Dark Gods And Dark Traditions
We hardly ever talk about if these Dark Gods are real or if we have ever experienced encounters with one. Or at least I don’t talk about such things much. Do I believe in them? No and Yes.
No I don’t believe in Them because you believe in ideas and experience real things. Yes I do assume that such creatures or entities do exist based on stories I hear from family members of mine who have directly experienced such entities. I guess it’s a matter of semantics?
I’ll give some example of non-physical things people in my family have experienced and seen and ‘believe’ in. But we have to remember that I come from a Thai-Khmer culture, so I’ll be using “Western/ONA” terms to describe some of these things.
Mythos
The first species of these things I hear my family talk a lot about are the “Niag” Race. Niag is the Khmer form of “Naga.” In Thai and Cambodian and Lao culture and tradition, a Naga doesn’t really mean a Dragon, as the word actually means in Sanskrit.
A Naga/Niag is a seaserpent creature that lives in the ocean. Except they aren’t physical like us. I guess they are spirit things [acausal?]. But they can shapeshift into human form and be physical like us. When they shapeshift into human form they often take on the form of sea nymphs or water nymph or “mermaids.” These Niag People also have an entire realm of their own described in the Tipitakas.
The most famous of these Niag People is a Princess named “Mera.” Her father is the King of the Realm of the Naga, which is said to be at the bottom of the ocean. In her Naga form she has 7 snake-like heads like most of them do.
The story goes that Mera likes to shapeshift into physical form and bathe in the mouth of the Mekong River. So one day a Prince named Kambu from a kingdom in India was walking along the shores of Indochina and saw what looked like a beautiful girl bathing just off shore.
Kambu fell in love and went to ask her to marry him. She said that she would but she’s not human so she can’t because she can’t live outside water and she doesn’t have feet because her bottom half is a seaserpent.
So Kambu said that he’ll get his men to build a Great Temple by a lake called Tonle Sap [which means Freshwater Lake] and that he’ll make for her in this temple a giant room with a large swimming pool in it so she can live with him. Mera said ok. That temple was one of the first temples at the Angkor Wat complex.
There is actually a temple in the Angkor Wat complex which is a huge round room with a swimming pool in it which is sometimes called the “Bridal Chamber.” Legend says that in ancient times on a certain day of the year Kambu would carry Mera out of the ocean and bring her into this Bridal Chamber to sleep with her to make children. Those children came to be known as “Kamera” which is the ancient form of Khmer, which is a combo of Kam[bu]+Mera. And their civilization came to be known as “Kambujadesa.” Kambu meaning the name of that prince; Ja meaning “descendants of,” and Desa is the Sanskrit word for a country.
This legend reminds me of the mythos of the origins of the Merovingians [French] or Europe, whose line started from a female bathing in the ocean who was raped by a merman of some type. The coincidental thing is – and it may not mean anything – the “word” Mero and Mera are associated with both similar legends.
The word “Mer” itself etymologically can be traced to other languages which means “sea” or “ocean.” Such as Mare, Mari, or Marus in Latin, and MR in ancient Egyptian which means sea and sexual affection [A.E.Waites].
Magic
There are everyday “eye witness” testimonies of family members seeing shapeshifting spirits. One I often hear about which my mother has seen, and which many other people in my family and culture have seen are these things we call “Marey Komvil?” That’s my best Anglicization.
Marey Komvils are these spirits that solidify into things that look like children dressed in red wardrobe, usually with red scarves. My mother and grandmother and everybody says that if you see them around a certain house, that means somebody in the house is going to die soon. They usually are seen in cemeteries, hospitals, and nursing homes. Or they can be seen in forests or special area or fields as guardians of that place.
Another thing my mother saw are these things called “Ap.” My mother explains that Aps are people – “witches” – who know “black magic” and at night they have to feed off of people’s blood or life force to keep their magic powerful. So she says at night these people pull off their heads and guts and fly around in the night sky. And they look like hazy balls of glowing light and you can see the head and entrails in the ball of light. She – and everybody else – says that if you see one hovering above you you’re going to die.
