I left ONA in February:
PENDULUM SWING
I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching these past few months. I’ve come to realize something I find very emotionally difficult. Two maxims have been repeating in my mind and echoing inside of me for the past year, since the beginning of 2022.
The first Maxim is something my grandmother and the old people in my culture say: “You will stumble upon that which you hate.”
I’ve come to realized that the ONA has become the very things I hate in life.
I hate democracy, because its premise is faulty. The rhetoric of democracy is that: if we get rid of the power of the King, then the “people” will have power to rule themselves. But is that the case? No, people in a democracy have no more power than serfs and indentured servants did in old Europeans kingdoms. In a democracy, cabals and organized groups of rich and powerful men control the government and country [Deep State as Trump and company calls it] and wield strong influence.
ONA has been democratized: we have gotten rid of Anton Long, gotten rid of his post as Grandmaster, stopped him from writing primary source ONA MSS. Just like England did with its monarch. And just like in any democracy: organized groups end up playing entryism and gaining control and influence: ToB did it to ONA. It’s the same pattern that took place in the USSR: an organized group of people used communism to gain influence on their Russian audience/market, took control of the country, gain their profit and career promotions… and ran Russia to shit with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I hate Liberalism. And ONA has become very liberal. Just like how America is liberal. For example, there was a time in the long past when WASP [White Anglo-Saxon Protestant] had a meaning. Today, because of Liberalism, America has destroyed its Traditional Religion of Catholicism and Protestant Christianity, and so, there is no more “P” in WASP. America is so Liberal today, that any inkling of ethnic or racial consciousness is deemed to be racists. Ask a group of young White people in America who were all born and raised in this Liberal society of ours what their ethnicity is, and I can guarantee that most of those young kids won’t even know [lack awareness/consciousness of the fact] that they are Anglo-Saxon. And so there is no more “AS” in WASP.
That same Liberal pattern is inside ONA. Because all of us, as with all things in nature, are a product of our environment, and we all are born and raised our entire human lives inside of a Liberal society [since the 70s]. ONA has gotten rid of its Traditional religion: Traditional Satanism. You can be any type of Satanist or even any type of religion you want in ONA these days… even a Buddhist [me].
And like how America did away with its own Culture: ONA has Liberally done away with its culture. To the extent where the Old Guards, in creating the Hebdomadry Way [or whatever it’s called] said in simple English: We went thru the entire ONA corpus and we have deemed 99% of the whole thing to be useless. Cultural praxes in ONA meaning stuff like the ceremonies in the Black Book of Satan, and so on.
And just like how America puts the “American Dream” as a carrot on a stick, where it tells Americans: all that old religion, culture, and shit don’t matter because what you want and are seeking is that nebulous American Dream: ONA and the Hebdomadry Way puts the concept of “Lapis Philosophicus” [a very nebulous abstraction] as the carrot on a stick were they say: all that Satanism stuff, the ceremonies, the magic and shit, that all’s dumb and useless, all you want and need to chase after is that carrot on a stick!
All the Liberalism that the ONA has become, even going so far as to parrot Liberal society in saying that in ONA there exists “gender equality,” going so far with Reichfolk in saying that all racial diversity is Numinous and divine, and having detoothed Anton Long [making his primary source ONA MSS only “guidelines” and not binding], has led me to the second Maxim that now echoes in my mind.
Dan Dread said/coined this second Maxim. He once said: “If Satanism can meaning anything, it means nothing.”
Today, because ONA has done away with all of its old institutions – grandmaster, traditional religion, traditional culture, binding concepts, values, etc – it can mean and be anything to anyone. ONA has no established political standard. ONA has no established ethical standard. ONA has no value system. Anybody can be ONA, and as an ONA associate you can pick and chose different ONA ideas to be ONA in your own way. Some ONA people are communists, some are capitalists, some are Leftists, some are Rightist, etc. ONA today can be anything you want it to be. And so, because it can mean and be anything: it is nothing.
And that is a very big problem, as I have come to see: the problem is that because ONA is today very liberal and without established rules: people can come in, identify as ONA, or as a Nexion, and say shit like: we stand for rape… we stand for torture and rape of children.
But the problem with people being born and raised in a Liberal environment is that we do not like established rules and ethics. Because the moment Anton Long or the Old Guards say something like: “Okay… this has gone too far, we need rules and ethics” we’d all whine and cry shit like: “That’s dogma! We have a right to live our lives like we want!” ONA has no established system of value. It values nothing. It means nothing. It can be anything.
I now know that the older I grow up, the more conservative I become. I do have my one value system: I value Traditional Religion, which is why I continue to be a Theravada Buddhist, because it’s the religion of my people and race. I value Thai, Khmer, and Chinese cultures, because those are the cultures I was born and raised in and are the cultures of my own race and people. I value Ethos and Ethics based on the concept of Honor and Decency. And because of such concept of Honor and Decency, there are things, behaviours, actions, ways of speaking, ways of carrying yourself in society, ways of interacting with your elders and superiors that are “right” and “wrong.”
Many times in the past, often in Nexion Zine, I will play the devils advocate, and rhetorically write things and say things in order to see how ONA people and the Old Guards will react. For example, if I use rhetoric to make it seem like rape is fine [militaries used it in the past, etc], would they put their foot down and actually show an inkling or desire for ethical boundaries? Would they stop being Liberal and give Anton Long his teeth again where they say that such conduct and actions go against what ONA represents and values [indicating a System of Values] because it says so in such and such primary source text by Anton Long? How far must things be taken before ONA realizes that lines need to be drawn, that Ethos and Ethics need to be revisited and addressed, that boundaries need to be set, that ONA needs to represent something, that it needs solid ground to stand on: in order to be meaningful and edificatious?
I am at a point where that unless ONA changes, if it stays the way that it currently has become: then I cannot endorse it, support it, or associate with it, because it represents everything I dislike about our current Western Liberal societies, and because it [ONA] is so nebulous today that it is meaningless. Unfortunately, the people who can change it: the Old Guards and Anton Long, are no longer here, and may not even still understand that something is fundamentally wrong and broken with ONA today. By their fruit ye shall judge: it only takes a good look at the fruit/people that ONA has been producing for the past several years, to understand that something is broken. Newton was right after all: certain changes we made in the past to circumvent the Blackwood Problem created unintended negative causal reactions.
These are my last moments in ONA. Even though ONA doesn’t represent me anymore, I still have a sentimental attachment to the spirit/egregore/volksgeist of ONA which brings me back to check up on it. I hate to see it die because it is broken. In the old days, it would have been easy to work to fix the problems because Anton Long was around and you could just talk with the Old Guards about issues and they would relay such talks to Anton Long who would fix things for us. They are all gone; if they are around, they seem indifferent.
My sentimental attachments to the spirit of ONA just gives me an instinctive reaction when people seem to claim leadership or claim to be outer rep… but at this moment in time, I must admit that, I secretly believe that such might be a workable idea. But, like I said: there is a proper and decent way to get that title and post. I’ll hang around for a couple months, to see if the Old Guards will come back to help fix the problems. If they don’t come back, it means they wish for ONA to indeed publicly die away. And I will follow their cue and sever my sentimental attachments permanently. I’ve learned a lot from ONA, and I gained a very valuable Life Skill from it: writing. All that being said: the pendulum swing ONA is going into, is a good swing. I hope it will be fruitful.
Well last night was a huge Red Flop. I was amped up from tuning into weeks of what’s been happening in Iran and their protests and I was wishfully hoping/thinking that a Republican take over would galvanize the Right and Far Right in America towards similar unrest and then Civil War. I forgot to calculate how apathetic and pathetic Mundanes are [the average voting Joe Schmoe].
There is not enough heat in America to bring the Right and White to a boiling point yet. The Left and Liberals need more time to stay in power to fuck shit up a little more.
Two things are now clear to me after last night’s Republican belly flop:
The Republican Party is incoherent and lacks a solid Modernized [relevant to current times and situations] platform, ideology, and most importantly: Vision. I do not understand [it’s hard to grasp] how a president with such low approval ratings can do so well with a midterm election. The party is Right leaning, but not truly Right in the open. They need to openly embrace the concept of a Heritage Race [WASP], of preserving American culture and traditions. But doing so will have the Left [neo-marxists] calling them racists.
All things now considered, with the consideration of last night’s Republican belly flop: Realistically, there won’t be a Civil War 2.0 in America. There is just not enough heat and unrest [public and economic].
I was really hoping that what is gradually happening in Europe would happen in America soon, like now! Looks like we need to flood America with more Third World migrants in order to poke and prod the American public to act up.
Now I have doubts about Trump winning a second term. Without Trump and his narrative, it will be hard for a Civil War to happen.
The best thing to do in America, is to bite the bullet and continue to support the Left and their crazy Liberal agendas for another decade. Having said that, for the public record: I am a Leftist and very Progressively Liberal and I hope that AOC becomes president one day. I honestly believe that grown transvestite men who wear miniskirts should be allowed to use the girls bathroom at public schools and other places. And I like Wokism.
I am your disciple
And therefore my own
Your weapon I will be
With the demons that possess me
We’ll ride the seven sins of death
That takes me to katharsis
The sign of your horns
Is my dearest vision
They impale all holy and weak
You watch me face the mirror
And see desecration
With my art I am the fist
In the face of god
On this night of nights, in lurking darkness, pestilential twilight, in melancholic reverie and sunset and fire … one wonders: why is fire so sacred to night? It beckons as a feeling throughout the blood. We sense it all around. The earth peels away its distillated skin, the yawning moon prepares its ascent, and a glowing horror rises between the thinning veil of this world of worlds.
