.:.”What does not kill, makes stronger.” –21 Satanic Points, Black Book of Satan, ONA
I’ve been around Satanism for a very long time. I like watching online Satanists. Since they had little fancy Satanic groups on MySpace and MySatan, most of those dummies attempted to “evolve” Satanism. Unfortunately, what they understand of evolution was learned from high school science class, in which class one can only assume they paid very little attention.
Those dummie Satanists on MySpace and MySatan usually, nearly 99% of the time, used the same exact equation/formula to “evolve” Satanism. The formula looks like this: Evolve Satanism = Make Better. And in practice, 100% of the time, the variable “Make Better” ends up meaning: “My Ideas.” In other words, what they believe is: “My ideas will make Satanism better, thus evolving it.”
That line of reasoning regarding how shit evolves is like saying: “Evolution is when God/Nature makes things better.” As if to suggest, using that same line of thinking, that Mother Nature one day had a great idea and she put webbed feet on a dinosaur and a billed beak, and came up with a duck.
The main problem with their dummie notion of evolution is that an idea, no matter how great such idea sounds and seems: is Conjectural. Conjectural in practice means that the idea has not yet been tested, that such idea has not yet produced “proof of concept,” that such idea has not yet made Fruit which you can judge. In other words, you have no idea what end results [cause and effect] your conjectured idea will actually produce.
And so, I’ve watched those dummies come into Satanism, with big titles, try to make Satanism better, by adding to Satanism their own “great” ideas: [re: their own opinions, beliefs, views, sentiments, “philosophy”]. And 100% of the time, even if on the rare occasion they even publish self-published books on Amazon or Lulu: they fail.
DEVELOPMENTAL EVOLUTION
In reality, in the Real World of Nature, developmental evolution happens in the matrix of an environment/ecosystem. Fractally: our own human species’ development from the primitive homo sapiens we were 300,000 years ago to the human beings we are today exclusively happened within the matrix of an environment we call “Civilization” [re: “society”].
And so, the universal principle of physical development/evolution is governed by two main factors that exists in a state of “tension” with each other. The first factor is that – as the Buddha taught – all things change and nothing is permanent. This means that the environment changes and its conditions/state is never the same. The second factor – by law of Nature – is that all living organisms have the instinctive impulse of self-preservation. And so, when those two factors are at play with each other, there arises a “tension,” a pushing and pulling of those two main factors.
And so, that “tension” looks like this: 1) An organism adjusts to its environment, 2) the environment changes, 3) the change in environment is an Challenging or Adversarial condition to the organism because that organism adjusted to the previous condition of the said environment, 4) the organism must try to adjust itself to the Challenging/Adversarial [the Force of Satan] condition, or die, 5) if the organism succeeds in adjusting itself to such new conditions it Survives, 6) but survivability is not the want or desire of Mother Nature, 7) Mother Nature needs Thrivability, 8) if an organism adjusts/adapts to such new conditions, survives, but also Thrives in that new condition: 9) then that organism’s genes drift, which incrementally produces new species genetically pre-programmed to function well in such new conditions of such changes in the matrical environment.
But you have to learn to view that process of developmental evolution not on a macrophysical level, but on a microphysical level. Why? Because the Reality [re: Realism] is that when we say “organism/creature” what we mean is a Complex System of Trillions of Cells [Cuz that’s what a fucking “multicellular” organism is]. In other words: the cells themselves, as well as the molecules and biochemicals, are what reacts and adjusts to environmental cues/pressures. A real example is when a human lives in a place like subsahara Africa for many epochs where ultraviolet radiation is high. And so the cells of the skin, the molecules in and around such skin cells, and the biochemicals and proteins, produce dark pigmentation to protect themselves from said high ultraviolet radiation. And we interpret those microphysical adaptations to be Negros developing dark skin to protect themselves from the light and heat of Africa. What should be noted is that such Negroes were not consciously aware or in control of the darkening of their own skin! When ducks became ducks: they were not consciously aware or in control of the webbing of their own feet. As you develop from a zygote to a fetus into a new born infant: you were not conscious or in control of that process. Simply because that process of fetal development is happening on a cellular and molecular level.
MEMPLEX EVOLUTION
A “meme” is to a memeplex what a “gene” is to a genome, what a “lexeme” is to a lexicon, what an “episteme” is to epistemology. Developmental evolution is a fractal pattern that governs all physical things in the universe. Everything which exists, gradually/incrementally develops over time because of its environmental conditions. That word “environment” is a Relative term. The matrical environment of a planet and the matrical environment of an atom are not the same things. For an atom, their environment mostly consists of Fields, Charges [electric and magnetic], force of attraction, etc. And so, when conditions in their atomic environment changes, they also change, accordingly. In that way, very gradually, carbon atoms, evolved into the many different carbon based molecules in the universe, which all carbon based things [like us] are made of.