My mother said that during the Khmer Rouge revolution she was sleeping in a big shelter near the forest with a female friend of hers and another person. She said that she and her friend woke up at night and both saw an Ap hovering by the ceiling. They freaked out and prayed. In the morning my mother said that the other lady sleeping with them had died during the night.
There are these things my aunt-mom [who is older then my mother] and the grandparents talks about that aren’t people but they look like people and often live with people like a real person, but these “people” things have magical or supernatural powers. There is no single word for these types of entities that shapeshift into human form. Most of them are just called “Tmup” if they are female, which is a generic word meaning a “witch.” Or if they are males they are often called “Nik Ta.” Sometimes they are referred to as a “kru gamnat” which means a “Birth [gamnat] Teacher/guru [kru].” The word kru is more related to the term “medicine man” or “shaman.”
Usually these entities take on the form of a human lady and they usually live with people and get married. My aunt-mom was telling us a story of how during the Khmer Rouge era after everybody had been chased out of cities to live in the forests, that there was one such Tmup lady living in the camp/village she was living in at the time.
My aunt-mom said that everybody in that village, even the Khmer Rouge knew she wasn’t human and gave her a certain amount of respect and stayed away from her. But my aunt-mom didn’t believe this. The villager said that at night this lady takes on her spirit form and feeds off of the dead, and that if you are giving birth that you have to call her to act as your midwife because she feeds off of the after-birth or she will kill you with a curse if you don’t call her. But my aunt-mom didn’t believe this.
So my aunt-mom said that she got pregnant and went into labour while living in that village/camp. Everybody in the camp had told her to call that Tmup over to midwife the baby, but my aunt-mom said she did not believe in such ridiculous things.
She said that she was in labour for a whole day and part of the night and the baby would not come out and that she was in terrible pain. Her husband and his mother and relatives begged her to go and just get that Tmup or she and the baby would die if the baby did not come out soon, so my aunt-mom agreed and told the people to call the Tmup over in the middle of the night.
My aunt-mom said that as soon as the Tmup lady came she just touched her old finger to my aunt-mom’s abdomen and said to her: “This baby belong to me; every child you bare for the rest of your life belongs to me. Every child that suckles on your breasts for the rest of your life belongs to me. I will take them when I want, and bless them if I want.” After she finished whispering that, she said the baby gushed out painlessly into the Tmup’s arms. The Tmup handed my aunt-mom the baby and said: “Here, you may take care of my daughter [my late cousin],” and then she collected the after birth in a bag and went to her home. This is why these types of entities are called “Birth Krus,” in a sense, they are like what you might call “god mothers,” in the Western understanding of that term.
The elders in my culture say that if you have a Birth Kru that they know you and follow you during your life and that it’s wise to pay your respects and honour to them by calling them in your mind [praying to them] to acknowledge them, so they will take care of you, otherwise they curse your life. My aunt-mom raised me since I was a baby and she breast fed me till I was 3, so I was raised knowing that I have a “kru gamnat” and I was raised to quiet my mind and “pray” to her before going to bed and on the full moon to ask her to take care of me and to not take me away so soon.
The reason why I brought up this type of entity that takes on the form of a human person and lives among people, and that has a “not so human appetite,” for blood and people’s “life force,” is because they actually do remind me of certain types of “Dark Gods,” we read about in the ONA’s Mythos. If you are familiar with the Mythos of the ONA, then you’ll know what I am talking about. And these are things I don’t make up. You can go find a person from my culture who is well informed of these olden aspects and ask them about these things I share here. And if you look closely at other such ancient and indigenous cultures around the world, with open eyes and opened minds, you also begin to notice that all such cultures and primal traditions have similar “beliefs.”
There are good “spirit” things too that shapeshift. One type is called “Nik Ta.” I don’t know what the words Nik Ta together actually means, but as two words, Nik means “Person,” and “Ta” means “Granmpa,” or “oldman.” Together a Nik Ta is a Nature Spirit that guards a village or forest. People in Cambodia who believe in Nik Tas swear by them and these Nik Tas even are a part of the much older and ancient pre-buddhist and pre-hindu indigenous animist culture and tradition of the Khmer and Thai and Lao.