Tonight is Halloween, a night of ghoulish gimmicks, ecstasis and elation, tricks and treats. But beneath the veneer of its Christian etymology – a popular derivative of All Hallow Even or the eve of All Saints’ Day, which was a time assigned to the Christian calendar for “honoring the saints and the newly departed”[1] – this day is believed to have pagan roots that were not eliminated by its later Christianization.[2] Some folklorists have traced its roots to the Roman feast of Pomona or the festival of the dead called Parentalia.[3] More commonly, it is connected to the Celtic festival of Samhain or Samuin (pronounced “sow-an” or “sow-in”), which means “summer’s end.”[4] Nicholas Rogers notes that the heroine of the tenth-century Gaelic text Tochmarc Entire refers to Samhain “as the first of the four quarter days in the medieval Irish calendar, ‘when the summer goes to its rest.’”[5] J. A. MacCulloch notes that Samhain was ultimately “an old pastoral and agricultural festival,”[6] one which “in time came to be looked upon as affording assistance to the powers of growth in their conflict with the powers of blight.”[7] Rogers goes on to describe the feast of Samhain as an:
[O]ccasion of stock-taking and ingathering, of reorganizing communities for the winter months, including the preparation of quarters for itinerant warriors and shamans. It was also a period of supernatural intensity, when the forces of darkness and decay were said to be abroad, spilling out from the sidh, the ancient mounds or barrows of the countryside. To ward off these spirits, the Irish built huge, symbolically regenerative bonfires and invoked the help of the gods through animal and perhaps even human sacrifice.[8]
Not everyone agrees on what went on at the feast of Samhain, but many acknowledge its “elemental primitivism” and its “enduring legacy to the character of Halloween,” most notably in terms of “its omens, propitiations, and links to the otherworld.”[9] But by whatever name we choose to call it – Samhain, November Eve, Witches’ Night, All Hallows’ Eve, or the like[10]– Halloween seems to have its most abiding roots “in the terrors of the primitive mind,” terrors which “made no distinction between the waning of the sun and the potential extinction of the self.”[11] The “ancient rituals of sacrifice and supplication” employed during this sacred period were done “to guarantee a good harvest and, by extension, continued earthly existence.”[12]
In many ways, my leadership of the Fenrir journal and de facto role as Outer Representative of the Order of Nine Angles has been motivated by similar ancient rituals of sacrifice and supplication, and for much the same reason: to guarantee a good harvest and this tradition’s continued earthly existence. But in lock-step with the capricious moods of autumn as winter bares its lupine teeth, so too is it time for Fenrir to change.
I have long since expressed my intention to remove Fenrir from its dolorous and baleful roots in National Socialism, extremism, and violence in favor of a return to scholarship, esotericism, Sinister magick, and genuine Satanism. In turn – and as with all magick borne from the majesty of death as a radical outgrowth of organic change – I have found good people: people who through tremendous insight, a lifetime of trial and tribulation, and an unshakable conviction in the necessity of what is right as the voice of irrevocable action have gathered to see this extraordinary time in the history of the ONA flourish rather than withdraw, survive rather than secede, triumph rather than fall forever into the forgotten tombs of vanquished history. No, though God indeed does not deign to reason with man, let Satan draw him out! We, who are bound by sacred oath, by blood, by fire, wretched in its woe, will see these changes overshadow and overthrow decades of insincerity, deceit, meaningless violence, and counter-productivity. With this supreme art, our loyalty, and our pact in the eyes of the Devil, let justice triumph even though the heavens may fall! And may our art be a fist in the face of God.
Now, in the spirit of that Samhain feast and its elemental primitivism, I would like to present an article co-written by two of our newest partners in cosmic crime, Kristos 513 and Ariadne, on what we feel is an appropriately ghoulish topic this evening: cannibalism. From our grim hearth to your worn fireplace, our team – myself, Ariadne, Kristos 513, and Eternal Outsider – would like to wish everyone a very Happy Halloween!
My heart is the one
That will tend to your flames
And make them mine
We share this spirit
My heart is yours…
For the Devil,
Nameless Therein
Halloween 2022
Notes
[1] Nicholas Rogers, Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 23.
‘Pharaoh is the Bull of the Sky,
who shatters at will,
who lives on the being of every god,
who eats their entrails,
even of those who come with their bodies
full of magic from the Island of Flame’
The Cannibal Hymns of Unas, Utterance 273
Predation upon other organisms for sustenance is not at all uncommon, a harmonious act of violence which facilitates evolution by weeding out those who are unfit to survive, while also ensuring the continued existence and reproduction of those specimens who, by practical demonstration of their ability, have earned the right to survive. The prey organism is typically of a different species, however, this is not always the case, and there are many naturally-occurring instances of cannibalism, such as with the genus of jumping spider known as Portia, which preys on both web-building spiders and its own males after copulation. Portia, despite its diminutive size, shows complex social behaviours and a sort of intelligence one might expect of much larger predators, using particularly devious tactics to lure its prey – other spiders typically several times its own size – into vulnerable positions. Preying on one’s own kind is far from exclusive to the delightfully sinister Portia, and the apes which we share common ancestry with have been observed to carry out very similar acts, albeit in very dissimilar contexts, such as the consumption of infants or, particularly in the case of chimpanzees, the eating of young snatched from other families in very deliberate acts of primal warfare – a precursor to the tribalism they will no doubt later develop.
Humans, for all their moral posturing and delusions of separation from the horrors of the natural world, are not exempt from the above, as both history and its psychic shadow of mythology are rife with instances of cannibalism – the subconscious traces of a ghoulish racial memory, one which is alive and well in the dark corners of the earth, and even within the boundaries of ‘civilised’ society, the forbidden act of consuming human flesh is not unheard of.
Early humans displayed cannibalistic tendencies for largely the same reasons as their ape cousins did – sheer practical need. A body no doubt lure predators to the rest of the tribe, and so it stands to reason that the best and most efficient way to dispose of the material was to eat it, which just so happened to address matters of nutrition as well. While a human body might not be the most ideal source of nutrition, it was remarkably accessible besides, as defending one’s area from invaders would no doubt result in a surplus of freshly killed meat lying about. Furthermore, hunting larger prey is dangerous if done by a group and near-suicidal if done alone, many animals taking quite a bit of abuse from primitive tools before going down, and not before injuring a member of the hunting party or two. A person, however, could be inncapacitied with comparatively little work – a rock in the temple, for example – and yield a sufficient return besides. This type of primitive efficiency is seen in the modern day as well, as various tribes of Papua New Guinea (including the infamous Asmat, who supposedly killed and ate Nelson Rockefeller), Africa, and throughout the Pacific islands.
As human societies grew more complex, evolving from the most rudimentary kinds of proto-culture to something more recognisable, the exact reasons for acts of cannibalism grew more abstract, as there was no longer as immediate a need to capitalise on any and all opportunities to eat, nor was there as much of a need to avoid luring predators with corpses. Many of the tribal cultures still practicing cannibalism do so for magical-religious reasons, such as to take on the power and attributes of a foe – the African warlord humourously known as ‘General Butt-Naked’ is said to have partaken in cannibalism for precisely these reasons! Another good example of post-primitive cannibalism for spiritual reasons more than practical is the practice of the Indian Aghori sect, a Shaivite tradition which has become infamous for its rather morbid rites, including eating the flesh of the recently deceased. However, unlike previously mentioned examples, they do not kill or harm anyone for their strange communion, and such practices are intended for them to truly know God – after all, how can one say they love and respect creation if they only accept the parts which are pleasing to the senses? Are not the deathly and grotesque also a part of nature, and the rot which feeds life? Furthermore, exposure to such unpleasant stimuli takes no small amount of willpower to override a feeling of revulsion towards the act, and it is through willingly taking part in difficult practices, such as eating the recently deceased, that they develop a state of absolute domination over the lesser parts of themselves which might feel fear or disgust.
Almost as if the practice of devouring one another is hard-coded into human nature, cannibalistic acts are not limited to the carnal and fleshy. Ideas are subject to being preyed upon in this way, the growth of mythos rarely, if ever, being a spontaneous phenomenon. As cultures interact with both each other and themselves, their various memes undergo changes to reflect the very real movement of people. Most immediately relatable in a broader Sinister context is the way in which folk European traditions were adapted as the region underwent its conversion to Nazarene practices. Instead of merely erasing the native ways and mythos of a given area, they were instead devoured by the Christian organism and thus, made part of it in such a way as to strengthen the organism and help it to adapt to its environment. This is seen in the transmutation of local deities and spirits from mostly benign entities to ghouls, devils, and evil things which snatch away children and livestock. For example, the Devil in modern popular culture is often shown with decidedly goat-like features in the form of cloven hooves and horns, while also possessing very carnal appetites and a certain mischievous inclination. Imagery of the Devil as an anthropomorphic goat-man is not canonical to any sect of Christianity, and is rather the product of demonising, quite literally, the ancient god Cernunnos, who was worshiped by the Celtic peoples, and similarly, the Fauns, Satyrs, and their lord Pan, who were part of the Hellenic cultures to the southeast. Both Cernunnos and Pan shared a similar horned man-beast appearance, as well as their considerable hunger for all manner of sensual gratification – quite possibly the most literal, archetypal depiction of that which is considered ‘Pagan’ – and so the deities previously revered by a people were ‘cannibalised’ as they transitioned from the old ways to their regional flavour of Christianity. Other folk deities across Europe underwent a similar process, such as the north’s Allfather Odin, who formed the basis for the modern archetypal witch, and also from the north, the underworld place of the dead known as Hel, whose later inclusion in Nazarene mythos is obvious. It was not an outside force that endeavoured to suppress old-world traditions in this way either, but elements within each of the cultures, those who swallowed up their own gods, regurgitating them as the politically necessary devils of a new religious form. As cultures shift into new paradigms, their old ways are consumed, and absorbed into the younger, thus contributing to its growth – not unlike young spiders devouring their mother after birth.
Just as humans prey on their own mythos to create new ones, the mythos themselves also feature instances of people being killed for the purpose of being eaten. In the Greek tale of King Lycaon, for example, the titular king makes a rather foolish attempt at testing Zeus. Lycaon secretly murdered his own son, and then prepared him as a meal for Zeus. Outraged, whether at the moral bankruptcy of the act or the insult to his divine intelligence, or both, Zeus turned Lycaon into a wolf-man as punishment. This story has both literal and symbolic components, as the Greeks found themselves utterly revolted by the savage religious practices of their neighbors, which supposedly included cannibalism, and so their disgust was reflected in their own mythos as a reflection of their societal values. In addition, one of the themes of many Greek myths is that of arrogance. That Zeus chose to react to this one instance implies it was the specific action of a mortal daring to test him which drew his ire, as the practice had obviously predated the Greeks and indeed all of civilisation – where then are the other Lycaonians?
Another instance of like-devouring-like, this time in Latin, involves the figure of Eumolpus within the Satyricon. Unlike the Greek tale of Lycaon, the cannibalism of Eumolpus was not an act of mortal hubris, but one of necessity for financial gain. Eumolpus is an unextraordinary poet posing as a wealthy individual in order to exploit those who might proverbially bend over backwards in order to gain his inheritance, and indeed, all manner of fawning candidates went to great lengths to appease him. Unable to keep up the ruse, Eumolpus has his will read to the gathered ‘inheritors’, which proclaims that, in order to receive any ‘inheritance’ they must eat his dead body in public. Naturally, the condition of being required to eat Eumolpus’ dead body was intended to ward off those who expected what could not be provided, but it also speaks to the mindset of those who would seek out in some way the legacy of their forebears, as they put on all manner of disingenuous fronts and superficial displays in a shallow attempt at courting approval and thus, assurances of inheritance – and the post-mortem division of assets and legacies does indeed resemble the butchery of a carcass, often done ravenously, as though the inheritors were tearing the corpse apart in the street and swallowing great fistfuls of viscera.
