Prolegomena to Any Future Satanism: Order of the Nine Angles and Supremacy of the Fringe pt. 1

The first episode in a series of essays on Left Hand Path Satanism – it’s significance for the emerging zeitgeist and the profound depravity coming from the Fringe.

Transcript (apologies for rough editing due to technical problems):

Doubtless, Satanism is quite a loaded term. It’s been thrown around rather copiously in all directions, in blatant disproportion to the graveness of its true meaning.

Nevertheless this analysis will deal precisely with flimsily defined, modern Satanism, i.e. with what is broadly subsumed by the term Left Hand Path (further, LHP).

Order of the Nine Angles

While Satanism proper is an anti-religion, that is: it is a counter image of existing religion, LHP is neither religion nor anti-religion. It is, properly speaking, primarily a metaphysics and, by derivation, an ideology or political tool for the implementation of ideology.

In this respect, the definition of LHP used in this analysis will be the one proposed by Jacob C. Senholt via Granholm (The Sinister Tradition, 9; further ST) to define the most extreme modern LHP system, Order of the Nine Angles (further ONA):

“LHP is based on 1) individualism, 2) man understood as a psycho-physical whole, 3) focus on present moment, 4) deification of the self and 5) antinomianism (which is, as we shall see, where the true Satanism really lies, KT).”

Or, in the words of the man behind the ONA system, David Myatt:

“In the LHP there are no rules: there is nothing that is not permitted; nothing that is forbidden or restricted. That is, the LHP means the individual takes sole responsibility for their actions and their quest, and does not abide by the ethics of mundanes (this term denotes a common man, not inclined to look through the “causal” world of appearances, KT).¹

As the system of thought of ONA is taken as an exemplar of LHP here, I consider the terms interchangeable. If there’s a LHP aficionado reading this and feeling excluded and/or offended by this reductionism, so much the better.

The extremity and radicalism of ONA stems from the assumption that the above principles should really be practically followed and upheld, i.e. not only held, as some other Satanists would say, “on a mental level”, so we can take it as representative of where LHP leads its consequent followers.

Center and the Fringe

The reason why I deem it important to analyse the metaphysics of this obscure and fairly fringe ideological system is that its profound and deeply thought out depravity is astonishingly resonant with what I consider to be the emerging zeitgeist: a radical popular shift towards what is apparently anti-establishment, while in fact radical anti-social ideologies and patterns of behavior.

This shift is surfacing now, moving from the fringe into the mainstream, and is fuelled by the election of Donald Trump as the new American President.

All of the sudden everything seems possible: the fringe can become mainstream, mainstream can become fringe; populism can overpower globalism, globalism can be re-imagined as fringe; Nazism can become a vogue fashion statement, while Christian charity, which is in fact still the basis of Western morality, can in principle turn out to be the but of the joke.

And it’s all Urbi et Orbi. What happens in the USA has a license to happen everywhere else in the West.

Trump’s rise to power was widely perceived as mainstreaming of vox populi, while in actual fact it was the mainstreaming of the fringe – or the re-imagining of the establishment in the form of a fringe – by the power of irreverence, trashiness and a complete disregard for the established rules of political engagement; moreover, it was perceived by many as nothing less than a miracle.

Well, a miracle is commonly considered to be a break in the natural causality, effected by the activity of a higher cause. Let us keep in mind these two terms because we’ll meet them again during our analysis.

In this case, however, the situation was perceived differently. Miraculous “Trumpening” was understood by those who deem it such as a working of the acausal world shattering the order of the causal, everyday existence; not the illumination from above – softening the sharp edges of the existence to the point when walking on water is a normal occurrence, but rather surfacing of inexplicable coincidences seemingly bending the reality to the will of thousands of young and warped people in the bowels of the Internet, connecting everything with everything else.

Which is in fact the abolition of causal order and properly a definition of Chaos.

Acausa therefore denotes Chaos – that which cannot revert back to any underlying/preexisting cause, reason or meaning.