My mother says that in Cambodia, if you walk into the forest and you don’t ask the Nik Ta of some forests for permission to enter their forest they harm you by making you fall over on the spot from a terrible stomach ache. And if you take a tree, pick a fruit, or kill an animal near certain forests with a Nik Ta guarding it, the Nik Ta will kill you.
So in the old days, and still today, if you enter a forest to go hunting, you ask the Nik Ta for permission to enter and for him or her to guide you and keep you safe, and you leave offering like incense and gifts by a tree.
There are even Nik Tas in America. I was hiking once with my mother and some cousins in an average place in Southern California here this one time, and for some bizarre reason at one spot on this hiking trail was an apple tree with ripe apples on it! So me and my cousins ran to go pick the apples to eat. But my mother screams out: “Hey, hey, you guys can’t just take those apples! That tree doesn’t belong you, it belongs to somebody else! It’s barbaric to take things that don’t belong to you! You have to ask owner for the apples first!”
We looked around for this “owner” she was referring to, because we were all born and raised here in California, and we didn’t see anyone but us, so one of us asked my mother: “There’s nobody else here?” And my mother says: “That tree still doesn’t belong to you, or its fruits. Some Nik Ta takes care of the tree, you have to pay your respects and honour to the spirit that guards and cares for that tree, and ask the Nik Ta for some some apples.” So basically you just turn to the tree and you say or pray to the tree, in English [since we only speak English]: “May we please have some of your apples Nik Ta.”
So from this simple belief that things in Nature don’t belong to you and that spirits or livings entities care for things in Nature, and that one must pay one’s respect and honour to nature, trees, and such nature spirits, there is born an “ethos” of respecting and honouring Nature as a living entity that is not yours to be conquered or abused.
Nik Tas also are like Voodoo Loas. We have these traditional “shamans” [I don't know any other English term for them: mediums?] who can call these Nik Tas into their bodies and the Nik Tas will cure the peoples illnesses and stuff.
Nik Tas, if they like you they give you gifts [jewelry or other stuff]. My mother and grandmother says that sometimes the gifts just materialize out of nothing and you find it. Or sometimes they give you things called “Nieng Boohn.” These gifts have “magical” powers to protect you.
I have a Nieng Boohn. “Nieng” means a “Maiden,” or “Young Girl,” and “Boohn” means “hidden,” or “to hide.” A Nieng Boohn is when an animal that lives in a forest protected by a Nik Ta runs into a tree or rubs its horns or tusk into a tree and the tusk breaks off and gets buried in the tree [hence the “Boohn” meaning “Hidden,” or “Hiding” in the name]. Wild Boars tusks and teeth, and elephant tusks are said to be the most powerful. Tiger claws and tiger teeth are the second most powerful. Nieng Boohns don’t have any magic if you kill an animal and cut off their teeth and tusks. Actually the Nik Tas will kill you.
Only people with “Wisna” will find a Nieng Boohn. “Wisna” means Fate or Destiny. So you take the Nieng Boohn to a shaman or a monk. In Cambodia and Thailand and Laos, some monks are also shamans. They wake up the spirit inside the tusk or teeth, and you take care of the tusk by putting oil on it, spraying it with perfume, and on every full moon you burn incense for it and give ask it to take care of you. You make a necklace out of it.
Nieng Boohns don’t do anything magical on a normal day. They only work during moments when you are in danger to protect you from all harm. The most stories you hear from people who have Nieng Boohns is that Nieng Boohns keeps you from being cut and makes you bullet proof; but only in times when you are in danger. If you have a Nieng Boohn and you asked your friend to shoot you, the bullet will kill you like normal. Nieng Boohns – if you buy one – costs around $1000 dollars just for the tooth or tusk, excluding the gold wrapping and gold necklace. And if you buy one, it doesn’t work anyways because it wasn’t given to you by a Nik Ta. Genuine Nieng Boohns are pasted down from generation to generation. I got mine from my stepdad.