– Salvador Dalí, Metamorphosis of Narcissus, 1937[1]
As we make our way into autumn, new changes bear old faces, reflected in the many moods of nature. As death makes way for life, change is all around. From the fallen tree to the dying leaf and the setting sun behind the clouds, we find mirrored in our own mood a shift at once familiar and new: a shift in season.
Things have been quiet in the ONA lately. Though autumn’s mark of silence can be felt, one can sense something else – a restlessness and exhaustion, a neutral disinterest and quiet anticipation, a dispirited silence from the need to be heard. Having experienced big changes in my own life recently, I have observed these qualities in myself over the last year, emerging in and through the psyche and receding into the unconscious like an ocean tide. I suspect others have found a similar canvas of emotion in themselves.
These qualities have concerned me. But as said changes in my life began to show signs of the death of many things I had trouble letting go of, what remains of these qualities has been cast into the open to be more closely examined and then discarded.
This is never a straightforward process. It can take years and sometimes a lifetime of patient, careful observation, work, and self-reflection. It requires a certain sensitivity, compassion, a level of humility, and what David Bentley Hart might term grace.[2] The quality that concerns me most, both in myself and in much of the ONA, is the need to be heard. I would like to share some thoughts on what this entails from a vantage point I believe now has some of the necessary space and silence to witness this tenacious quality begin to lose its hold. It is my hope that such observations might gently encourage others to identify, confront, and in time work to overcome this quality if and where present in themselves. As one may have discerned from my approach to the ONA, I think this is much more productive than castigating, japing, or attacking such individuals for a quality they may not even be aware of.
The Temptation to Be Heard
Much like the title of the Romanian nihilist Emil Cioran’s work The Temptation to Exist, there is a quality I would term the temptation to be heard. Though it is perfectly natural to want to be heard, acknowledged, and validated by one’s peers in some capacity, the emphasis on “temptation” points to a recurring spectrum of pathology commonly characterized by various degrees of compulsion. This quality can be characterized by an unhealthy need: the need for validation regarding one’s work or accomplishments, the need to be recognized as somehow different or unique from the rest of society, a hyper-sensitivity to what others think masked by a façade of false and callous indifference about the opinions of others, and an inflated sense of individuality regarding one’s importance within their societal niche. I emphasize “spectrum of pathology” because these characterizations can manifest in tangible or subtle ways depending on the psychological constitution of the individual. Such characterizations are sometimes visible in a person’s appearance, in their means of dealing with conflict and confrontation, in their ability to cope with stress, and in their way of interacting with others. When I say this is a recurring spectrum of pathology, I mean that it is both operative throughout the psyche and operative in a way that is rarely transparent or “visible” to the individual, who more or less takes its occurrence and existence for granted. Ultimately, this temptation rests on a need to control, whether as resistance to change beyond one’s control, a need to assert dominance out of a consistent lack of control in one’s past or present, or a resistance to being controlled, whether real or imagined.[3]
The temptation to be heard resembles certain unhealthy qualities in what Clarice of Nexion of Ur previously noted as an Enneagram Type Four personality. More to the point, I think Cioran characterizes this type of temptation accurately when he says that:
Certain peoples … are so haunted by themselves that they pose themselves as a unique problem: their development, singular at every point, compels them to fall back on their series of anomalies, of the miracle or the insignificance of their fate.[4]
The posing of the self as a unique problem to draw attention to, then inflated by an ongoing compulsion to do so – this lies at the heart of the temptation to be heard, in whatever shape or variety. We all fall victim to it from time to time, sometimes in subtle ways. In the ONA, it seems reasonable that such a private and personal quest of transformation, growth, and self-realization sometimes carries the need to share such experiences with others who may appreciate their value. But I think there is a difference between the need to convey meaningful experiences with others who might appreciate them, relate to them, and use them to guide their own experiences, and the looming, often hidden compulsion to continuously validate one’s identity in the eyes of others. The latter rests on creating the conditions for a “hidden war” with the other person in order to resist, and then attempt to control, their objectification or reification of the self.[5] The ongoing and recurrent compulsion to create those conditions in any form is what I am referring to here as “temptation”; and the “temptation to be heard” has to do with a compulsion to control the way one is objectified or reified by their peers by resisting that objectification in order to validate a distorted or inadequate sense of self.
Confusing Self-Immolation and Self-Esteem
The temptation to be heard can be thought of as a confusion between self-immolation and self-esteem. The former has to do with clearing a kind of opening for the unconscious and self to form a cohesive bridge across the psyche through the gradual but radical dissolving of the egoic resistance structures that attempt to control these processes. The latter has to do with how these forces in motion across and beyond the individual psyche manifest and then come to constitute an individual’s identity and sense of self-worth, both as an individual and in relation to others. Confusing one with the other can be disastrous, and many of us fall victim to this confusion at some point in our lives, myself included. The key, I think, is learning to identify certain hidden patterns and signs that briefly emerge into conscious experience in a variety of ways, much like a shapeshifter. This requires the cultivation of certain faculties such as empathy (the ability to identify the appearance of these patterns and signs in other people and vice versa), a heightened sensitivity (being attuned to those appearances as they emerge), and formal tools for studying these appearances (phenomenology, meditation, and various formal psychological models are a few examples). One can then take steps to trace the potential origins of these patterns and signs in the unconscious in order to slowly diminish their effects on our lives. The danger is letting these go unnoticed until the aforesaid confusion gives way to a need and that need to a temptation: commonly, the temptation to be heard.
The Harmony of Grace
Interestingly, that temptation can work the other way as well: when one identifies the temptation and gradually takes practical steps in the real world and in their life to diminish its hold on their psyche, on their identity, on their interpersonal relations, and on their family life, they may begin to see that temptation become merely a need. As that need itself diminishes its hold, it may become a healthy attunement toward others as a balanced desire to share meaningful experiences and ideas that can then shape their lives in a constructive way; or that need may disappear almost entirely, being replaced by a sort of wordless and outstretching contentment across one’s being, a tremulous and living epiphany of great grief and melancholy settled in the heart as a work of ongoing art, validated by the life lived and those it had an impact on, as one’s tragedy finally gives way to a comedy after so much pain, as the wounds of the past erect joy rather than misery from no longer needing to control or resist, as one loses desire for more things and possessions and finds they want for very little, having always been the source for everything they need – not as something self-contained, but as a living embodiment of nature’s many moods within the world. A harmony: their body and being have become a work of music. This is what I refer to here as “grace.”
Conflict, Struggle, Assimilation: The Final Harmony
Whatever the ONA was or is or shall be one day, it is precisely this kind of harmony that systems like the Seven-Fold Way aim to achieve. The simple acts of kindness at the heart of the ruthless spiritual predation found in the genuinely Satanic, the metamorphosis of the narcissist into a being of tremendous joy, the tensions of the flesh sculpted through powerful and pagan physical ordeals into spiritual transformation, ecstasis, and elation, the letting go of all desire into nocturnal love, the hidden sun, the Kingdom of Ends as an eternal beginning, the wisdom of falling, of letting go … I would go so far as to draw a connection between the harmony that results from this constructive movement away from the temptation to be heard and the spiritual harmony the Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis describes in relation to Christ’s temptation in The Last Temptation of Christ. In describing the tension between the flesh and the spirit, Kazantzakis says:
Every man partakes of the divine nature in both his spirit and his flesh. That is why the mystery of Christ is not simply a mystery for a particular creed: it is universal. The struggle between God and man breaks out in everyone, together with the longing for reconciliation. Most often this struggle is unconscious and short-lived. A weak soul does not have the endurance to resist the flesh for very long. It grows heavy, becomes flesh itself, and the contest ends. But among responsible men, men who keep their eyes riveted day and night upon the Supreme Duty, the conflict between flesh and spirit breaks out mercilessly and may last until death.
The stronger the soul and the flesh, the more fruitful the struggle and the richer the final harmony. God does not love weak souls and flabby flesh. The Spirit wants to have to wrestle with flesh which is strong and full of resistance. It is a carnivorous bird which is incessantly hungry; it eats flesh and, by assimilating it, makes it disappear.[6]
It is this conflict, struggle, and assimilation – under whatever name and through whatever esoteric framework – that I think the ONA has attempted enact, explore, and provide a rough-and-ready guide for individuals to achieve over the course of its history, all with an aim toward this final harmony. Exploring the means to achieve this harmony, and if unachievable learning to regulatively enhance it to the highest degree possible – that is a large part of what lies at the core of the ONA.[7]
Two Faces of the Same Passage
And so, over the course of many years and the last year in particular, I have come to realize the importance of the temptation to be heard as a test of self-honesty and a necessary rite of passage. Sadly, this test is one that many people continue to fail or refuse to take at all; one that I’ve failed – and continue to fail! – many times. But failing has helped to resolve an important disparity for me, one that I think is helpful for all of us to keep in mind: the disparity between the public face of the ONA on the one hand, and the movement toward the aforesaid final harmony on the other, one that goes on out of sight among a loose network of serious practitioners. In my opinion, the public face of the ONA was more or less meant to be a collocation of the experiences, observations, ideas, and techniques encountered or developed while working toward that final harmony by sincere and advanced practitioners of the tradition. That is my goal for the future of the Fenrir journal. In terms of the public face of the ONA as it currently stands, this goal has unfortunately been overshadowed by the temptation to be heard on the part of many individuals who, while bearing the right spirit of enthusiasm, perhaps have some work to do in diminishing the power of this temptation in their lives.
Conclusion: What the Future Holds
The real work toward this final harmony will continue to go on behind the scenes, either privately or in small groups of individuals bound by pacts of loyalty and committed self-sacrifice, pacts which make possible their patient progression into the difficult and shadowy landscape ahead. Meanwhile, the public face of the ONA will take on whatever organic form required to attract and deflect, bewitch and misdirect, or enchant and mislead a new generation of budding adepts, one brave enough to brave the elements and courageous enough to examine these dynamics in the world and in themselves: with humility, with grace, and with love.
Narcissus,
in his immobility,
absorbed by his reflection with the digestive slowness of carnivorous plants,
becomes invisible.
There remains of him only the hallucinatingly white oval of his head,
his head again more tender,
his head, chrysalis of hidden biological designs,
his head held up by the tips of the water’s fingers,
at the tips of the fingers
of the insensate hand,
of the terrible hand,
of the mortal hand
of his own reflection.