Evolution is a fractal phenomenon, which can be seen in how languages evolve. Languages evolve/develop slowly/incrementally over Time, on a microphysical level: meaning the lexemes of the language’s lexicon alters, changes, adjusts, adapts, new lexemes are acquired from other languages [called “Horizontal Gene Transference” in biological sciences]. And so, in Reality, organismic evolution is the change or alteration or adjustment of genes and/or the acquisition of new genetic information via horizontal gene transfer; the change being influenced by conditions of environment.
In the same way, a memeplex evolves over time. Like how organisms have their own matrical environment, and like how language has its own matrical environment, a memeplex has its own environment. The Matrix of a Meme is made up of two overlapping things: 1) Socialscape & 2) Mindscape. Like how Landscape is the environment of animals/creatures/organisms; and how “cosmicscape” is the environment of planets, moons, galaxies, and stars.
By “socialscape” is meant “human society,” and the views, opinions, cultures, practices, people [and so also: races and ethnicities], nations, religions, etc, of a given human society. By “mindscape” is meant ideas, notions, concepts, beliefs, weltanschauungen, language, knowledge-base, sentiments in a person’s mind and in the collective public mind of a people of a given society.
Like how Landscape changes, the socialscape and mindscape of a Memeplex also changes and is never permanently the same. For example: the socialscape and mindscape here in America of the 50s and 70s were very different from each other, where conditions in the socialscape and mindscape of the 70s were challenging and adversarial to that of the 50s.
Like how an organism must adapt to the change in conditions of its environment: a Memeplex – if it desires to survive and even thrive – must adapt to the changes of its socialscape and mindscape matrix, and must survive Challenging and Adversarial forces in such environment that presents itself.
I will give three very brief examples of familiar memeplexes that have evolved to meet the changes in the socialscape and mindscape of Western Social Order. The first is Christianity. There was a time when Christianity was very doctrinally vocal about homosexuality being a damnable sin. Today, gay couples can be married by priests, gay people can join churches, and gay people can even be priests [of some denominations]. The second example is the dominating and ubiquity of Science/Scientism: all ancient religions today, from Buddhism to Christianity to Islam have changed where they have re-interpreted their doctrines and teachings to reflect what science teaches, where even the ancient Catholic Church acknowledges the theory of evolution. The third example is the ideology of Communism/Marxism: today that memeplex in the West has evolved to not be an ideology regarding the struggle of Class, but the struggle of Race [Wokism].
A memeplex must evolve to changes in conditions, pressures, of its Matrix [socialscape and mindscape] or it will die. Death for a memeplex is when the memeplex becomes irrelevant, when it goes away with an older generation and is forgotten by the new generation, when it loses cells/membership, and it atrophies. I can name a few dead memeplexes, as examples: 1) There was once a little memeplex called “Pet Rocks” which flourished in the 70s and 80s and today nobody keeps pet rocks; 2) Tamaguchi; 3) Pogs; 4) Diet fads nobody uses or remembers anymore, 5) TM [Transcendental Mediation], 6) Th British Empire, & 7) Forgotten conlangs from 100 years ago nobody can name or speak or cares about.
THE EVOLUTION OF ONA
And so, in the same way, as a memeplex, ONA evolves. We, ignorantly think or believe that ONA evolves when we add new texts and new ideas to ONA to make it better and cooler, to make it more attractive, more evil, or hardcore, more intellectual, or whatever. As if the monstrosity of the ONA Corpus [5000 pages] needs more pages and texts of conjectural ideas that look great and awesome in writing and on blogs.
Like any living organism [to which we are its cells] the ONA develops slowly and incrementally over Time when conditions in its matrix [its socialscape and mindscape] changes and/or when Challenging/Adversarial factors present themselves as environmental pressures. Most people don’t understand the concept of Developmental Evolution as it happens in the Real Natural World, and so when they look at ONA over the years, they don’t see evolution: they don’t recognize what they are looking at.
One real example of an environmental pressure in ONA’s matrix was the “Blackwood Problem,” which was a Challenging condition where people claimed to be ONA’s grandmaster, leader. In order to adapt to that Challenging condition, the ONA had to change somehow – anyhow – in order to survive. It was successful at adapting to that environmental pressure, and ONA actually ended up Thriving for a decade.