I have an uncle who has a Nieng Boohn and one day he was in North Carolina walking home at night when a group of black guys tried to rob him at gun point. He called his Nieng Boohn to help him and fought the guys [he knows kung fu] while he was being shot at. The black guys ran away eventually. My uncle walked home and when he got home the relatives he was living with got scared because he had blood on him and there were hole in his shirt. My uncle got scared because he thought a bullet had hit him, so he checked himself. No bullets had hit him, but he and the relatives said that the shirt he was wearing had bullet holes in it.
In America, if your age my age [or around my age, or ten years older than me] and you are Khmer or Thai or Lao and you are sporting a Nieng Boohn around your neck, it means you gangbang, and that you’re most often OG or got status in a gang; and that you got a “kru.” And it means your hardcore or fearless [since you think your invincible], and usually, nobody fucks with you. Or it just means that your family was so scared for your life they just found you a kru to give you a Nieng Boohn [like with me] but nobody has to know. A Kru [Guru] is a teacher of a magical or religious nature [shamans or monks that know magic]. Gangbangers [southeast Asians] will go out of their way to find a kru and they will worship their krus religiously for Nieng Boohns.
There is something else in my culture similar to these Nieng Boohns called a “Goan Krok.” Goan means “Child,” or “Baby,” and I don’t know what “Krok” literally means, but it is describes what type of baby these things are. Goan Kroks are more powerful then Nieng Boohns, more versatile, but much more harder to find and take care of. My aunt-mother and grandparents tell me about these Goan Kroks since one of my late great uncles had one.
A Goan Krok is also something you chance upon. In ancient times before hospitals and in door plumbing, when you had to go to the restroom, you went into the woods to do your business. Sometimes if you are a woman and you are pregnant you will have miscarriages. So if you are out peeing in the woods and you have a miscarriage your fetus will fall out. That discarded fetus is where a Goan Krok comes from. A Goan Krok begins as a three month old developed fetus that has been miscarriaged and left behind.
If you walk by one of these discarded fetuses it’s said that you here a baby’s voice calling you. One of my grampas was telling us about his late brother who had one of these Goan Kroks. He said that this late grandpa when he was a young man went hunting in the woods and that when he walked by a bush he heard the voice of a child crying. He called out to the crying voice and asked if the child was lost. And the child said no it wasn’t lost but that it has been abandoned by its mother and did not have a home to live in or any parents to care for it.
This grandpa said out to the voice that he would take care of it because he didn’t have any children of his own, and he asked the child where it was hiding. The voice guided him behind a bush but this grandpa couldn’t find a child. So the grandpa asked: “Where? I don’t see you?” And the child said: “Here, on the ground.” To this grandpas horror, it was a tiny human fetus. So you take the fetus to an elder or a shaman and the fetus is baked in a fire to harden and dry its body, and it’s put in a protective cloth like a pouch. Then you make or buy a doll house with a bed, and you let this Goan Krok live in the house. And you offer it food and water every day.
My grandpa [great uncle] said that a Goan Krok talks to you as a voice and sits on your head when you walk around. It knows if people are talking behind your back and will tell you who is talking about you, and if you ask the Goan Krok to go and hurt or harm this person, the Goan Krok will do it with its magic. The Goan Krok also keeps you safe and protected in every way. But you can’t sleep with it at night because it’s a child spirit and like to talk and play so it wakes you up at night and doesn’t stop talking to you.
I guess in Western terms things like Goan Kroks are called “fetish items.” Goan Krok reminds me of other such fetish items in other primal traditions. Like in Voodoo, there are these special jars you keep the spirits of the dead in which you command and which takes care of you. Or in Palo Mayombe and the indigenous traditions of the Congo they have these things called “Nga Ngas” which are also “babies” you take care of that have magical powers. Except a Nga Nga lives in a pot or bag in which you have human skulls and other magical items which you sacrifice animals to. As a side note: in Khmer for some odd reason a “Goan Nga” means a “baby child,” or new born baby.