When that head slits
when that head splits
when that head bursts,
it will be the flower,
the new Narcissus,
Gala—my Narcissus
– Salvador Dalí’s accompanying poem to Metamorphosis of Narcissus
Nameless Therein
Scothorn Nexion
September 16, 2022
Notes
[1] “The ancient source of this subject is Ovid’s Metamorphosis (Book 3, lines 339-507). It tells of Narcissus, who upon seeing his own image reflected in a pool, so falls in love that he cannot look away. Eventually he vanishes and in his place is a ‘sweet flower, gold and white, the white around the gold.’” Beth Harris and Steven Zucker, “Salvador Dalí, Metamorphosis of Narcissus,” Smarthistory: The Center for Public Art History, accessed September 16, 2022, https://smarthistory.org/salvador-dali-metamorphosis-of-narcissus/.
[2] Hart offers the following insight on grace: “Christian theology taught from the first that the world was God’s creature in the most radically ontological sense: that it is called from nothingness, not out of any need on God’s part, but by grace.” David Bentley Hart, “Christ and Nothing,” First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, October 2003, https://www.firstthings.com/article/2003/10/christ-and-nothing.
[3] At a deeper ontological level, we can observe this need to control as an inability to accept our own mortality – a refusal to acknowledge that we will one day die, which is related to what Heidegger characterizes as the “inauthentic.” This can take the form of attempting to control death or resist being controlled by it. We find that impulse in many surface-level interpretations of religion, spirituality, and even in the ONA to some extent, with its recurrent emphasis on immortality.
[4] Emil Cioran, The Temptation to Exist, trans. Richard Howard (Paris: Librairie Gallimard, 1956; repr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 65. Citations refer to the University of Chicago Press edition.
[5] This is related to what Jean-Paul Sartre calls “the glance,” which is well-characterized in his play No Exit.
[6] Nikos Kazantzakis, “Prologue,” in The Last Temptation of Christ, trans. P. A. Bien (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2015), 1-2.
[7] Over the course of intense Satanic devotion and practice throughout my life, I have found that this conflict, struggle, assimilation, and final harmony is also what lies, in part, at the heart of genuine Satanism. One may sense this, for example, in the potential relation between Vindex as opfer and the temptation of Christ so described. I should note, however, that this is a personal conclusion I have arrived at through my own experiences via the evolution of my own system of Satanism, one I suspect would not be widely accepted or possibly even acknowledged as “Satanism.”
Chapter I, Desertam Indefensamque, was a memorandum sent to Occult colleagues by the Oxfordshire-based Sapphic group the TWS Nexion at the beginning of November 2021. It led to the discussions recounted in the section titled The Esoteric Philosophy And Seven Fold Way Of Anton Long – A Debate in chapter II, A New Beginning, the gist of which discussions concerned the anarchist/nihilist O9A principle of the ‘authority of individual judgement’ and what had recently resulted from that principle: such as the Black Propaganda of a fake American O9A nexion run by an FBI agent provocateur.
The TWS Nexion was of the view that the principle of the ‘authority of individual judgement’ – described in chapter III, Paradox Of The O9A Authority Of Individual Judgment, whose consequences are described in the Debate section of chapter II – were on balance detrimental to the quest for Lapis Philosophicus. Hence their reformation as The Seven Oxonians and their development of a new esoteric tradition which they termed The Hebdomian Way, described in detail in chapter IV, The Sevenfold Seeking And Noesis Of The Hebdomian Way. They thus returned to the fundamentals of Hermetic philosophy as described in the tractates of the ancient Corpus Hermeticum, with chapters V and VI – Julius Evola, The Seven Fold Way, And The Corpus Hermeticism and A Review of Myatt’s The Divine Pymander – providing an overview of that Corpus. This work presents the new esoteric tradition in detail as well as the background to its development involving as that did ceasing to publicly defend or explain Longusian Occultism because it had been abandoned in favour of The Hebdomian Way.
Not long ago, a few members of Scothorn Nexion were invited to an international Sunedrion deep in the mountains at an undisclosed location, attended by a few notable persons and nexions. We arrived a day early to explore the region. After hiking up the mountains for many hours, we found a place to camp for the evening before reconvening with the others the next morning. As day turned to night, I sensed something unmistakably sinister about this land – something primal, atavistic, unaltered. Here, one knew the meaning of the nocturnal, the dismal decay of light into the lunar, the primitive and watchful spirits who guarded the veins of the earth. Learning to find the divine, the Satanic, in something as simple as the bark of a dying tree, the restless wind, the fading sun, descending over a horizon untouched by man as something in us faded with it … that was the goal this evening, expressed in a single chant. As the other members prepared our ritual supplies to commemorate the sinister, to burn our souls in blood, to throw ourselves off the edge of the world, I opened the group working with Otonen Satanas, recited from memory. No effects, no editing – the recording is unaltered. Though the video cannot do justice to what transpired in those moonless woods, I am sharing this for those with the eyes to see and sense the space between the shadows; to give back a little of what we sacrificed that evening.
Yet for herself she felt no terror; no little personal fear could touch her whose anguish and deep longing streamed all out to him whom she so bravely loved. In this time of utter self-forgetfulness, when she realized that the battle was hopeless, thinking she had lost even her God, she found Him again quite close beside her like a little Presence in this terrible heart of the hostile Forest. But at first she did not recognize that He was there; she did not know Him in that strangely unacceptable guise. For He stood so very close, so very intimate, so very sweet and comforting, and yet so hard to understand – as Resignation.
– Algernon Blackwood, “The Man Whom the Trees Loved”
Tunica propior est pallio,
Nameless Therein
Scothorn Nexion
July 27, 2022
What follows is another article for the upcoming edition of Fenrir. This article covers the subject of wyrd in relation to the medieval Christian influence on the Anglo-Saxon pagan Weltanschauung. In examining the role of wyrd in extant Anglo-Saxon verse, I demonstrate how the role of wyrd as Other illuminates the meaning of the phrase, “elþeodigra eard gesecan” – “to seek the land of foreigners” – in relation to the Hermetic quest (ἄνοδος) of the Order of Nine Angles. In so doing, I then examine how the relations between man, wyrd, and God and three types of human responses to wyrd in medieval Anglo-Saxon verse shed light on the deeper esoteric role of wyrd within (and beyond) the ONA through what in Beowulf is called “forethought of mind,” and what in devotional Anglo-Saxon verse is referred to as “thinking well” or “thinking wisely” – all with an eye toward addressing “the inability of the individual to comprehend the operation of wyrd in man’s daily life and the human endeavor to live meaningfully in the face of that incomprehensibility.”
“Where’s Your Will to Be Wyrd?”
An Examination of Wyrd in the Anglo-Saxon Religious Imagination
by Nameless Therein
monað modes lust mæla gehwylce
ferð to feran, þæt ic feor heonan
elþeodigra eard gesece.
The mind’s urging admonishes the spirit at every moment to set forth, that I might seek far from here the land of foreigners.
– “The Seafarer,” translated by Andrew Galloway
The above poem fragment is taken from the tenth-century manuscript known as the Exeter Book, which “constitutes the largest extant collection of Old English verse.”[1] Some scholars have suggested that the phrase “elþeodigra eard gesecan” – “to seek the land of foreigners” – is a “common expression for a journey into religious exile.”[2] In the poem, “The Seafarer,” the phrase is meant to indicate an “oblique and elusive resolution” as “the speaker passes beyond the world of heroic obligations … to another sphere.”[3] This “passing to another sphere” alludes to a complex historical relationship between the concept of wyrd or “fate” in Anglo-Saxon literature and that of choice, indicated by the verb (ge)ceosan, “to choose,” which appears in the tenth and eleventh centuries.[4] While this relation can be observed historically with respect to the notion of Christian predestination,[5] the relation speaks more broadly to “early English poetry’s deterministic vision of history.”[6]
That deterministic vision of history takes on additional significance when considering how the phrase “elþeodigra eard gesecan” finds application in the modern world, specifically in terms of wyrd. In the complex relation between fate and choice, and much like its central place in the “surviving paganism … [of] Anglo-Saxon literature,”[7]wyrd plays a central role in the Order of Nine Angles. Here, “elþeodigra eard gesecan” can be interpreted as the way wyrd directs each individual across the Septenary spheres of the Tree of Wyrd, thereby “passing to another sphere” or “from sphere to sphere” over the course of their Hermetic quest (ἄνοδος).[8] While many associates have a cursory understanding of what the term “wyrd” means in this context – as an unclarified sense of “fate” or “destiny,” for example – few have a grasp of its etymological origins and fewer still get beyond the apparent duality it alludes to within the practice of the ONA. This duality concerns two horns of a dilemma upon which each initiate necessarily finds themselves impaled – a dilemma involving the emphasis on solitary, individual experience on the one hand, and the confrontation with something other than the self on the other. The dilemma concerns the way one can become ensnared in various “traps” or “deceptions” as the duality “turns in” on itself through the dissolving of the ego, either through the temptation to over-emphasize individual experience, where one can lose their way in mistaking a personal map for impersonal territory;[9] or in deceiving oneself into believing that dissolving has occurred before it has begun.[10] All in all, one must remember that the ONA’s emphasis on solitary practice and pathei-mathos with respect to individual experience is intimately conjoined with empathy as a means to empathic living.[11] More specifically, solitary practice and individual experience are a means to the radical confrontation with something other than the self, which empathy makes possible; and this confrontation recasts each initiate in a shadow of destiny that exceeds the boundaries of the individual.
Wyrd is important in this respect because it involves this “something other than the self.” At one level, said confrontation can take the form of a relation to the other person; but at a broader level, it can reveal itself in the form of fate or nature (physis or φύσις). Though other phenomena can assume this role, the acknowledgement of something other than the self plays an important role in the dissolving of the ego. While more attention can be dedicated to this relation, this article will focus its attention on the cultural, historical, and etymological origins of wyrd in relation to this “something other than the self,” both in terms of wyrd as Other and in terms of the relation between man, wyrd, and God in Anglo-Saxon literature. The purpose here is not to conduct a systematic analysis of these subjects, but to highlight certain recurrent dynamics that can occur in the transformative experiences of ONA praxes like the Seven-Fold Way.