Like the evolution of organisms: when we talk about ONA evolving, what we really mean to speak of are the changes that happen on a microphysical level: the level of individual memes, or individual cells [ONA associates]. And so, on a Microphysical level, the Adaptations of ONA back then to the said Challenging environmental factor looks like this: 1) Memes had to be altered slightly where ideas and texts change, 2) People associated with ONA who wanted ONA to be led by a leader gradually atrophied [they left], 3) People who liked ONA and liked the idea that ONA should be leaderless came to join ONA: and so, as Time passed, the ONA “changed” where it became a leaderless subculture. The reality is that when we say “ONA” what we mean to speak of are the people associated with ONA, because ONA is not an object proper that you can point at or touch. Those people who wanted leaders simply got replaced by people who did not need or like leaders.
Just like how each day your own skin cells die off and are replaced by new skin cells. Just like how a football team of 30 years ago compared to the same football team today, with the same name and logos, have had its football players replaced by new ones. Just like how your own mind of a childhood self had its knowledge, ideas, views, opinions, replaced by new ones. Like the Buddha said: all Things in this physical universe are Aggregate Beings/Phenomena: the key concept is “Aggregation.” An aggregate entity changes by having its aggregate units replaced: and we call that process of replacement “Evolution.” This is exactly how Mother Nature herself has been continuously in physical existence and Evolving for 4.5 Billion years. It is Fractally how this entire universe/cosmos itself has been in continuous existence and evolution. An aggregate entity dies/decays when it can no longer aggregate/accrete new units/parts to replace its old ones. In the same exact way, by the same Fractal Principle: a Nation/Civilization develops and evolves and continuously exists for hundreds even thousands of years.
THE GIFT OF SATAN
Satan as it is spoken about in ONA MSS is the Challenging raw Force of Nature. Satan is the causal Seed of evolution itself. It is a blessing in disguise when Challenging and Adversarial conditions and factors present themselves in ONA’s environment [its socialscape and mindscape]. And so, understood in this Luciferian [a nod to The Lucifer Principle] Light: the recent Challenging and Adversarial factors ONA had recently met up with is a Satanic Blessing: I speak of agents infiltrating ONA, things agent provocateurs did in ONA. Why are they blessings? Because ONA should learn to adapt to such adverse and challenging factors or die: and if it doesn’t die, it will become stronger. What does not kill us makes us stronger. And the recent challenging events did not kill ONA. ONA quickly adapted to the change in its environment. Like The Borg quickly adapts to a phaser gun: you might be able to shoot the Borg once or twice, but they adapt and become stronger.
But that adaptation, on a microphysical level is and will be a gradual process of where many ONA people who don’t like boundaries and ethics will atrophy away, and new people who possess noble ethos/wyrd will gradually be drawn to ONA. The new replaces the old. It’s how everything in this universe evolves. It’s how ONA evolves. And, if you understand the essence of this essay: you will have what you need to work on the process of evolving Satanism.
How do you Fish for men? With nets made of memes. Every word we speak and write, every story we tell, every myth and mythos, are like fibers that entwine to make a fishnet which attracts a certain type and kind of fish: and so it’s necessary to know what type of fish you want [to whom do you speak / who or what is your audience / who was Christ speaking to when he spoke], in order to make the proper nets. As genes dictate and build the proteins, memes dictate and build the Aura. As proteins organize to become cells so the Aura of ONA collects types and kinds of people. And evolution is the process of an aggregate entity continuously replacing its aggregate units, in tandem to the constant changes in its matrical environment, in order to not only struggle to survive such changes, but to Thrive, wyrd willing.
.:.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.
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
“Deep Roots” and Meaningful Associations: Musical Tarot Continued, Auditory Sigils, and Aeonic Chant Magick
With respect to my previous post on musical tarot (“Techniques for Doing a Musical Tarot Reading & Creating Auditory Sigils”), I would like to add a few comments regarding the selection of appropriate music. I will additionally offer some commentary regarding the purpose of sensory layering techniques like combining musical and visual tarot readings in relation to the creation of advanced auditory sigils for the purpose of chant magick. I will conclude by noting a few ways this finds application in Aeonic magick.