Sacrifice
The elders in my family do also talk about sacrifice. In Khmer it’s called “Bojia,” which is a form of the Sanskrit “Puja.” A Puja/Bojia basically means an “offering,” which – if you are ONA, – you will get why I am bringing this up. When specifically referring to blood sacrifice it’s often called “Bojia-yay [yay rhymes with the English word “my”]. I don’t know what the extra “-Yay” means, but I speculate it may be a form of a Sanskrit or Pali word “Jay” which means “High,” or “Mighty.” So Bojia-yay could possibly mean a “High Sacrifice,” or “Great Offering.”
My elders say that in olden times; they use the term “Samay [Period, Era] Boran [Antiquity, Ancient];” long before Buddhism came to the area and the people, before great events such as a war or battle, or on the new year festival, a Bojia-yay is held to bless and magically empower the war, battle, great act, or to bless the new year with prosperity for the empire. The king would gather these traditional “shamans” and the people would bring their large animals to be sacrificed to the spirits and Nik Tas that guard the kingdom and land. The king provides slaves and prisoners which are also offered as Human Sacrifices to these spirits and Nik Tas that are guardians of the kingdom and land. They would then bathe their weapons, or even farm tools and farm land with the blood. Or if you were a soldier you bathe a piece of clothe with this blood and you wear it and go to war.
My elders say that in this way, the ancient Khmer Empire grew to control most of the Indochinese peninsula. They say [they are Buddhists outwardly] that it is because of this crazy Buddhist Religion that foreigners brought into the Empire that cause it to shrink into an insignificant pathetic State. Because when the kings and the people became Buddhists, they believed that it was wrong and bad karma to hold Bojia-yays and to sacrifice animals and people and the ancestors [spirits] and Nik Tas of the kingdom and land were disrespected for being ignored; and the people were even afraid to war because war kills people. But old habits – old traditions – are hard to break. Although humans are no longer offered, Bojia-yays still go on in rural areas with animals are still offered.
Animal and some form of human sacrifice is a common reoccurring tradition in primal indigenous cultures around the world [see Mayans for one example]. Such as the Native American belief of killing an enemy to honour one’s warrior ancestors. The head hunting that went on in Indonesia and New Guinea up until recently. Certain indigenous tribes in the Amazon bury children alive to appease “evil spirits.” And the animal sacrifices that are living aspects of indigenous traditions in Africa; and even in pre-Christian Europe. There are evidence of Human Sacrifice in areas in Scotland where mummified bodies in bogs have been found with nooses around their necks, hands tied, and a stab wound in their chest. The Roman Empire outlawed “Druidism” even, on account that they allegedly practiced Human Sacrifice.
Spirits
Back to shapeshifting entities: All Devatas, prets, and yaks can also shapeshift. Devatas are sometimes called devas. They’re basically godlike beings, “angels,” or those spirits people that live in the upper realms. Prets [preta in sanskrit] are demons things. They live in the forest. Yaks [yaka in sanskrit?] are things like monsters or giants?
Then there is another class or species of entities that are remnants of animistic beliefs that have no names. They are just called “Vinyin,” which is the Khmer form of the Pali word for “Consciousness.” Generally the word Vinyin also means a spirit person.
This class of entities take on physical form and always wear black. They are benevolent, and you usually see them just as you die. Or they usually come to talk to you as you drift off to sleep. These entities are said to escort you when you die to the other places. Or it is said that they come to you to tell you important things.
There is a real famous story that happened not to long ago that had something to do with these Vinyins. A few decades or so before the Khmer Rouge revolution there was this one monk everybody called “The Crazy Monk.”
This Crazy Monk had been living in the forest as a hermit doing his Forest Tradition meditations. One day he said that three spirits people [these vinyins] materialized right in front of him and had said to him that he needs to leave the forest and begin to tell people to leave the country because before he grows old and dies [he was already old] a horde of men in black shirts will come out of the forests and they will burn the cities, murder many people, and the kingdom will fall into ruin.
The monk did what he was told and he spent the rest of his life walking the streets and telling people to leave the country because men in blackshirts would come and kill everybody and destroy the kingdom. Back then Cambodia was in pretty good economic shape so everybody thought he was crazy. That’s why they called him The Crazy Monk. Nobody believed him. My grandmother and all of her sibling were alive to hear the Crazy Monk go crazy on the streets warning people to leave the country. Anyways, we all know what happened in 1975.