WYRD AS OTHER IN THE MEDIEVAL CHRISTIAN AND ANGLO-SAXON WORLDVIEW
The term “wyrd” has complex origins culturally, historically, etymologically, and in terms of its usage in the early literature of the Order of Nine Angles.[12] We find references to it in the Old English poetry of the tenth-century manuscript known as the Exeter Book, in the epic Anglo-Saxon[13] poem Beowulf,[14] and in King Alfred’s Old English translation of the Roman philosopher Boethius’ influential work, The Consolation of Philosophy, which marked one of the last great crossroads between the Classical and Medieval worlds.[15] Though translating “wyrd” was once a “polarizing enigma for scholars of Old English literature and of the history of religions,”[16] philologists of the nineteenth century translated it as “fate” and held that “the presence of the word in the … [Old English] corpus … [represented] one of the few preservations of England’s Teutonic pre-Christian cosmology.”[17] Jacob Grimm, for example, notes the “philological link between wyrd and the Norse norn Urðr, one of the three entities responsible for weaving the fates of humankind.”[18]Wyrd is thus described as a “fixed fate that shaped the pagan world of the Anglo-Saxons,”[19] which, in “pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon mythology” denoted “a force in the universe which controlled the destinies of all things.”[20] In this, its role is similar “to that of fate in Old Norse literature, where it compels even the gods to act in accord with its dictates.”[21] In Beowulf, “Wyrd is the force that eventually destroys the lives of the violators of unknowable universal order,”[22] which F. Anne Payne describes in the following way:
[Wyrd] is the agent in the most terrible experience of the day of death. It is the opponent of man in the strange area of the most intense perception and consciousness. Though it may hold off for a while, the individual in the end makes an error in choice and releases forces whose consequences at the moment of crisis he controls no longer and Wyrd is victorious. Wyrd affects only those with the strength and energy to enter that space where order is at first contingent on their choices. When they fail as they inevitably do because they are human, Wyrd’s dreadful power compensates for their inadequacies. While it is completely accurate to say in epic and tragedy in general that the hero seeks his fate, it is totally erroneous to say he seeks his Wyrd. Wyrd is alien to the individual; it is the force which balances his errors, punishes him, at best tolerates him. Wyrd is always the Other.[23]
In this sense, wyrd thus functions as the form of alterity alluded to at the beginning of this article: a fundamental Other or otherness that we encounter through empathy in the radical confrontation with something other than the self. While alternate forms of alterity can take on this relation, each with their own dynamic in relation to the self (nature or physis being one example), such relations are sometimes sensed more prominently with the dissolving of the ego. Thus, to revisit the phrase from “The Seafarer” introduced above: “elþeodigra eard gesecan” does not just refer to seeking “the land of foreigners” as an expression for a journey into religious exile. In “passing to another sphere” or “from sphere to sphere,” wyrd also refers to exile from the self in confronting something other than the self. In this respect, wyrd as enigmatic, impersonal, and incomprehensible is reflected in the poetry of the Exeter Book, which thematically addresses “the inability of the individual to comprehend the operation of wyrd in man’s daily life and the human endeavor to live meaningfully in the face of that incomprehensibility.”[24] In this, “elþeodigra eard gesecan” indeed indicates a passing “beyond the world of heroic obligations … to another sphere”[25] as each initiate continually immolates and re-constitutes their sense of self in the face of wyrd’s incomprehensible influence across the Tree of Wyrd.
MAN, WYRD, AND GOD
In this context, wyrd does not just refer to fate but “inexorable fate,”[26] one in which “the hopeless pagan vision of a crumbling world” – whose “bitterly cold, inconsolable pagan worldview” makes poems like “The Wanderer” in the Exeter Book so compelling – eventually converges with Christian consolation.[27] In fact, though the Christian influence in Anglo-Saxon works is explicit, there is disagreement regarding its role and origin. While early scholars considered the term “wyrd” in such literature “a rare preservation of pre-Christian belief in the extant corpus,”[28] a more recent scholarly consensus acknowledges the Christian context of extant Old English literature,[29] possibly tracing the derivation of wyrd to the verb weorðan (to become).[30] This Christian context introduces alternate ways of interpreting the term “wyrd.” Though there are various occasions in Old English literature “where wyrd is personified and is distinguished from God,”[31] there are numerous references to God and “God’s wyrd” throughout the poems of the Exeter Book.[32] F. Anne Payne notes that “[t]he relation of man, Wyrd, and God which is represented in Beowulf finds its philosophical clarification in [King] Alfred’s use of the term in his … [translation] of [Boethius’] Consolation of Philosophy.”[33] Payne adds that “Alfred’s metaphor for the absolute relation of … [man, Wyrd, and God] makes Wyrd a great wheel on which men are caught, the worst toward the outer rim, the best near the axle, which is God: ‘swelce sio eax sie þæt hehste god þe we nemnað God.’”[34] On this point, Susanne Weil traces the “many words that express the concept of wyrd” to the term’s Old English root meaning “to shape.” She notes that gescipe, or “destiny,” means literally “that which is shaped”; that the verb sceppen means “to destine, to shape”; and that “one of the most frequently used words for ‘God’ is Sceppend,” which literally means “Shaper.”[35] With respect to the relation between man, wyrd, and God in Anglo-Saxon verse and literature, she adds:
Since the motif of wyrd as the implacable arbiter of men’s struggles resounds throughout the Anglo-Saxon canon like a perpetual minor chord, the synonymous nature of fate and shaping in Old English should not be surprising: the singers of the canon were always aware that the events of their lives had been “shaped” by a force (or forces) beyond their control. Given the primacy of tactile imagery throughout their poetry, their vision of destiny as a process of shaping is characteristic. It is as if their Shaper were a sculptor, carefully crating the form of each man’s fate, molding a rough edge here, a smooth curve there, until the work took on its final cast in the moment of death.[36]
Against this clear Christian influence, however, there does seem to be something mysterious with respect to wyrd in the underbelly of the pagan Anglo-Saxon Weltanschauung. As monks historically moved into Britain and began recording Anglo-Saxon writings, it was assumed that the Sceppend was the Christian God. But Weil raises the important question: “who was he before that?”[37] After all, “The Anglo-Saxon tongue existed before the Christianization of Britain, and yet the Germanic religion which had held sway there had no supreme Shaper.”[38] On this point, Weil finds that, “As we push the parameters of the mythology, every possible explanation seems to lead to another mystery. The Anglo-Saxon universe seems curiously without cause, yet brimming with effects—all subsumed under the murky heading of wyrd, which remains a force, not a figure. Who, then, is the Shaper?”[39]
In relation to wyrd, Weil suggests that a clue to this question can be found in the following lines from Beowulf, where Beowulf says that “Gaeð a wyrd swa hio scel (Fate always goes as it must!),” and also that “Wyrd oft nereð/unfægne eorl, þonne his ellen deah (Fate often saves an undoomed man if his courage is good).”[40] In these two axioms, there appears to be an inconsistency: in the first “fate is unalterable,” and in the second “[fate] plays favorites.”[41] Later in Beowulf, the narrator seems to suggest that fate “is subordinate to both “wise God” and “the man’s courage.”[42] At a superficial level, these differing conceptions of wyrd appear to reveal an inconsistency. At a deeper level, however, that inconsistency may confirm Weil’s suspicion that neither Beowulf nor the narrator are confused here – that it is instead the modern audience who has missed the point of these pronouncements.[43] She elaborates on this in the following way, unpacking the relation between the Christian influence and the pagan Anglo-Saxon worldview:
Critics who see the poem as primarily Christian … view the narrator’s pronouncement on the power of God as evidence that Christian providence, not wyrd, was the Shaper of the Anglo-Saxon world—ignoring other pronouncements that the narrator makes elsewhere about the supreme power of fate. If proving God to be the sole power were the narrator’s purpose, why would he immediately append the caveat “yet is discernment everywhere best, forethought of mind?” He seems to be telling his audience not to count on the power of God or wyrd: the future will be a mixture of satisfaction and suffering even though God (or fate) “rule(s) all the race of men.” What a man can depend on is his “forethought of mind”: this is the core of the individual’s power to endure.[44]
“FORETHOUGHT OF MIND” AND “THINKING WELL”: THREE HUMAN RESPONSES TO WYRD
This “forethought of mind” as a means of enduring wyrd is an important theme, one that other scholars have taken note of. The “narrator’s purpose” Weil refers to above with respect to “forethought of mind” occurs in Beowulf as follows: “Forþan bið angit æghwær selest, [/] ferhðes foreþanc,” which can be translated as, “Therefore understanding is best everywhere, forethought of mind,”[45] or, “Yet is discernment everywhere best, forethought of mind.”[46] As a parallel to the reference to “forethought of mind” in Beowulf, we find an analogue in what Karma Lochrie renders as “thinking well” in one of the poems of the Exeter Book.[47] The reference occurs with respect to a series of “less obvious sequences of poems” in the Exeter Book, ones that “present variations on some particular theme or a series of instructions for devotional exercises.”[48] Such poems are noted by Lochrie to reveal a “pattern of the sacrament of penance.”[49] These form a “thematic group” and are headed by a “Judgment Day” poem, which is comprised of three short poems: “Judgment Day I,” “Resignation A,” and “Resignation B.”[50] These three short poems comprise three different approaches “to the common concern with wyrd and its effect on mankind” in the form of “a homiletic poem, a prayer, and an elegy.”[51] The phrase “thinking well” occurs in the first of the three poems that comprise this triplex: “Judgment Day I.”
“Judgment Day I” is described by Lochrie as a “homiletic poem in the third person” that “switches curiously … to a prayerlike, first-person narrative mode in which the speaker solicits the audience’s participation in his poem.”[52] The poem seems to call the reader to prayer after “a description of the inexorable end of the world through God’s wyrd and the judgment of mankind through His Word.” The call appears to be a “response to the mysterious upheavals and revelations wreaked by wyrd,”[53] where the ending “embarks on a prayer for the recognition of one’s inability to change or postpone wyrd ‘under heaven’”:[54]
Oncweþ nu þisne cwide; cuþ sceal geweorþan
þæt ic gewægan ne mæg wyrd under heofonum,
ac hit þus gelimpan sceal leoda gehwylcum
ofer eall beorht gesetu, byrnende lig.
Siþþan æfter þam lige lif bið gestaþelad,
welan ah in wuldre se nu wel þenceð.
(Repeat now this saying; it shall come to be
that I may not frustrate wyrd under heaven,
but it shall happen thus to all people
the coming of the burning flame, over all this bright creation.
After the flame life will be established,
and he will possess happiness who now thinks wisely.)[55]
This poem points to the fact that “the individual cannot ‘frustrate’ or prevent God’s wyrd under heaven, that in fact that wyrd is destined to frustrate the individual’s plans for the future, and that he or she must endure the ‘burning flame’ which will engulf all creation equally.”[56]
It is in this enduring – specifically with respect to enduring wyrd – that we find a link between the “forethought of mind” in Beowulf and the “thinking well” that Lochrie mentions with respect to “Judgment Day I.” “Thinking well” is also rendered as “thinking wisely,” where “the poet also adds to what might otherwise be a pessimistic outlook that the individual can affect his or her destiny by ‘thinking wisely’ now—that is, in the present.”[57] Whether referring to wyrd as “the speaker’s hardship, suffering, and misery which he cannot understand or prevent” in “Resignation B,” or as “the final conflagration and Last Judgment” in “Judgment Day I,” the lesson is the same: “one must not try to change or appeal one’s destiny; instead, one must ‘think well’ in order to endure it.”[58]
These three poems – “Judgment Day I,” “Resignation A,” and “Resignation B” – present variations on the limits of human understanding in relation to wyrd, and illustrate three “particular human responses to wyrd.”[59] “Judgment Day I” establishes a “triptych” that “portrays these [three] human responses to wyrd” – responses that “[hinge] upon the quality of one’s thought, and … [whether or not] we consider the truth well.”[60] The three responses involve three characterizations or caricatures: 1) the gromhydig guma or “the grim-thinking man”;[61] 2) the earthly feaster;[62] and 3) the deophydig or “deep-thinking” soul.[63] Of these, the first two are “caricatures of the unwise—those who are heedless of the future in their overweening confidence in the present.”[64] The third conversely “assumes the model human response to wyrd.”[65] I will briefly examine each of these in turn.