Regarding the selection of music for musical tarot readings, a few things should be kept in mind. The music selected should be meaningful to the user, emotionally evocative, and selected with care, keeping in mind that it needs to be appropriate for this type of working. While one should feel free to experiment, it should be noted that certain forms of popular music may introduce coloration and structural distortion in the creation of auditory sigils. Lyrics and certain lyrical themes, certain musical production elements, “noise,” and other distracting characteristics may misdirect the user’s emotional and psychic attention. Lyrics, for example, can be distracting insofar as they involve the mediating role of language. This is not to say that music with lyrics should be avoided; chant itself is defined as “sung speech.”[1] But on this point – and though here taken grossly out of context – something Nietzsche wrote on the relation between lyric poetry and music is relevant:
Language can never adequately render the cosmic symbolism of music, because music stands in symbolic relation to the primordial contradiction and primordial pain in the heart of the primal unity, and therefore symbolizes a sphere which is beyond and prior to all phenomena. Rather, all phenomena, compared with it, are merely symbols: hence language, as the organ and symbol of phenomena, can never by any means disclose the innermost heart of music; language, in its attempt to imitate it, can only be in superficial contact with music; while all the eloquence of lyric poetry cannot bring the deepest significance of the latter one step nearer to us.[2]
In keeping one’s “eye on the prize,” the user must remember that the goal of techniques like sensory layering is to form meaningful associations – associations that combine many levels of meaning across the emotive, mnemonic, sensory, and symbolic domains. These are structured organically, in that each experience will be unique according to the musical selection, tarot reading, and a plethora of other associations from the user’s unique history; but there is also an element of chaos, in that the way these meaningful associations structure themselves systematically through sensory layering are unpredictable and beyond the comprehension or control of the user. Interestingly, however, in being directed systematically across the seven Septenary spheres of the Tree of Wyrd, the structure of such experiences can be reproduced for other individuals (in using, for example, the same music and tarot reading); but the way that structure takes shape across the psyche for a given user will be unique. This structure, which is in part created by meaningful associations combined with sensory layering techniques in motion across the Septenary spheres, creates what I call an “auditory sigil.” In the technique described above and in my previous post, this involves combining musical and visual tarot readings using a Septenary spread and then moving from one card and sphere to the next sequentially while listening to the corresponding music.
These auditory sigils become more efficacious as layering meaningful associations reach their zenith through an increase of precision and symbolic condensation. The technique I suggested of combining musical tarot readings with visual tarot readings and then directing them across the seven Septenary spheres is an introductory exercise. It is meant to allow the user to experience certain energies of the Septenary spheres, to form meaningful associations with them through sensory layering, and then to direct these systematically across those spheres, where the sequential movement or motion of meaningful associations from one sphere to the next essentially creates the auditory sigil (at the most basic level of chant, melodic movement and chant sequencing across the spheres perform this function). The exercise is not only a useful introductory tool to familiarize and then personalize the Septenary energies and correspondences, but also serves as a simple and practical technique to start creating and then cataloguing a “toolkit” of auditory sigils for use in more advanced Septenary and sinister magick.
As one gains experience with the creation of auditory sigils and begins to establish a catalogue, the practitioner may wish to make their way into the more advanced domain of esoteric chant magick. Much more can be said on this subject, and I may elaborate on some of the following techniques in a subsequent article. But part of the purpose of chant magick is to expand and increase the efficacy of these auditory sigils, and then direct them. Through a precise series of correspondences, meaningful associations can be focused, deepened, and directed using advanced sequences of melodic motion, specific Gregorian modes and diatonic musical keys, polyphonic and harmonic layering, visual sigils, incenses, colors, and the Dark Gods, to list a few examples. Each individual will additionally bring with them a vast host of meaningful associations from their life experiences, magickal experimentation, and transformations through the Grade Rituals. Previous, less clarified, and rudimentary auditory sigils can be expanded upon and developed; they can be structurally recreated and worked with interpersonally and intersubjectively in a group setting; they can be introduced into even larger groups of practitioners for purposes determined by specific Nexions; they can be used in the Star Game, including the advanced form, for the purposes of Aeonic magick; and they can be animated as “egregores” through advanced mimetic techniques.
While these are only a few of the applications of esoteric chant magick, its application, unlike external and internal magick, is one of the most powerful forms of magick in the Order of Nine Angles. These techniques are unique to the tradition. It is also one of the few forms of magick that is capable reaching the Aeonic level for use in Aeonic magick.