The other story concerning this species of entities is more personal. I have an auntie who had a baby just before the Khmer Rouge took over the country. When her baby was 2 years old she died because she got very sick and there was no doctors in the country. But before she died my auntie was holding my 2 year old late cousin and my auntie said that the 2 year old cousin started saying that men in black outfits had come to take her “home” and that it was her time to go and she won’t be coming back, and she died after she said her good byes.
I’ve always found this story very significant because it happened to somebody I know intimately, and because it’s very hard for me to believe that a 2 year old baby who had barely learned to speak would even know what death and dying is to be making stories up.
Ritus Antiqusque Humanae
I thought I’d share some these things, just to show that what the ONA has as far as its aural traditions of “Dark Gods,” and shapeshifting acausal beings; it’s Dark Tradition; and Sinister Seven-Fold Way; is not entirely made up or the fanciful creative imaginings of Anton Long.
There are many, many cultures and living traditions the world over – those more closer and in harmony with life and Nature – that also share these same “beliefs” and practices/traditions. The names and mythos might be different from indigenous people to indigenous people; but the essence of it is as old as humanity.
The oldest forms of “religion” [I use that word loosely here] is “animism,” and what is referred to by people like Joseph Campbell as “shamanism” in which entities and spirits can materialize and where magic is an aspect of such “religions,” which would include “ancestor worship.”
I believe that – even if it’s not on a conscious level – the ONA’s Dark Tradition is an example of the West reverting back to this more ancient and Natural Way of Life, that was and is more Human. And if we pay close attention to the time and condition of the West’s slow “awakening” - and Liberation – to its more ancient and Natural Way, we can see that such things as the ONA, and those new revivalist religions referred to as “Neo-Paganism,” began to surface circa 1960’s in the West, which was a time when that magian ethos and religion had finally lost its thousand year grip on the Western Mind. Such that, such Minds gradually begin to revert back to what is more alive, more in tune with the way of Primal Nature and Life, as their feral and tribal ancestors once knew.
If we each try to be more open minded with other cultures that the West has typecasted as being “primitive” and “savage,” we just might see that our ONA’s Dark Traditions has more in common with such numinous and tribal ways of life and “religions” [I use the term very loosely] then we realize.
I personally take the time to study some of these “animistic” traditions: one being that ancestral indigenous tradition of my own culture beneath our Theravada Buddhism: as Bon Po is to Tibetan Buddhism; as indigenous Taoism is to Chan Buddhism.
If you want to rediscover what is Human, what is Primal, and what gods and practices existed in mankind’s primeval past, all you have to really do is enter Africa. It doesn’t matter who you are, what skin color you are, what culture or tradition you come from: we all – as a species – came out of Africa. You got to the indigenous traditions of the Yaruba or the people of the Congo and you will see they have a list of dark primal gods, each with names and “sigils.” You will the magic and supernaturalism. You will see the sacrifice and dark rites. And in seeing such things for yourself you know and feel that the ONA does share things in common with such very ancient primal [Dark] traditions.
Urban Cults
By the word “Urban” I mean here that sometime in our species’ history not to long ago some group of hunter-gatherers, began to settle one place and farm, and from that farming an agrarian social order formed which became a “city-state.”
Most of us unconsciously assume that when our species came into existence, that we came into such existence inside a metropolis, with streets, and politicians, kings, and priests already pre-fabricated to rule and govern us.
We know so far that the oldest such prehistoric “city” or first urban settlement is Jericho which dates back to 9,000B.C. this means that for at least ~11,000 years some members of our species have been living in urban conditions; and not as feral hunters and gatherers.
But our species has been around for 200,000 years at least. So if we minus 11,000 from 200,000 we are left with: 189,000 years of humans living in other Ways besides an urban way. The question thus is: how were our ancestors living and what were their beliefs and practices, for all of those 189,000 years before urban life? Obviously, this city-state way of life is new compared to the much Older and Ancient Way of Life. The answer to this question will be both revealing and enlightening for those of us in the ONA.