The first type of response, the gromhydig guma or “the grim-thinking man,” is suggestive of a character who boasts and “heaps scorn on his lord, murders him, and flees to hell with his friends.” He is “the destroyer of peace who, in his grim ravaging of the earth, fails to consider the ‘dark creation’ which eternally waits for him.” As a response to wyrd, “the grim-thinker’s failure to know what lies beyond the present” represents a species of “proud ignorance by which man exploits the limitations of his own knowledge on earth.” Lochrie notes that the remedy for such pride is suggested by the word ferðgleaw, an adjective meaning “prudent.” With respect to wyrd, prudence “is a wisdom in the face of the future which recognizes the limitations of human knowledge and our inability to change our future” and is characterized by forethought.[66]
The second type of response is that of the earthly feaster. Similar to the grim-thinking man, “the feaster is oblivious to his wyrd.” Lochrie contends that the feaster “is guilty of another kind of pride which is associated with the ‘immoderate mind’.” The feaster is additionally characterized by an indifference or lack of care towards knowledge.[67]
The third type of response is the deophydig or “deep-thinking soul.” The deep-thinking soul “considers well his journey hence and looks upon his sins with anxiety, sorry, and suffering.” This type of response marks a soul characterized by prudence, one who, “while not … [presuming] to know or understand God’s wyrd, is able to endure it patiently by thinking well upon the future.”[68]
All in all, these three responses to wyrd are meant to indicate the types of qualities required to endure it: “understanding, patience, and memory.” On this account and in order to receive these qualities, the speaker of “Resignation A” realizes that “he must first learn to ‘think well’,”[69] as indicated by the poet’s words:
Gesette minne hyht on þec,
forhte foreþoncas, þæt hio fæstlice
stonde gestaðelad. Onstep minne hige,
gæsta god cyning, in gearone raed.
(Set my trust in you,
strengthen my forethoughts, that they may
stand fast. Raise my thoughts,
God King of souls, in ready wisdom.)[70]
CONCLUSION
Over the course of this paper, I examined some of the cultural, historical, and etymological origins of the Anglo-Saxon term “wyrd” in two contexts. The first concerned a radical confrontation with something other than the self, where wyrd took on the fundamental role of Other. I investigated this in some of the poems in the tenth-century manuscript known as the Exeter Book, in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf, and in the Old English translation of Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy. Here, I found that the phrase “elþeodigra eard gesecan,” or “to seek the land of foreigners” could be interpreted as more than a religious exile, referring instead to how an initiate in the Order of Nine Angles is exiled from the self in confronting something other than the self. That other (or Other) can take the form of wyrd.
The second context concerned wyrd’s deeper constellation of meaning when examined through the lens of the medieval Christian influence on the Anglo-Saxon pagan Weltanschauung. We examined different interpretations and possible etymological origins of wyrd in extant Anglo-Saxon verse in relation to God and the three different human responses to wyrd described by Karma Lochrie. These responses centered around the theme of “thinking well,” which I suggested is analogous to the idea of “forethought of mind” in Beowulf. Through an examination of “Judgment Day I,” “Resignation A,” and “Resignation B” in the Exeter Book and their characterization of the three human responses to wyrd, we learned that the appropriate human response to wyrd is prudence: “the recognition that we cannot change or frustrate wyrd.”[71] Hence, “Thinking well and wisely upon our future judgment while accepting the limitations of our understanding of divine wyrd finally means suffering well our present.”[72]
While prudence as an appropriate human response to wyrd may conflict with the Order of Nine Angles’ philosophy – there may in fact be magickal and esoteric techniques to alter or “re-direct” one’s wyrd, which is an element of the ONA’s esoteric system that seems to attract the dogged initiate – it does cast an interesting light on a deep historical complexity surrounding the cultural, historical, and etymological origins of the term “wyrd.”
In closing and as a testament to the importance of activating what has been said here in a participatory manner – one that brings wyrd to life in life, not on paper – I will end with a brief symbolic gesture: long ago, on the trail of danger and adventure in my younger years, I had a close friend who, now on the path to becoming an adept, once said to me: “Where’s your will to be weird?” Like a forethought of wyrd echoing into that present – a present which is now the past but is still very much alive – the question stuck with me. The question returned. The question evolved and took on strange forms. Now, as an echo across history into the present, as a moving anchor into the future, wyrd seems to be revealing itself to itself, providing temporal clues as to what this was intended to mean. Like many of the mysteries or “treasures” revealed in wyrd, I sensed the meaning instinctually, liminally, beyond the bounds of understanding. Until now, I never knew how to describe this “sensing.” In closing and as a clue as to the meaning of the title of this article,[73] I end with a passage from Payne:
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.[74]
Nameless Therein
Scothorn Nexion
March 28, 2022
2775 ab urbe condita
Wudu mot him weaxan, wyrde bidan,
tanum lædan; ic for tæle ne mæg
ænigne moncynnes mode gelufian
eorl on eþle.
(The tree might flourish, abide its wyrd,
sprout forth with branches; I for disgrace may not
any of mankind love in heart
any earl in my native land.)
– “Resignation B,” translated by Karma Lochrie
NOTES
[1] Courtney Catherine Barajas, “Introduction,” in Old English Ecotheology: The Exeter Book (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021), 20.
[2] Andrew Galloway, “Beowulf and the Varieties of Choice,” PMLA 105, no. 2 (March 1990): 199.
[5] A noteworthy development in this respect is the lesser-known fifth-century Christian heresy known as Pelagianism. Pelagianism, which is associated with the British monk Pelagius, held that “the grace needed for salvation comes from God through creation (which gives humans the capacity to do good) and from revelation (which teaches and encourages them toward goodness).” According to Pelagianism, sin “does not invalidate these gifts, and baptism is not necessary for the forgiveness of original sin.” These teachings were opposed to the views of St. Augustine, who held that “humans pass original sin to their children through reproduction, and that after Adam’s sin they lost the divine gift of love that makes human actions effective for salvation.” On Augustine’s account, “Without love, even things that seem to be virtues have evil motives.” Pelagianism was condemned by the Church as a heresy. Interestingly, a group now referred to as the Semipelagians, “represented by the monks John Cassian and Vincent of Lerins,” agreed with Augustine “on the necessity of interior grace and the effects of sin, but felt that predestination was dangerously close to some kind of destiny.” Predestination in relation to destiny is beyond the scope of this article but is mentioned here in passing given its relevance to this discussion of wyrd. Charles Taliaferro and Elsa J. Marty, eds., “Pelagianism,” in A Dictionary of Philosophy of Religion (New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010), 174-75.
[7] Eric Gerald Stanley, “Wyrd,” chap. 11 in Imagining the Anglo-Saxon Past: The Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism and Anglo-Saxon Trial by Jury (1975; repr., Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), 85.
[8] The Greek term “ἄνοδος” commonly occurs throughout ONA literature to describe this Hermetic quest. See, for example, Kerri Scott’s point that, “The symbolism of ω9α philosophy is – as described in the Poemander/Poemandres tractate of the Corpus Hermeticum and in many Renaissance alchemical texts – the ancient one of seven spheres (ἑβδομάς) and of a hermetic quest (ἄνοδος) by the individual from the first, lower, sphere to the seventh, higher, sphere.” Along these lines, Scott also notes that, “The Seven Fold Way involves an individual or a partnership undertaking a difficult hermetic quest, an ἄνοδος, either overtly Occult – as for example described in the Naos manuscript – or based on a non-Occult seeking as described in the text The Sevenfold Seeking And Noesis Of The Hebdomian Way.” Scott adds that, “Those on such a quest, often called the Hebdomadary (singular) or Hebdomadarians (plural) generally concern themselves with their quest, their interior life, their partnership, and family, above and beyond the dialectical machinations of the external world such as those of politics.” Kerri Scott, “Guide to Omega9Alpha Subculture” (self-pub., 2022).
[9] There is a powerful sense in which wyrd relates to the self in a way that exceeds the boundaries of the self. This involves a kind of personal intimacy; but that intimacy is also enigmatic and impersonal in its relation to forces that cannot be reduced to comprehension or understanding. It is, however, rarely abstract, embodied in an experience that can neither be “located” nor locuted, defying all natural forms of expression and grammar; all except, perhaps, music. In this way the map can become the territory, and the way this occurs is deeply personal.
[10] These are two common examples that many individuals fall victim to. Regarding the latter case, said “deception” can occur as an ulterior resistance structure or unconscious defense mechanism that artificially “elevates” the individual above the actual confrontation, sometimes out of fear, denial, unresolved trauma, or a refusal to let go. Small – and sometimes not so small – signs can indicate this type of inflationary response in the individual: in the way they speak, their mannerisms, their response to conflict, their etiquette, and their interpersonal relations, to cite a few examples.
[11] On this point, Myatt notes that, “The 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. (self-pub., 2018).
[12] Sadly, overuse, misuse, and a lack of knowledge regarding the origins of ONA terminology on the part of many ONA associates has diminished the meaning of such terms; but through a careful examination of some of the complexities that inform their intended meaning, we may breathe fresh life into a terminological framework that has been stripped of significance through years of carelessness. Such investigations will hopefully inspire others to find new ways to describe complex phenomena – phenomena that may appear conceptually contradictory but consistent in experience. There is evidence that the early authors of the ONA were aware of the complexities surrounding such terminology and were possibly attempting to exceed the limitations of such terms in creating clear divisions like “causal” and “acausal.” While such distinctions can be misleading, they lend the advantage of drawing our attention to their apparent limitations so that we may evolve and exceed them in turn.