Crossing the Abyss

The ONA metaphysics is founded precisely on the idea of “crossing the Abyss”, that is: invoking this acausal, chaotic and, ultimately, destructive “origin of all” into “causal”, that is: the relatively ordered, temporal universe, by acts that are qualified as being “sinister”.

One of those acts is a political “sinister dialectic” which is the use of the Satanic principle of antinomianism or adversary as a driving force for destroying stable societal structure; the adversary principle can encompass terrorism, crime, anti-social behaviour or indeed the injection of anti-social ideas into mainstream society.

While the ONA does indeed hold Satan to be a real being² albeit not one confined to the causal universe and therefore to a specific intelligible form, the principle of adversary is a rather profoundly depraved moral standpoint which seeks to counter anything that can be deemed morally acceptable with its opposite.

The purpose of this is both individual and social, so to speak, because the LHP Satanist seeks to abolish his own “causal” form – personality, in fact – for the sake of invoking the “acausal energies” of chaos into his personal life, but he also seeks to affect the broader society in the sense of making way for social change and giving history a certain, sinister, spin. In the words of David Myatt, writing under his favorite pseudonym Anton Long:

“Our most fundamental and long-term practical goals are to create an entirely new, more evolved human species, and for this new human species to explore and to colonize the star-systems of our own, and of other, Galaxies – to thus create a Dark Galactic Imperium. (…) Furthermore, we see the breakdown, destruction, and the replacement of all existing (and mundane) societies – by our new progressive societies based on our new warrior tribes – as a necessary prelude to this Galactic aim of ours.”³

The idea of Dark Galactic Imperium, while indeed as crazy as it sounds, is neither cheesy Sci-Fi nor arbitrary political fantasy, but a specific development of ideas inherited from the American post-Nazi icon F.P. Yockey, and we’ll expound on it in detail in part two of this analysis.

For now the most important thing to note is that the O9A understanding of “individuation” makes the true practitioner of this methodical deprivation very elusive and hard to pin point, especially in terms of personal history.

Thus the epitome of LHP would be the man behind ONA itself – namely, David Myatt.

Strange angles, strange faces: the many identities of David Myatt

Myatt’s life as told from different perspectives by people, who are in fact cca. 90% himself writing under pseudonyms, perfectly displays the working of sinister dialectics: a post-Nazi street fighter, political theorist, occultist, Benedictine monk, radical Wahabbist and now a practitioner of pathei mathos – learning compassion through suffering – dissolving his life in its various and seemingly contradictory forms. Jeff Wells of Rigorous Intuition blog sums it up perfectly:

“In the mid-90s, in an essay entitled “Death Before Dishonour,” British neo-Nazi political philosopher David Myatt wrote:

To live and act like an Aryan – that is, with nobility of character – means upholding and living by this principle of Death Before Dishonour. Nothing else is more important – not personal happiness, not personal love, not personal comfort and wealth. This principle expresses the spirit, or ethos, of the Aryan warrior, and to be Aryan means to live like such a warrior, for however short a time.

(…)

At about the same time, Anton Long, Grandmaster of the British-based “traditional” Satanic group the Order of Nine Angles, wrote:

We uphold human culling as beneficial, for both the individual who does the culling (it being a character-building experience) and for our species in general, since culling by its nature removes the worthless and thus improves the stock. Naturally, there are proper ways to choose who is to be culled – each victim is chosen because they have shown themselves to be suitable. They are never chosen at random, as they are never “innocent.”(“culling” is a fancy-shmansy term for human sacrifice, KT)

Two years ago, in “The Perspective of Islam,” radical theoretician and al Qaeda apologist Abdul Aziz wrote:

The majority of Westerners condemn martyrdom operations on the basis of the Western perspective, using Western criteria, failing to understand the Muslim belief that this life of ours is only a means, a test, and thus failing to understand that many Muslims are willing to give up their own lives in order to do their Islamic duty, trusting as these Muslims do in the judgement of Allah…. Our life here on this planet we call Earth is only an opportunity – never to return – to gain entry into Jannah and that one of the best means to gain such entry is to strive, and if necessary die, in the Cause of Allah.