With an urban settlement a new “species” of social ordering comes into being. One whose functionality, mechanics, and equilibrium depends on the social coherency and specialization of its members. This means that one of the first aspects of urban settlement to come into being is class/status differentiation and division of labour: Priests and Kings at the top; Warriors in the middle; Commoners below warriors, and slaves at the bottom. We see this same tendency for humans to form these same divisions in other modern social orders such as corporations and religious institutions: CEOs and High Priests at the top; Executives and Priests in the middle; employees and believers at the bottom. This in Vedic Hinduism is called the “Caste System” isn’t it?
With such differentiation and division of class, status, and labour, there thus arises Policies to maintain such divisions. These policies in ancient times were the laws of the city-state cult. There is nothing divine or authoritative about urban religious policies. It’s abstract and arbitrary. It’s invented with the end purpose of maintaining the overall functionality, mechanics, and equilibrium of the city-state and caste system. It’s not natural. It’s a restrictive perception forced onto a population. It is forced cosmology, forced ontology, forced morality, and forced arbitrary laws. The priestcraft that spoke Sanskrit gibberish of “yesterage” which the commoner doesn’t understand, is the lawyercraft that speak legal gibberish of today which the commoner does not understand. Modern politics is just a refined evolution of ancient urban priestcraft.
What do I mean by “restrictive perception?” I mean when a priestcraft says: “Thou shalt have no other gods,” that that ontology condemns the city-cultist into a perception in which he cannot legally/religiously “see” other gods outside those gods endorsed by the city-state’s ruling class. Why not? Because your ruling class power and city’s coherency depends on your make believe authority vested on you by a defined set of gods; and if your citizens go off worshiping other gods, then what authority do you have to maintain your status and your city’s coherency? If everybody in your city had different gods, the city’s equilibrium and coherency is disrupted.
In such an urban system of life that where class status and division of labour is needed to maintain the life of the city-state and thus the power and privilege of the ruling class, the city-cult’s religious law of: “Thou shalt not commit adultery” is a crime to break. Why? Because if your citizens were all reproducing arbitrarily without regard for class and caste then what social group and labour function is your off spring born into? If your mother was a daughter of a priest and your father was a handsome slave, then what are you? Such reproductive disregard for class and caste disrupts the city-states system. Castes aren’t big deals to us in the West during our modern age, but in ancient times, in the various civilizations that occupied India and else where social class and labour caste were very important and legally pervasive.
There is nothing natural, divinely moral, or cosmically authoritative about: “Thou shalt not kill.” It is an urban policy. As the ruling class whose job it is to maintain the functionality of your settlement, you simply can’t have people killing anybody they want, or even themselves. Why? Obviously if everybody is dead or ran away from fear of being murdered for no reason, what settlement/city/social order do you have? Killing and murder happens all the time in nature. If you can defend your off spring or don’t have claws or venom or camouflage to protect yourself, then tough.
Same things goes with: “Thou shalt not steal.” There is nothings divine or morally authoritative or natural about stealing or not stealing. It happened all the time in nature. If you are a tree and you forgot to evolve thorn to protect your fruit, then some monkey will come by and steal you fruit. Stealing ruins the game of a city. You can’t have your citizens just taking houses and possessions that don’t belong to them. They need to work for make believe things called money or work for pieces of metal and stone with some arbitrary value ascribed to them. You save that money up and buy what you want. Out beyond the walls of the city-state, if you are a feral tribe and you lack the means to defend your territory from another tribe, then they will kill you and take you land. Such ways are neither “good” or “bad,” it is beyond urban conceptualizations of legal and illegal. It is just natural.
The belief system, theology, ontology, and cosmology of an urban cultus is restrictive, arbitrary, unnatural, and forced. The idea that an urban city-state god created the world has nothing to do with life and nature outside the walls of that urban settlement. It’s just myth that backs up and props up the priestcraft policies of the city-state. What’s even more revealing is that not only is this creator god the maker of the world, but he also has a chosen group of humans he favor over others who he is more closer to [Jews, Brahmins, priests, rabbis, imams, pastors, whatever].