[13] Note that while “Anglo-Saxon” is often used synonymously with “Old English,” the term and its Latinized form, “Anglo-Saxonicus,” originally applied “to the people and language of the Saxon race who colonized the southern parts of Britain.” The Saxons were distinct from the Angles, who colonized the northern regions. “Anglo-Saxon” does not refer to a combination of Angles and Saxons – i.e., “the people and language of the whole of England.” The latter would be more accurately described by the term “Old English.” Since the revival of such studies in the sixteenth century, however, “‘Anglo-Saxon’ has been used as the general term, without a sense of geographical distinction. Dinah Birch and Katy Hooper, eds., “Anglo-Saxon,” in The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
[14] There is controversy surrounding the dating of Beowulf. See, for example, The Dating of Beowulf: A Reassessment, ed. Leonard Neidorf (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014). Neidorf notes that scholars have assigned dates ranging from the seventh to the eleventh century. Prior to the 1980s, “most scholars held that the poem was composed during the seventh or eighth century.” Interestingly, J.R.R. Tolkien was convinced that Beowulf belonged to the age of Bede, which lasted from 672-735. On this point, Francis Gummere wrote: “There is no positive evidence for any date of origins. All critics place it before the ninth century. The eighth brought monastic corruption to Northumbria; while the seventh, described by Beda, with its austerity of morals, its gentleness, its tolerance, its close touch with milder forms of heathenism, matches admirably the controlling mood of the epic.” R.W. Chambers additionally notes that, “[F]rom the point of view of its close touch with heathendom, its tolerance for heathen customs, its Christian magnanimity and gentleness, its conscious art, and its learned tone, all historic and artistic analogy would lead us to place Beowulf in the great age – the age of Bede.” Other scholars disagree with this assessment. Scholarship on the dating of Beowulf appears to be “uneven in quality.” Leonard Neidorf, “Introduction,” in The Dating of Beowulf: A Reassessment, ed. Leonard Neidorf (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014).
[15] Victor Watts, “Introduction,” in Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy, rev. ed., trans. Victor Watts (1969; rev. ed., London: Penguin Books, 1999), xi. Boethius’ Consolation marks one of the great crossroads between the classical pagan worldview and early medieval Christianity. Boethius is said to have written this work in prison before his execution in 524 AD. Watts notes that, “[I]n the absence of firm evidence to the contrary … [we must believe that] Boethius … wrote [Consolation] in prison, alone, under the shadow of eventual execution, unaided except by the power of his own memory and genius.” Watts, “Introduction,” xxii.
[16] David Pedersen, “Wyrd ðe Warnung … or God: The Question of Absolute Sovereignty in Solomonand Saturn II,” Studies in Philology 113, no. 4 (Fall 2016): 714.
[18] Ibid. Pedersen interestingly cites a long-standing conflict between pagan and Christian interpretations of this term in an Anglo-Saxon context. He notes that “numerous proponents of the preservation of Germanic mythology in … [Old English] literature pointed to the various occasions throughout the corpus where wyrd is personified and is distinguished from God.” This began to change in the early twentieth century, however, as “a predominantly English school of scholarship began to attack the idea that the extant sources preserve some vestiges of Anglo-Saxon paganism, contending that the nearly three centuries of Christianity preceding many of the earliest literary occurrences of wyrd preclude any pagan connotations.” Pedersen, “Wyrd,” 714.
[19] Susanne Weil, “Grace Under Pressure: ‘Hand-Words,’ Wyrd, and Free Will in Beowulf,” Pacific Coast Philology 24, no. 1/2 (November 1989): 94.
[20] Jon C. Kasik, “The Use of the Term Wyrd in Beowulf and Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons,” Neophilologus 63 (January 1979): 128.
[22] 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.
[24] Karma Lochrie, “Wyrd and the Limits of Human Understanding: A Thematic Sequence in the Exeter Book,” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 85, no. 3 (July 1986): 324.
[26] Dan Veach, “The Wanderer,” in Beowulf and Beyond: Classic Anglo-Saxon Poems, Stories, Sayings, Spells, and Riddles (Atlanta: Lockwood Press, 2021), 41.
[58] Ibid., 326-27. There is a parallel between “forethought of mind” and “thinking well” in Anglo-Saxon verse and my analysis elsewhere of the importance of what Hannah Arendt refers to as the vita contemplativa or the contemplative life. That parallel has to do with the role of contemplation in relation to action. The parallel only indicates a relation, however; the two issues are not identical.
[73] I should note that the phrase “Anglo-Saxon religious imagination,” which I chose as the subtitle of this article, comes from Pedersen, “Wyrd,” 713.
The intention of this experience was to investigate the uses for Henbane and potentially other
tropane alkaloid containing plants in an insightful setting. I’m most interested in this being used in a
ritual or meditative setting, as it has reportedly been in the past particularly by the oracle seers at
Delphi. I’ve chosen to experience it myself as almost all reports online are from people trying to
obtain a recreational high. Before embarking on this experiment, and after reading those experience
reports mentioned, I fully understood the danger of using such plants before proceeding. Many
reports wildly differ in intensity. Usually experiences reported either are of mild and nearly non
existent effects, all the way to intense and complete psychotic breakdowns, of which I doubt the
veracity of the later. The Henbane I used was obtained from a local farm and is a mixture of ground
leaves, chopped stems, and some seeds all sun dried. There are some, but very few flowers present.
Initial attempts
For the first experience I had, I scooped out two lumped teaspoons into my teapot, and left it soak
for four minutes, noticing a deep brown colour which I looked strong for a herbal tea. Also, the
smell was quite off putting, not quite rotten but similar to compost. I sat down with my tea and
slowly sipped on it. At first I thought thought it was still too hot, but as it began cooling down I
realised that the tea itself had an unpleasant mouthfeel, as if my mouth was drying out and lightly
burning. Half way through my second cup my lips were noticeably dry. I also felt a slight pain in
my stomach, I’m not sure if it’s from the tea or hunger so I decided to walk to a supermarket for
some food. The night felt quiet and I heard every little noise. It had an eerie atmosphere and I felt as
if everyone was staring at me. When I got home I made another pot of tea, using three instead of
two teaspoons and also allowed it to steep for ten minutes instead of four. I assumed this should
have been much stronger and hopefully allow me to feel the psychoactive effects clearer. From this
I felt a little dizzy and sleepy, but other than that, no discernible psychoactive effects. Shortly after
consuming my final cup I went to bed. At this time I noticed that time seemed to have accelerated. I
hadn’t been doing much other than a bit of reading but it seems as if time had flown by. I wasn’t
able to sleep much and constantly woke up during the night, finding myself thrashing around. When
I woke up in the morning I had to urinate frequently. My vision was extremely blurred at short
distances, it was difficult to read anything, look at my phone, or even see my hands from up close.
The blurriness was quite severe and I was worried that I had caused some kind of permanent
damage, but by about midday my vision had entirely returned to normal.
My second experience with a tea occurred a week later, making it stronger and smaller. Instead of
using a teapot, I used a french press with four tablespoons of the same material. I left them to steep
for fifteen minutes before pressing and pouring. Visual blurring began before sleep, not so bad as to
not be able to read, but noticeably difficult to focus on a single object. Other than that, effects were
similar to previous. As I lay in bed I experienced my first visual distortions, black shadows creeping
in the corner of my room, in the corner of my eye. They only lasted seconds and there was no
confusion to them being distortions… I had no illusions of them being anything more than
hallucinations. As I turned my light off, my room still being lit by the moonlight outside, one of
these shadows pierced from the corner of my room right in front of my face, as a blunt spike still
attached to the wall reaching out to grasp me. I was momentarily frightened by this but felt more
annoyed by the disturbance than anything. That is another comment I can make… my mood is more
erratic than normal while under its influence. Mostly I’ll be more confused and wandering around
trying to find something to do, or frustrated at some small annoyance. Never have these emotions
been positive. As I awoke the next morning, I noticed that the visual blurring had returned, the exact
same as the first experience. Another visual distortion I noticed was dark waves forming on my
walls, and the texture flowing like dark water down a stream. These were not intense and I would
not notice them if I didn’t focus directly at the wall. I felt slightly more ill than previously, sort of a
mild hangover.
A different method
A few weeks after the attempts with tea, I tried smoking Henbane instead. I was less comfortable
starting at a higher dosage, so I begun by rolling at a quarter of a teaspoon of the plant with a pinch
of tobacco into a small, thin, joint with no filter. The buzz felt lighter and more floaty than the usual
nicotine head spin. Onset of this feeling was more delayed than normal, and I was slightly more
relaxed after finishing. Within half an hour there were no residual lightheaded sensations and I took
a nap. Later I rolled a larger joint, using a full size paper. The Henbane smoked well, was smooth,
and remained lit, however the mouthfeel was awful, I can only describe as what I’d imagine eating
mould covered chalk would feel like. This time I noticed the same cognitive effects as the larger
dose of tea with different physical effects. As what is turning out to be typical, I again experienced
distortion of causal time. Mostly, I’d say this is compression and a speeding up of time, but
occasionally it’ll feel like everything moves in a slow motion briefly. There is also this strange eerie
feeling that persists. It’s a similar uncomfortable and awkward feeling as walking into a room, only
for everyone to suddenly become quiet. Physically, I felt sedated and my face was numb, mostly
around my eyes. I also felt sleepy and took a nap shortly after. When I woke up my lips and mouth
were dry as usual, but my eyes were also dry this time. All these effects however were mild.
Perhaps it would require a water pipe or similar set up to smoke larger amounts of material to
achieve a higher dose. I feel like smoking it in joints is too time consuming and too difficult for
what it’s worth, as it burns much slower than tobacco. Despite these difficulties, the negative
physical feelings during smoking were not really present, and being more cognitive and less
physical, it may be worth pursuing.
The Gate is open
About three weeks had passed since my last experience. I boiled approximately 5 to 6 tablespoons
of the same material as previous for half an hour in a small pot. This boiling over an extended
period of time, in hindsight, appears to be the best way to extract the Henbane essence and
psychoactive alkaloids. I believe now that simply soaking the leaves in hot water as with tea or
coffee is simply insufficient. As can be guessed already, this experience turned out to be much
stronger and I really should have been more careful. The brew foamed up quickly in the pot but
dissipated with stirring. I kept it on a slow rolling boil, watching and stirring. I had to top up the
water once due to evaporation. After half an hour of boiling, I poured the mixture into a french press
before pressing and filtering out the plant material. I allowed it to cool to a lukewarm temperature. I
brought the pot and mug into the room I use for meditation, preparing my altar and mentally
preparing myself while the brew cooled. When I felt ready, I drank quickly. The resultant colour of
the brew was as black as tar, but the smell was not any worse. The taste was much stronger, and it
felt like less of a tea and more of a strong drink. After a minute of allowing it to settle and my throat
to relax, I chanted the Agios Vindex, sat down and begun meditation.