What do these people have in common? Everything. They – and many more, besides – are the same person. Let’s call him, for simplicity’s sake, David Myatt. But what he is, there’s nothing simple about that.” (source)

The same, or at least something analogous, could be said about two other significant figures of contemporary LHP – Alexander Dugin and Myatt’s one time correspondent and comrade in the sinister way⁵, Kerry Bolton of New Zealand.

Like Myatt, both men, during the course of their respective careers, exchanged diametrically opposed metaphysical, ethical and political standpoints and moved slowly from the fringe to the centre – in Dugin’s case quite literally as he is a prominent intellectual presence in Russia, whereas Bolton at least established himself as something of a Traditionalist historian, with a respectable scholarly resume and a declarative, albeit false, Christian guise.

However, what they all have in common is that they started out as Satanists and will more than likely end up as Satanists, in the sense that we use the term in this analysis.

There’s a whole plethora of similar but less intellectually gifted personages all around the semi-public sphere of Internet based intellectual life, gathered around a handful of websites such as the Russian Katehon, American Duginist outpost Open Revolt and Serbian based Centre for Syncretic Studies, to name but a few.

They are now also exerting increased influence on pro-Russian flavoured alt media outlets and individuals, displaying the astonishing ability to attract people from a diverse political and ideological spectrum – from the radical Left to the radical Right, provided, of course, that they’re well read, self assured dimwits in search of return to Tradition, original Christianity, true Left or whatever ego trip they might be on.

We won’t attempt a comparative study of this strange bunch, because this will be an analysis focused on the fundamental ideas they share and investigations into certain (and uncertain) relations between proponents of ideas must always be secondary to the depiction of the substance they all share in – something “conspiracy researchers” tend to regularly turn on its head.

So the introductory question must be: how does one change effortlessly from avowed Satanist to Christian or Muslim and vice versa; or how can a post-Nazi all of a sudden become a radical Leftist and vice versa?

This question is not important for the purpose of investigating some of the persons mentioned before in order to “expose” them. They expose themselves very well – with quite an exhibitionist intensity, we might add – yet still they’re able to sell the personal role they’re playing to gullible intellectuals. The truly essential thing is that the understanding of this peculiar elusiveness – which indicates to a fundamental lack of anything substantial in the respective personalities of these people – provides a unique path towards an understanding of what LHP metaphysics truly is.

One is tempted to invoke the phrase about extremes meeting, but this kind of psychoanalyzing, apparently very popular among contemporary historians, completely misses the point. There’s method to the madness and, to paraphrase Nietzsche: there’s also a touch of madness to every method.

In this respect David Myatt’s life is exemplary and his ONA system provides us with clear insight into how this comes about and, more importantly, “why?”.

The key to apprehending the issue lies in understanding one of the requisite steps in initiation into the system of sinister way, as ONA is alternatively dubbed, namely: playing of insight roles.

 

Insight roles and Sinister Dialectics

In one of the ONA manuscripts we are informed that:

“What is hidden becomes revealed and made present, in our phenomenal world, by the magickal act. That which is revealed is Chaos, Non-Being. These acts of revealing destroy everyday or ‘ego’ consciousness and as such are the essence of true initiation.” (NAOS, appendix “The Left Handed Path”, pg. 85)

The insight role is a part of ONA initiation dubbed the “Seven-Fold Way”⁶ and is supposed to aid it’s purpose of channeling or, as Myatt would put it, ‘presencing’ of the acausal primarily in the life of the practicing LHP individual but ultimately in the broader field of the civilization to which he belongs. Before we expound on a definition and the nature of this methodical activity which can in fact be properly described as de-personalization, let us illustrate how it appears to observers when put into practice.

