MYTHOS:
Mythos will be defined here as a pattern of beliefs expressing symbolically the characteristics of a given culture. One such pattern is that of tragedy. Tragedy (as an esoteric practice) can be understood to be an intentional use of pain to awaken (self-perception). Tragedy exists as an ephemeral and yet acutely visceral phenomenon. The human story is one of tragedy.
Should we choose to embrace the tragic, it can be a powerful and transformative energy, a sudden jolt breaking open the psyche, preparing the subconscious for new parameters within existence, and waking those of a particular sensitivity to the harsh environment of the natural world. This is what we describe as “Pathei Mathos” meaning “learning from adversity” or wisdom arising from personal suffering, and/or personal experience is the genesis of true wisdom [1].
μῦθος Mythos – Something said, a design, a plan.
In this context, mythos is the path we choose in following the Pathei Mathos. Mythos would be used to create one’s reality – and forge one’s own path – out of adversity. It suggests Carl Jung’s Shadow creeping into the collective unconscious, waiting for its turn in the story we weave.
Tragedy, terror, crime, and hate are elements within the human experience which cannot be simply cut out; they are ingrained within the nature of our being. These and other such “evil” aspects of the human condition are a reflection that stares back at us from within the Dark Pool – Carl Jung’s Shadow of Self. (Or, Lovecraft’s Outsider.)
This Shadow side is not merely a facet of the individual, but something that can be detected on a broad scale within what’s called “social-consciousness.” The Mythos will always be infected by the mind virus within the Shadow. As Niners, these are the elements of self we seek to explore and understand. We recognize that there is nothing beneficial about the repression of such mechanisms. Vaccines are made from the cells of the disease; they are not mere conduits through which “evil” is enacted to the world – nor the zombie of the Shadow Self in its instar emergence, rather, these Shadow elements are the darkness through which a normal man can be transmuted into something more extraordinary.
“We explore other realms and create a new form of living for ourselves because it is in our nature to do so. If we do not live true to our nature, and revel in our defiance – in our living as gods – then our Destiny to take human experience outwards into the Cosmos to bring the Galactic Aeon, will not be realised.”
-Temple 88 – Fenrir No. XXI – 1997 – Nouvelles Pieces Froides – Esoteric Pioneers pt 2
This is where our critics fail in understanding what we are. Headlines of NSBM clownery and fringe cases using our iconography are not representative of the whole – only of those who are where they are meant to be. As for our critics, detractors, and well-meaning adversaries – We are amongst you already. We are your teachers and your students. We are the police and the criminals. We are the staff and the patrons. We are neighbors and strangers alike.
We seek to “distil the opposites between us.”
AEONIC ALCHEMY:
“Even if man were nothing but a piano key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of sheer ingratitude, simply to have his own way…then, after all, perhaps only by his curse will he attain his object, that is, really convince himself that he is a man and not a piano key! If you say that all this, too, can be calculated and tabulated…then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and have his own way.”
–Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The sentiment of the above quote is all too familiar to the Order of Nine Angles. We recognize this within the tragedy that is the human story. This is the beginning of mankind’s hubris; not because Man chooses to see himself differently, instead, it is hubris because Man does nothing in the way of changing his station.
This is where our Order is differentiated. We seek in a very practical sense to separate from the delusions of the Other. As such, we use tools that can be misunderstood and we do this offering no apologies, each of us taking responsibility for our own development.
Of these tools, one we note is: ὴχομιμητικό – “echomimetico” – “echo” + “mimetics.” This is the game of creating imitation. Replication of ideas, stories, histories, traditions. A term that’s thrown around at times in the ONA is “memeplex.” I would bore you with the etymology, but it’s precisely as it sounds. As a Simulacra of sorts, our Memeplex is the entire web of our Order of Nine Angles. Our Labyrinthos Mythologicus.
I lied a bit there about not boring you with more Greek, but of importance to the growth and complexity of the memeplex, is the understanding of the labyrinth.
On Labyrinthos Mythologicus:
“The term is a combination of (i) a transliteration of the Greek λαβύρινθος – whence the Latin labyrinthus – and (ii) the post-classical Latin mythologicus, the former word giving rise to the English terms labyrinth and labyrinthine, and the latter word having been used in the book Mythologiae by the post-Roman grammarian Fabius Fulgentius (c. 6th century CE, a modern edition of whose works was included in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana of 1898 published in Leipzig), and used by him to suggest “myth-making; creating or concerned with mythology or myths; a mythical narrative.”
-Order of Nine Angles, 122 yfayen
Our Labyrinthos Mythologicus is (a) “a modern and an amoral version of a technique often historically employed, world-wide among diverse cultures and traditions both esoteric and otherwise, to test and select candidates,” and (b) a mischievous, japing, sly, and sometimes (for mundanes) an annoying, part of our sinister dialectic.
Thus and for example, we, the Order of Nine Angles, have presented to outsiders – and to those incipiently of our kind – a series of tests, a modern Labyrinthos Mythologicus, and which tests begin with them being expected to distill our essence from our apparent conflicting opposites.”[2]
“Furthermore, these practices lead to a synthesis. They are essentially learning experiences. The self-learning that they provoke (in those who triumph, that is) leads in time to a transcendence, new beginnings, new stages of the Satanic way. This is essential for novices to understand – the experiences have to be undergone, they have to be mastered, what they provoke within and external to the individual has to be faced and then mastered. All this is seldom easy – which is as it should be, for those questing after the essence.”[3]
-Hysteron Proteron – The Practice of Evil. In Context.
Just as Anton Long must have done in his journey to and through gnosis, we test ourselves. We test others. Through our pathworkings, we are made conscious of the subtleties of being and what is possible beyond.
Finally, this leads us to the understanding that each of us destroys, sustains, and most importantly, creates. To embody this is the essence of our founder, who, for a deliberate purpose, concealed the truth of his identity. Who “Anton Long” might be simply does not matter. It was never meant to be the point. We all seek to develop an essence like that of Anton Long[4].
I am Anton Long. We ALL are Anton Long.
-The Eternal Outsider yf 133
Footnotes:
[1] Pathei-Mathos and The Initiatory Occult Quest – Order of Nine Angles MSS
[2] The Seofonfeald Path Trilogy – Labyrinthos Mythologicus – Order of Nine Angles MSS
[3] Hysteron Proteron – Order of Nine Angles MSS (For further context and a more complete understanding please read “Satanism, Sacrifice and Crime – The Satanic Truth” as a supplementary text.
[4] Hysteron Proteron – ONA – Organizational Structure:
“This working secrecy is necessary because Satanism cannot now be anything other than selective – it is elitist, being a hard and dangerous path, and part of its effectiveness lies in work of an underground, clandestine nature [e.g. some essential work is done by those involved in respectable positions, which positions would no longer be available if the Satanic beliefs/practices of those involved in such work was generally known: i.e. they were discovered to be Satanists].”
Written in conjunction with Kristos513 and Ariadne (originally intended for the now defunct dot org site)
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