On this point, and returning to the topic of selecting music for musical tarot readings, I would like to draw the reader’s attention to an interview with the composer Edward Artemyev on his experience working with the cinematic auteur and master, Andrei Tarkovsky. Artemyev’s account of Tarkovsky’s views on the inclusion of music in his films not only highlights the appropriate mindset one should have in selecting music for a musical tarot reading, but illustrates what is partially required for chant magick to find application in Aeonic magick, where all previous meaningful associations, symbolic “gestures,” and forms fall away, collapsing into an incommunicable essence that is then directed as “melodic” spiritual energy:
I’ll begin with Tarkovsky. The most unusual things were the tasks set and our first conversation with him … I was struck by his attitude to music in film, precisely in his films. He told me right away that he didn’t need a composer at all. He needed the composer’s ear and his masterful command of sound, in order to mix music, to make musical effects. Possibly, to add some orchestra, but so that it didn’t stand out. So that it be background sound organized compositionally. I was simply startled by this. But so it was when we filmed Solaris, Mirror and Stalker. This idea of his was constantly present. He did not need music as a developing theme. “This is not a concert,” he said. “This is something special. When I run short of cinematic means, then I put on music.” But since he, basically, had enough means, he needed a composer only as an organizer of the background sound. And if a film needed some music, as in Solaris, he used Bach. There was Bach in Mirror, too, it was either “The St. John Passion,” or “The St. Matthew Passion.” Music as the lining to image he did not want.
Once Tarkovsky told me a very interesting thing. I asked him: “Why? I can write something [music] for the film too.” He [Tarkovsky] answered that cinema had no roots, that it was too young an art. It is only one hundred years old. To give the viewer a sense of deep roots, to make a linkage with the world art, the music of old masters is needed. As well as the paintings of old masters which he did quote … Subconsciously, it creates, as he believed and was right to believe, the deep roots for that art.
In many respects, the Order of Nine Angles is equally too young an art, despite its ancient influences and roots. In constructing meaningful associations with the aim of auditory sigils and chant magick, in addition to the application of magick in general and the establishment of tradition, Tarkovsky’s point is helpful: the creation of “deep roots” requires a “linkage with the world of art,” and for this “the music of old masters is needed.” This is perhaps even truer in making linkages with the world of magick. For this, the “music of old masters” is indeed needed; and in the application of chant magick, that music tends to find its most powerful voice through devotional Gregorian chant. The “deep roots” Artemyev referred to need to initially extend into the unconscious and find shelter there, which is part of the goal of introductory sensory layering techniques like combining musical tarot with visual tarot. When one reaches the more advanced stage of esoteric chant magick, these will begin to form a “bridge” into consciousness (through, for example, the path from the Moon to the Sun, which is the path of Azoth / Satanas). Eventually, these “deep roots” will exceed both, requiring the dyssolving of the ego. At this point, previous forms of meaningful association will shed their skin, taking on a structural identification that can only be approximated in music or speech as their sensory, psychic, and spiritual layering becomes more and more condensed. This can occur, for example, when one’s “catalogue” of correspondences, associations, and auditory sigils has become rich and expansive enough to resemble a Tree a Wyrd through the “doors” or “paths” created by layered associations across the psyche (through, e.g., years of advanced chant magick). Chant itself then becomes malleable, where certain musical and magickal elements of a given chant become interchangeable with others. Auditory sigils themselves can then be layered, where that malleability can lead to a kind of musickal dyssolving, unlocking the true power of chant magick. Contrary to popular belief, the map can become the territory. And this is required before an Aeonic context becomes possible. For this, “deep roots” and meaningful associations can only do so much; it is necessary to enact both as a kind mimesis through embodied imitation – an imitation of these condensed associations and their function as a Tree of Wyrd within the psyche – through transformative activities like the Grade Rituals of the Seven-Fold Way (though there may be other ways). Put another way, one’s psycho-spiritual constitution should actually resemble the “deep roots” and meaningful associations an individual has established – a resemblance that mirrors and enacts a functional Tree of Wyrd within the psyche. (One’s psycho-spiritual constitution and the development of “deep roots” go hand-in-hand. Attempting to develop one without the other will usually be self-evident to those who have developed both.) Unless real alchemical change has occurred in the individual in lock-step with their approach to chant magick, this kind of magick is not only dangerous but may have catastrophic effects.