As Myatt is notorious for hiding behind numerous pseudonyms and denying his authorship of many ONA text (and many of his own foul deeds, such as inciting terrorist acts), researchers tend to lose themselves in trying to do him, and his ilk, justice by wrestling with the true identity behind numerous pseudonyms, while the very purpose of pseudonyms is in fact precisely to methodically erase any kind of substantial identity.

Here we have a very telling explanation of Myatt’s “Anton Long the ONA founder” pseudonym (whom he, of course, denies as being him):

“The list of Long’s/Myatt’s influence goes on….. But what all these diverse influences reveal is an outpouring of creativity, by a single individual. That is, they do seem to reveal an “evil genius” at work; someone assuming diverse roles, and diverse personae, in order to cause, or bring about, disruption, and change.” (source)

 

The pseudonyms are, in a sense, reflections of different, assumed, personalities. As I don’t seek to do people like Myatt any justice, scholarly or otherwise, except perhaps to see them hung by the neck until they fart, I won’t go into much depth proving how Myatt & Long are one, unified nutcase – a scholarly demonstration of this, also in the case of scholarly nutcase Kerry Bolton who is prone to sue those reckless enough to try to depict which one of his pseudonyms was really him, was already done in a satisfactory way (he wasn’t sued) by Senholt.⁷ The thing of interest here is a metaphysical and anthropological principle that makes this possible:

“An Insight Role is in effect an extended magickal ritual and involves the individual living a certain way and striving for a specific (often non-esoteric) goal. It involves playing a specific “role”. The novice is expected to learn from this experience. It is important that the novice identifies with the role to the extent that friends/associates and those the novice is brought into contact with by virtue of that role do not realize the novice is playing a “role”. For the duration of the Insight Role, the task of that role should be the main interest/occupation of the novice (…) he technique also develops certain skills – some magickal, some involving the gaining of Satanic judgment and insight. Expressed simply, Insight Roles develop Satanic character.” (source)

So playing the insight role is necessary to develop a Satanic character in the sense we defined it at the outset: an individualistic, a-moral, being serving as a conduit of chaos.

The insight role should be something that brings one out of his “comfort zone”, that is: forcing him to apply the antinomian principle of adversary on himself. If the person is a law abiding closet Satanist he’s to become a burglar for a duration of at least six months; if he’s a natural violent lunatic he should try to join the law enforcement, etc. The goal is to shatter the individuality, learn new skills and gain insight into oneself which obviously means insight into one’s own nothingness because the implication here is that the deeper layer of the self is something that can be reformed at will, if the will is strong enough.

However, as with everything in ONA system, insight roles have a deeper and more far reaching aspect designed to influence broader society, i.e. besides insight roles meant to develop a depersonalized individual there are also aeonic insight roles:

“The best Insight Roles are those which aid the sinister dialectic: that is, the deeds done achieve sinister aims as well as enhance the experience of the Initiate. (…) In order to determine the Aeonic aspect to Insight Roles it is necessary to understand the current situation that exists in the world. This is one of dominance by the so-called “New World Order” which basically means the domination of the Magian (The term taken from Oswald Spengler. For Myatt it denotes Jewish culture, KT). This domination over the West – and increasingly other countries – is essentially that of what is often euphemistically called “Zionism” with the reality that most nations in the West are covertly ruled by a Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG). (…) One of our aims as an esoteric Order is to continue our evolution through creating a higher, more evolved, type of human being – a strong, independent, warrior-like, individual. This individual is the antithesis of the denizens of The State. (…) If The System is not destroyed, then our evolution will be stifled, and our promise – the greatness, Destiny and glories that wait among the Cosmos – will remain unfulfilled. To destroy The System action is required, by individuals, and groups. Thus, any group or individual which is engaged in practical action against The System with the purpose of destroying it and challenging its ideas is interesting from the point of view of the Sinister Dialectic and those undertaking an Aeonic Insight Role.