The onset of effects was much shorter than previously. Within about fifteen minutes my face and
eyes were numb and I was feeling drowsy. I tried standing up but my head was so dizzy I couldn’t
balance myself, falling over and crashing on the ground. I believe I was in this position most of the
experience. Other physical effects were typical dry mouth but also my hands and feet became
blotchy and red as if they’d been rubbed raw. On top of these symptoms, my heartbeat began
accelerating to an uncomfortable level, which I hadn’t experienced in previous uses. My vision
began deteriorating rapidly, at first the corners of my vision became darker, which slowly
constricted what I could see until I could only clearly see what I was looking at directly in front of
me. Everything I could see had an upward melting motion in texture, like black seaweed waving
with the tide. Objects began moving from their places, for example my quartz crystal and black
candle appeared to continually creep towards each other but never collided. I also saw bugs moving
quickly over the walls, ceiling, and corners, which seems to be a typical hallucination produced by deliriants based on other people’s testimonies. Occasionally I’d feel the bugs touch me softly which would cause me to instinctively jerk away.
As time went on my ability to move and control my own body became worse and worse, while
getting more and more drowsy. My right leg would frequently spasm uncontrollably and it was
difficult to co-ordinate my arms and legs. Slowly sleep started to come upon me, not from tiredness
but from the analgesic numbness vibrating through my body from my face downward. As I begun to
pass out, I could feel the thumping of footsteps, without any sound. Instead of drifting off into
darkness only to wake up later, I was almost immediately awake with only nausia. Contrary to
reports about deliriant hallucinations being seemlessly woven into reality, almost the whole trip I
knew I was intoxicated. I found myself in my bedroom with a clear head. Looking out my bedroom
window, the sky was lit up a violent orange and no natural clouds had formed, it was entirely filled
with the smoke of a fire. Abruptly I woke up, still laying on the floor in front of my altar. I tried to
crawl over into a more comfortable position but began drifting off again. The cycle of
hallucinogenic sleep and suddenly waking up continued throughout the rest of the experience. Most
of these dreams were completely arbitrary and chaotic in nature, and I won’t recall all of them as
there is very little use to try explain them in words. Some were extremely simple, for example
seeing an albino rabbit in a muddy field. Some were a complex geometry of shapes and textures, all
quite dark and unaesthetic in contrast to the visual geometry of classic psychedelics. However
between these arbitrary dreams, I also experienced dreams where I saw some of my late family and
friends, which was less common but more impressionable and I remember vividly. These felt less
chaotic, and while I didn’t have a chance to communicate with the individuals, it felt as if there was
more purpose for these encounters. They manifested themselves as nothing more than the deceased
standing next to me in a normal, mundane scenario; outside a coffee shop by the road or in a
previous house I lived in. I haven’t been able to fully comprehend why I saw them specifically or
what it means, and I haven’t been able to process my emotions around these visions. Perhaps there
is no meaning and I’m not meant to feel emotions from these vision.
I woke up again for the last time, still laying on the floor but on the other side of the room. My
vision was no longer dark and fringed, but severely blurry and left me without the ability to focus
on anything. The same waving texture appeared on walls, but more intense than before, and dark
shadow bugs still shot around my room, although they presented themselves as tiny blurred specs. I
managed to stand and slowly shuffle to my bathroom where I was able to drink some water and
soothe my parched throat. Looking in the mirror was extremely eerie and made my feel
uncomfortable; there was a delay between my movement and my reflection moving. My pupils
were dilated to the point where there was nearly no blue iris visible. As described before, my hands
and feet were dark red in colour, and the rest of my skin was flushed red. There is not much else to
note about this final experience, the remaining time was spent recovering. I managed to eat a small
slice of bread and fell asleep fine during that night. The next morning I still had the classic side
effects of dry throat, nausea, and dizziness. However recovery was much shorter than I expected
and occurred roughly within the same time span as previous smaller doses.
In hindsight
Many of the effects that I read about during my prior research did present during my own
experiences, but with different levels of intensity and manifesting in ways I did not expect. I am
glad I was able to experience real hallucinations and understand Henbane more intimately. Since
that last experience however I haven’t dared to use it again, and I’m not even sure if I ever will.
There is definitely some insight that can be reached through it, definitely some nexion between the
causal and acausal… perhaps I’m just too inexperienced to handle and process it’s energy to such an
extent. I’ve been treating the visions I received in the same way as tarot cards, i.e. something to
meditate on and internalise, and have already begun thinking of ways it could be implemented in a
more rigorous ritual, such as nightly meditation leading up to use (in a way similar to the dark pathworkings) or smoking a small amount and meditating on previous hallucinations. I think this is
the best way to approach it because while intoxicated, there is very little ability to think clearly. I
could in particular see the use now for low doses as a meditative aid. The effects such as mood
alteration and time distortion have helped me understand and internally conceptualise the acausal
realm in a deeper way than study could. In terms of the experience being “dark, madenning,
hellscapes”, I think this only is reported due to the confusion that is produced; with strong mental
preparation it should be possible to manage it. That being said, it will definitely be uncomfortable,
disturbing, and frightening. From a materialistic viewpoint, Henbane is unlike any other
psychedelic drug… it’s simply a poison. To anybody wishing to take upon themselves and
experience the gateway it provides, I can only tell you to prepare for a raw and unpredictable reality
that this herb unveils.
In response to Clarice and in an effort to halt any tensions between us, what follows is an excerpt from a dialogue we had concerning the aims I hope to see realized collectively with respect to the future of the ONA. While many will not agree with what is expressed here, I think it may help clarify some of the motivations behind Fenrir. Additionally, I should note that I consider my personal desires, aims, and “vision” irrelevant to the ONA. Whatever emerges beyond our lifetime must realize itself organically through forces that are out of our control. I realize that it may be possible to influence these in our lifetime; but I sense that we are rarely in control of the actions that catalyze this influence.
[My purpose] is motivated by the … [original aims] of the Old Guard: to enact the conditions for the possibility of long-term and concrete Aeonic change across the world – both as a practical strategy for future generations, as well as those within our lifetime. This purpose is informed by my history in sinister and Satanic magick, my experiences through the Grade Rituals and alchemical transformations of the Seven-Fold Way, the insights I have gained from those experiences, the conversations I have had with some important associates of the ONA, and my desire to see an end to the current narrative of extremism and radical politics, which I think has become self-destructive toward these aims. If we are to take the notion of [the transitory nature of] “causal forms” seriously, which includes that of radical political ideologies like National Socialism, there cannot be a double-standard.
In reviewing some of my recent writings, a friend of mine from a known Italian Nexion remarked that “what is happening suggests that the O9A might be using its own disruptive evolutionary techniques on itself,” which is … [an accurate observation]. My practical aim here is to [aid in restoring] a positive image of the Order of Nine Angles in the public eye, [to help filter out] those who are detrimental to its survival and aims, and to redirect the negative attention it has received in order to create the necessary conditions for transparent Aeonic change.
The other side of this purpose concerns practical techniques that can aid in the devotional practice of sinister magick across a wide spectrum. Aside from my work in esoteric chant … [both myself and contributors on the Fenrir team] hope to introduce techniques that can, in combination with some of the “contemplative” ideas I will introduce, be layered into unique and more powerful systems – all with the aim of Aeonic magick in mind. With respect to Fenrir … [we aim to] create a true dialectic (though I have issues with that term): contemplative, “numinous” scholarship addressing the higher three Septenary spheres (past the Sun), and techniques of practical Sinister magick [introduced by other Adepts in the ONA] to guide those who resonate with the lower three “sinister” spheres. The alchemical unification of these at an internal level in the ONA, collectively and across history to ensure its survival and growth – in this way, the gun is loaded.
All this is well and fine. But Clarice importantly remarked that it is hard to see a “tangible end” to this desire for long-term Aeonic change. In turn, she posed the following question:
So, we ask again, if you could show us a video-recording of the Aeonic change already having changed this inner society of individuals, what scenes and personalities would we see in that “movie”?
From a place of sincerity and honesty, my answer comes from instinct, as instinct has always guided everything I do and say, including my thought. My answer is this: We would see scenes of deep compassion, a mutual desire to uphold the lessons derived from meaningful tragedy, a profound intimacy shared between us from that understanding, and a stillness and silence content with the majesty and beauty of this world. I think more than anything, we would see love, which to me is profoundly heroic. This would not be a society of philosopher kings but of heroes. We would find fathers and mothers, sons and daughters. We would see the value in family and a simple way of living. We would share in the joy of this unique existence and treasure the time we have together. This is my vision of that Aeonic change. If this was a movie, it would be Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev or the Czech masterpiece, Marketa Lazarová. That change is perhaps best summarized in the following vision from Major Briggs to his son Bobby in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, which applies powerfully to the ONA:
May I share something with you? A vision I had in my sleep last night – as distinguished from a dream which is mere sorting and cataloguing of the day’s events by the subconscious. This was a vision, fresh and clear as a mountain stream – the mind revealing itself to itself. In my vision, I was on the veranda of a vast estate, a palazzo of some fantastic proportion. There seemed to emanate from it a light from within – this gleaming radiant marble. I had known this place. I had in fact been born and raised there. This was my first return, a reunion with the deepest wellsprings of my being. Wandering about, I was happy that the house had been immaculately maintained. There had been added a number of additional rooms, but in a way it blended so seamlessly with the original construction, one would never detect any difference. Returning to the house’s grand foyer, there came a knock at the door. My son was standing there. He was happy and care-free, clearly living a life of deep harmony and joy. We embraced – a warm and loving embrace, nothing withheld. We were in this moment one. My vision ended. I awoke with a tremendous feeling of optimism and confidence in you and your future. That was my vision: it was of you.
As a response to this vision – and to the “vast estate” it refers to – and being first and foremost a musician, I think its application to the ONA can additionally be illustrated through music. Music alone can express what in speech must remain silent. And silence is the creative foundation for all music. The following song, and particularly the lyrics, perhaps better express what I’ve said above (and to be clear, United Bible Studies has no affiliation with the ONA and has spoken out firmly against it). It has had a powerful influence on my thinking over the years, and speaks to the mystery at the heart of the Order of Nine Angles:
When I was born, my father said to me:
The room in which I was born
was not what it seemed
It had a coffee pot,
a cat,
and some shadows
I asked what he meant, and he said:
Do you mean –
The room in which you were born
is not what it seems?
It was built ten long years
after when you were born
I said: what do you mean?
The room where I was born?
I recall his cold eyes
as he revealed this truth to me:
My son, it’s a shameful secret
spoken in the room where you were born,
which was itself born after me,
which I believe makes me unborn –
Unborn
Unborn
Though I think this vision may not be attainable – perhaps closer to something like a regulative ideal – the sentiment it expresses may serve to balance the other side of the ONA’s dialogue, directing us toward a future end that cannot possibly be known. My hope is that this is not an end, but merely a beginning.
Nameless Therein
Scothorn Nexion
March 15, 2022
2775 ab urbe condita
[Negotiation = Compromises + Concessions >-> Agreement/Peace/Mutual-Benefit]
source: https://gawathan.files.wordpress.com/2022/10/o9a-interview-2021a.pdf