With respect to Artemyev’s reference to Tarkovsky on “deep roots” in relation to art, some of Nietzsche’s comments on the Apollinian and the Dionysian in The Birth of Tragedy may be helpful. Though unrelated and taken completely out of context – this passage needs to be read in its proper context to understand what Nietzsche is trying to convey – it does cryptically illuminate a sense of some of what has been said here on the relationship between “deep roots” and chant magick, particularly with respect to “imitation.” In needing to be practiced and experienced, chant magick by and large resists rational comprehension or explication – and Nietzsche indirectly captures both sentiments if the following is read “artistically” or “musically” with this in mind:
Thus far we have considered the Apollinian and its opposite, the Dionysian, as artistic energies which burst forth from nature herself, without the mediation of the human artist – energies in which nature’s art impulses are satisfied in the most immediate and direct way – first in the image world of dreams, whose completeness is not dependent upon the intellectual attitude or the artistic culture of any single being; and then as intoxicated reality, which likewise does not heed the single unit, but even seeks to destroy the individual and redeem him by a mystic feeling of oneness. With reference to these immediate art-states of nature, every artist is an “imitator,” that is to say, either an Apollinian artist in dreams, or a Dionysian artist in ecstasies, or finally – as for example in Greek tragedy – at once artist in both dreams and ecstasies; so we may perhaps picture him sinking down in his Dionysian intoxication and mystical self-abnegation, alone and apart from the singing revelers, and we may imagine how, through Apollinian dream-inspiration, his own state, i.e., his oneness with the inmost ground of the world, is revealed to him in a symbolical dream image.[3]
In closing and to elaborate upon what has been written here a little further, I would like to share a transcript of part of a conversation I recently had with a close friend – someone who has completed the Grade Ritual for Master of the Temple (the sphere of Mars, past Internal Adept). Our conversation was on the subject of chant magick, during which I was asked the following:
As a musician … do you feel like when you perform esoteric chant … it is the precise performance of the chant that gives you access to … [a] particular pathway of [the acausal]? Or do you feel that it … [arises from] the connection … [you make] empathically [to it]? Or is it somewhere in the middle? Is it because you are a musician and by performing … [the chant as accurately as possible, you evoke] that empathic connection and … access is granted to you? What are your thoughts on that?
My response was as follows:
[While much more can be said,] the most important thing with respect to accessing the acausal is what I would call “charging.” Someone could formulaically perform a chant perfectly at every technical level and achieve nothing by way of magick. There are so many factors that play into successful chant work, but the energy generated to “unlock” a certain direction or momentum … [to] puncture into the acausal “stratosphere,” so to speak, comes from a continual, impromptu acclimation into higher and higher spheres of meaningful signification. This happens in real time, and those significations converge, often violently. I call this “charging,” and without that chant is at best informal mediation, not musick and certainly not magick. In this, certain “forms” can help the charging – the more symbolically condensed and meaningful the better. But eventually one doesn’t … need such symbols anymore. The condensation, like a sigil, becomes a kind of “muscle memory” – a treasure incarnated and recalled with each subsequent performance and charging.
The amazing and difficult thing about chant magick is that unlike, say, a Hermetic ritual, there are no symbols or meaning structures other than the internal movement of the … melody in combination with the words. Generating the proper charge from that takes skill and a certain – I would say [almost] Rounwythic – constitution. Because by definition and at the most advanced level, there are no gods, dates, holidays, or other meaningful correspondences. One has to make their own [through the malleability and “openness” of these condensations]. And this symbolic condensation is quite nameless, quite wordless, in the act itself. Which in my opinion and experience makes chant magick one of the most powerful types of magick, [capable of tremendous energy, direction, and adaptation to any form of chaos]; [capable, in turn,] of reaching the Aeonic level.
Nameless Therein
Scothorn Nexion
April 9, 2022
ADDENDUM: GETTING STARTED WITH ESOTERIC CHANT MAGICK
For those interested, there are many ways to begin learning chant. Other than various online resources, including the instruction manual by Fr. Columba Kelly provided in the first endnote below, the best way to start, as with all music, is to use your ear: listen. Listen carefully, thoughtfully, and actively, as many times a day and as often as you can. Repetition is the key to many mysteries; and chant magick is no exception. There is much to observe in listening: the movement of the melody, the structure of the chant, where to hold notes, how to enunciate and project properly, as well as breathing and breath control. Once you have listened carefully for some time, the next step is to try to imitate what you are hearing, trying to match your performance to the original as closely as possible through continual practice and repetition. After you have spent some time singing along, start looking at the chant notation while you sing to try to understand what certain symbols and notes mean. Once you have done this for some time, supplement your eyes, ears, and voice with a more detailed study of the notation itself using an instruction manual. There are further resources at the bottom of this addendum to assist with this.