Some Suggested Aeonic Insight Roles:

(…)

Join or form a covert insurrectionary organization, dedicated to National Socialism, (…) Undertake the role of assassin, selecting as your opfers (the term denotes human sacrifice, KT) those who publicly support or aid, ZOG, the NWO, The System. (…) Convert to Islam and aid, through words, or deeds, or both, those undertaking Jihad against Zionism and the NWO. (…) Join or form an active anarchist organization or group dedicated to fighting the capitalist System. (…) Join or form a National Socialist group or organization, and aid that organization and especially aid and propagate “historical revisionism.” (source)

What is plain to see here is that one is encouraged to join organizations with radically opposite political outlooks. And this is the essence of playing the insight role as a mean to foster a political goal of sinister dialectics: an ability to reduce any kind of consequent moral stance to nothing, which is best achieved through assuming a radical political ideology and then exchanging it for its likewise radical opposite. In this way one achieves a twofold end: de-personalization – what Myatt and his followers would call “losing the causal form” – and sowing confusion, i.e. implementing  the adversary principle into the life of the society.

So, for example, Myatt can support and aid both post-Nazis – one of whom he himself is – and Wahabbists while totally confusing his detractors who cannot understand that both insight roles are simply a means to an end: presencing of the acausal into causal or, in other words, invoking chaos. This makes a practitioner of LHP elusive and, above all, confusing.

However, confusion dissipates quickly when we observe that at the centre of his activities lies destruction – the one substantial anti-substance remaining the same in all changing forms.

So we arrive now at a clear image of LHP practitioner. He’s the man who can simultaneously utter two statements, the first being,

“According to The Numinous Way, the only ethical way in which we can change ourselves, and our society, is through an inner, individual, transformation by developing empathy and by striving to live in an ethical, and honourable, way. There is thus a self-transformation, an inner change – a personal and very individual living according to the ethics of The Numinous Way. That is, there is compassion, empathy, honour, reason – the cessation of suffering, and the gradual evolution, development, of the individual. This is a personal change, and, in consequence, a very slow, social change. The social change arises, for example, when groups of people who follow such a Way freely decide to live in a certain manner through, for example, being part of, or creating, a small community. The social change also arises when others are inspired by the ethical example of those who are individually or collectively following such a way as The Numinous Way.

Hence, The Numinous Way is profoundly apolitical, and opposed to the use of force, and violence, in the service of any abstraction or “cause”, believing that better communities – “a better world” – can only be brought-into-being by the efforts of ethical individuals who concern themselves only with that which, and those whom, they personally know and personally interact with.” (source)

And the second, taken from the fictional account for instruction of fledgling ONA aspirants, could be something like this,

“In every war there are casualties; collateral damage. Anyway, they’ll be plenty of time for the area to be cleared. Just remember, those there in that place on that day are flunkies of the repressive, immoral, State. Waiting is defeat, and the State isn’t simply going to collapse; it’s got to be pushed; the capitalists are vulnerable, and one of their weaknesses is the confidence that the money markets require. Dent that – get them into a state of fear – and you’ve got them ready to topple. Keep them wondering where and when we’re going to strike next…”

So Gruyllan talked, and Peter The Mundane listened. Talked of the struggle; of Bonanno; of the need to inspire others; and when they parted, hours later, each to their own student rooms, Gruyllan knew Peter was primed.

A few days, and they were in a rainy London, with the mundane carrying a large, heavy, rucksack. It was a symbolic target, near the Bank of England, and they shook hands before Gruyllan left, ostensibly to telephone a warning. But the timer, unknown to that mundane, was set for only a few seconds delay so that he had walked only a few paces away before the bomb exploded.

There was bloody carnage. Bodies, buildings, damaged, and around, among, the dead, the dying, waiting demonic shapes gathered, unseen by any mortal mundane eye – shapes feeding on, upon, the pain, the suffering, the deaths; transforming the life-force – leaking, leaving – into new life, Their life, as one more portal opened, allowing other shapes to eagerly egress forth. Agios o Baphomet, Your Balocraft be done, Gruyllan intoned from his well-kept distance, and smiled, knowing a reward awaited.” (source)

Both of these passages are in all probability written by the same person – Myatt, that is, and are describing the “presencing of acausal energies” or rather a burning desire to accomplish it. They are in fact saying the same thing.