To get started, I suggest beginning with the main ONA Septenary chants, which are simpler than some of the more advanced ones, such as the Dark God chant arrangements below. The main ONA Septenary chants will provide a basic familiarity with the energies of each of the spheres on the Tree of Wyrd and will provide a framework to learn and construct more advanced sequences. Below are some resources to get started.
Once upon a time, I learned the main ONA chants from the old Chant of the ONA cassette, released by MMP Temple. Most people have digital versions of these and they are not hard to find. Currently, they can be accessed here, for example:
There are, however, mistakes in some of these performances. I corrected these in the versions found in my “Dark Gate” sequence. This can be used to practice the main Septenary chants (and I recommend these over my older versions of the chants). It should be noted that this sequence includes the first public recordings of the chants for the Star Gate (“Chant to Open a Star Gate”) and Dark Angle or Man’s Gate (“Chant to Return Atazoth to Earth”), which are advanced and difficult to learn (having taken me many years to decipher, learn, and then finally record and release). They are required and important for more advanced chant sequences, being two of the most powerful, dangerous, and magickally significant chants:
When one gains more experience and familiarity with the main chants, they can move on to experiment with more difficult chants, such as the arrangements I did for each of the Dark Gods. Though I will not elaborate on how to use these in detail here, the most basic approach involves substituting Dark God chants for specific Septenary sphere chants in a given sequence or series of sequences to generate a specific type of acausal energy. (These can follow a specific pattern determined by the cantor according to, e.g., a “magickal algorithm”; or they can be completely random, to list just two examples.) For example, the “Agios Kthunae” chant could be substituted for the “Agios Alastoros” chant for Mars in a given sequence to target a specific aim, goal, energy, attribute, or desire. The Dark God chants can be found in the following playlist:
Other chants, such as the chant arrangements I did for those listed in the ONA’s Black Book of Satan can be found through the following link. These can be used to generate specific types of energy, usually of a sinister or “Satanic” nature:
Finally, some of the advanced chant magick techniques I alluded to in this article are demonstrated in the following chants I composed. These are but an introduction to the many possibilities of such techniques:
Additional chants can be found on my youtube channel:
It should be noted that chant can be used for more subtle forms of magick, such as internal and external magick. These can take the form of devotional, contemplative, reflective, or pensive exercises aimed at creating or projecting a certain type of energy generated from a “mood” or “disposition.” These require a different approach to creating and layering meaningful associations, which I will not go into here. My chant composition for David Myatt’s c. 1986 poem, “In the Night,” is one such example:
More resources can be found within the ONA for guidance. I may create a more detailed list in the future. For now, I suggest NAOS: A Practical Guide to Modern Magick for the beginner, which provides some basic instructions to get started. The Hostia texts and some of the old Fenrir editions under Christos Beest provide more advanced guidance for the discerning reader.
A helpful resource outside of the ONA can be found at Corpus Christi Watershed. The Saint Antoine Daniel Kyriale performances are accurate and are an excellent place to start:
[1] See Fr. Columba Kelly, “Part 2: Chant is ‘Sung Speech’,” in Singing Chant: Latin and English:A Performance Manual (Indiana: Saint Meinrad Archabbey, 2016). I consulted this text for many years in learning chant. It is a great resource and reference manual. The text can currently be found in its entirety at the following location: https://www.saintmeinrad.org/media/1387/chant_manual03.pdf
[2] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 2000), 55-56. One must be very careful here, as making sense of what this passage means requires carefully navigating Nietzsche’s analysis of the Dionysian and the Apollinian, in addition to understanding the distinctions he makes between epic poetry, lyric poetry, art, and music in relation to these. See, for example, Nietzsche’s characterizations of the “plastic artist,” the epic poet, the Dionysian musician, and the “lyric genius” on p. 50. See also p. 49, where Nietzsche discusses the taking for granted of the union or identity “of the lyrist with the musician” in relation to ancient lyric poetry.
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.
Kollective and Kulture are the two things that have been on my mind for the better part of a year now. I spend a vast amount time in consideration of what those two words mean. What they used to mean. Most importantly, what they will come to mean in the future.
It seems a whirl wind of events has occurred this past year. The events I feel were the most detrimental might surprise you. I could careless about the lies and misinformation being propagated. The Order of Nine Angles was always destined to be their boogeyman. Nor am I concerned with the infiltration of the Sinister Kollective by magian spooks. You cannot infiltrate something that doesn’t exist.
It has been said so many times here and elsewhere throughout the interwebz. There is no ONA. Not in the sense of an organization. There are no leaders. There are no followers. There is only the “meta” and the points in which it meets the nexion. Jason King aptly referred to ONA as a “mind-virus”. This is because anyone it comes into contact with is infected by it. Most are simply mind-fucked by it. There are those that possess within them, that thing which Anton Long called a ‘shapeshifter’. The “mind-virus” binds in symbiose with it and transformation can begin. Let’s call this an approximation of “Sinister 101”.
You can verify this “mind-virus”. Just observe how Antifa and its like simply seem to lose their minds. Let them chase phantoms. They cannot touch it. The best they can do is entrap a few overly arrogant individuals. Individuals which clearly didn’t understand the old saying “The only way to keep a secret between 3 thieves, is if 2 are dead.”
Coincidently as it would be, I’m writing an entry on my own blog with very much the same sentiments. You see, I am of the opinion that; we are not at a saturation point to which direct action can be effective. Guerrilla tactics and the whole ‘death by a thousand cuts’ mentality is still premature.
Tsun Tzu said “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”
This is done by the acquisition of minds. Winning the hearts of the people, if you will. This doesn’t mean that all must be won over. Rather just enough of them. In the right places. At the right time. Following keenly the strategy that was already laid out. Continuing propagation until the point of saturation is reached.
This is where the most detrimental loses have been taken, At least, this is my opinion. Some of the prominent carriers of this “mind-virus” have fallen off. Just in the examples of Chloe and Kris; they can both be seen as patient zeroes of my little analogy. Although they have fallen off; we are fortunate that they will continue to contaminate. How could they not? It is too ingrained in them now. The roots are too deep.
But what to do in the wake of their absence? I know I am not charismatic enough; not in pen and not by video or voice. Mr. Brett Stevens certainly has that flair. I really enjoyed his guest article entitled ” Metapromotheanism “. I am uncertain how often we’ll be gifted with more. Luckily the answer is simple and can occur with minimal efforts. We continue to grow our Kulture and embrace the Kollective.
Each nexion contributes in its own way. Should several nexions connect and we have a Nexion. Should several Nexions connect and we have a Kollective. This is not accomplished through some altruistic campfire sing-a-long, but through the exchange of craft and skill. The transference of Kulture.
I’m sorry this is short, but I wanted to get something up here to sort of break the ice. You know what they say… The first time is always a little akward ;) I will leave you with the words of David Myatt from the latest revision of The Mythos of Vindex.
Thus, the duty – the wyrd – of Vindex and of the clans of Vindex is not to
strive to try and restore some romantic idealized past – or even be in thrall to
some perceived wyrdful, often numinous-filled, past way of living, such as
that which Adolf Hitler brought to Germany – but rather to establish an
entirely new and conscious and thus more potent expression of the numinous
itself. This new and numinous way of living replaces the impersonal tyranny
of the State with the way of the clan and the tribe; it replaces the abstraction
of politics, and of democracy, with personal loyalty to an honourable, noble,
clan or tribal leader.
* Part One: Differing Perceptions Of The Order Of Nine Angles.
* Part Two: Baeldracian, Falciferian, Rynethian.
* Part Three: Omega9Alpha As Culture And Subculture.
* Conclusion: Future Non-Western Omega9Alpha Subcultures
* Appendix: A Rediscovered Balobian Treasure.From the Conclusion: Given (i) the ‘principle of the authority of individual judgment’ and (ii) the fact that the ω9α code of kindred-honour applies irrespective of gender, ethnicity, perceived social/educational status, nationality, and sexual preference, and (iii) that ω9α culture does not embody racist neo-nazism in ethos or in principle, ω9α culture can be further diversified and thus develop new subcultures that encompass the insights and some of the practices of non-European esoteric and mystic traditions.
This has already happened in a clandestine way in places such as Egypt and Iran where nexions have been established which incorporate some Sufi traditions and insights (and in the case of Iran, memories of Sumka) as well as in Japan where a clandestine nexion incorporates the insights of Yukio Mishima (as manifest in his quartet The Sea Of Fertility) with the esoteric non-racist National-Socialism of Reichsfolk. In Turkey, a clandestine nexion exists which blends Myattian insights – from his philosophy of pathei-mathos – with elements of Sufism, stories from لْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ and aspects of ω9α culture in a still developing individual and mystical quest for wisdom.
Such new and developing subcultures are expanding ω9α culture and harbingers of not only a New Aeon but of a new type of civilization independent of nations and States and old aeon notions of Empire and physical conquest.
[Negotiation = Compromises + Concessions >-> Agreement/Peace/Mutual-Benefit]
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