The LHP practitioner is an individual seeking to embody the principle of adversary: confusion, violence, lies and, ultimately, nothingness. The method of insight roles provides us with a clear demonstration of this. However, as Myatt quite consequently had put this in the early stages of initiation process, they’re also just means to an end.

This end is changing the world by ridding it of what the ONA considers to be alien influence of “Magians” (Jews) and the Nazarene religion (Christianity), thus opening the gates of chaos and inciting the advent of a new Aeon and Dark Galactic Imperium. This political goal is a consequence of certain rather profoundly developed depraved metaphysics – a sort of Satanic “fundamental ontology” (Heidegger) – which presupposes a certain subject: the authentic, “numinous” individual just described in the passages above.

Now when we are aware of the nature of this subject, that is: when we became able to discern its existential elements, we can proceed to depict the metaphysics of the ONA, which will be the purpose of the second part of this series.

It is, in conclusion to this stage of the inquiry, good to point out that people like Myatt are quite present in, at least, the Internet mediated public life of alt media outlets. Kerry Bolton, for instance, is one very good example of this and his role playing is to a certain extent even more radical than Myatt’s, given his scholarly career, Christian guise and apparent absence of a criminal record. Finally, Alexander Dugin is an archetypal LHP individual in every imaginable way as was already demonstrated to some extent on Kali Tribune. What they all have in common is best expressed in Myatt’s/Long’s own words:

“(…) many non-Adepts, and even some Adepts, sometimes confuse a tactic, a form, for the essence. That is, they fail to appreciate what is being done, and why it is being done. Sometimes, non-Adepts even mistake an Insight Role – undertaken by an Initiate or even an Adept – for the “views”, or whatever, of that Initiate or Adept, and thus castigate that individual! (…) a failure to go beyond appearance, and forms, to the sinister essence. (…) One mark of a genuine Adept is their ability to see beyond such forms, such tactics, to the essence – to the sinister magick often at work in such things. Another mark of a true Adept (and those beyond) – as has been written many times – is the ability to appear as different things: to be a shapeshifter, a chameleon.” (via Senholt, pg.50)

One only has to recall diverse following of Alexander Dugin to appreciate Myatt’s point about “causal form” and “sinister essence”. Or, for instance, compare Kerry Bolton 1.0 with Kerry Bolton 2.0.

One of the dangers in dealing with these characters lies precisely in attempts to disentangle their true identities whereas in actual fact they have none or are at least striving to get themselves to that point.

This establishment of difference of form and essence, where essence in fact point’s to the utmost depth of being as insubstantial, makes way for approaching LHP metaphysics proper. In the next episode we’ll do just that, based on an analysis of one of Myatt’s essays devoted to Martin Heidegger and his understanding of Being and Logos. As we shall see, by depicting the idea of Galactic Imperium, Aeons, Vindex and, most importantly, tha acausal realm, ONA is pretty much a blue print for many a LHP prophet, one of the most successful nowadays being the beacon of the mostly Anglo-American traditionalist dupes: Alexander Dugin.

The fringe is moving to the centre – that is the new archetype of politics. The LHP is an ultimate fringe, darkness at the edge of global cosmopolis. Therefore, if we want to get to grips with what’s going on with the new shifts in public consciousness which is moving in the direction of global populism, we are obliged to study it’s ideas and methods. The principle of “everything is possible” – a principle of chaos, that is – sways the public mind. It is, above all, a principle the LHP Satanism endeavours to “presence”.

Just what it means to presence chaos, with it’s “dark gods” will be a subject of the next episode in the series.

1 The Requisite ONA, (“A Glossary of ONA Terms”), pg. 27.