The belief of a heaven and a hell also has nothing to do with life and nature outside the walls of a city. Neither does the arbitrary religious notion of “believe,” “worship,” and “heretic” have anything to do with life and nature beyond the conditioned mentality of the city-state. It’s all smoke and mirrors to enthrall the urbanite for the end purpose of maintaining the urban settlement’s social order and coherency.
These city-states eventually evolved into our modern Nation-State. Our modern secular Nation-States don’t have “state-religions” any more. But in America there is secular “Americanism,” Patriotism, etc. There are no more priests, but there are lawyers and law makers. There are no more phony divine commandments authorized by some god in the sky. We now have laws that are authorized by some other abstraction called “The People.” There are no more 10 commandments, they are now called Amendments. You can worship whatever cult god you want today, but defy “The People,” and tell the Oligarchy you do not recognize the power and validity of their law and court and you become a State-Heretic, i.e.: a “Criminal.”
Where the olden urbanites of Christendom were conditioned to believe that Christianity and Christendom was “everywhere” and that you were born Christian. These Nation-State have conditioned their people to believe and perceive that their “Statism” is everywhere and that you are a citizen of whatever state you are born in, and thus subject by birth to such State laws and State taxation [tithes].
We never ask or meditate on how this is so. Point a finger for me to “the State” that I was born in. If you point to my mother: she isn’t a state; she is Human, and as a Human, her species has existed for 200,000 years. What State was around 200,000 years ago? If you point to the ground or land I was born on and live in: this is also not a State. This ground, like most land on earth has existed in some form or other for about a good 4 billion years. Show me what State existed 4 billion years ago.
Has our species always lived as domesticated apes under the power of some State or Religion for all 200,000 years of our existence? Have our ancestors always seen the world from a city-state religious paradigm? Has our ancestors always had unnatural, forced, restrictive perceptions and beliefs for all 200,000 years? What was life like for those 189,000 years before urban social orders? How did people live during those hundreds of thousands of years? What did they believe and practice?
Before urban settlement people lived in and with Nature; as many still do today. In clans and tribes consisting of bands of kinfolk and blood relations. There was no need for a forced and arbitrary division of labour. No caste system of slaves, peasants, or priests. There were no kings, just tribal elders who were honoured for their wisdom rather than some authority. All you really have to do is take the time to find and study such groups of people who still live in such tribal ways in any part of the earth. Or you can just find a living culture today whose indigenous and ancestral traditions are still past down and maintained by aural transmission: of living person to living person.
Where state-religions are based on written laws in some holy books. The more natural and ancient Human Way which existed long before the invention of writing was based on the living of life, on the intimacy and harmony with Nature, and on what one learned directly from life, nature, and one’s elders, who learned directly from life and nature themselves.
Where state-religions have some set of authority giving gods or some exalted abstract god to be worshiped and tithed to. The more natural and Human Way is the way in which everything is Life Force [spirit(s)]; where ancestors who have died are still honoured, called on, and believed to be still a part of the family. Where after living at-one with Nature and feeling the life force that inhabits all of Nature there evolves naturally a respect and honour for Nature, and Nature spirits.
Where the beliefs of a state-religion is arbitrary, restrictive, forced, and unnatural; such that if you desired to learn more about such religion, you had to go learn it from a qualified priest with city-state stamp of approval. The more ancient and Human Way of belief is one based on personal experience, direct apprehension of Life and nature, and one’s own effort to be more empathetically in communion with Life and Nature.
An example of this difference can be found in India. The Vedas are some of the oldest urban cult religious writings in the world. Its urban conditioning comes complete with forced cosmology, forced arbitrary laws and beliefs, and a caste system. But there exists in the same area a separate and independent Way and Tradition called Shramana [Sanskrit] or Samana [Pali]. This word is related to the word “Shaman.”
In Vedic India, a Shramana is a person who leaves the city behind [renunciation] to live in the forest. The shramana rejects everything Vedic, including the belief in gods and their Brahmin Priests. These shramana will meditate in nature and along the banks of the Ganges, and from removing themselves from the conditioning of the city, from the urban religion of the Veda, from the caste and status system, and from their own struggle to dis-cover what is Natural and Real beyond that urban conditioned delusion, they obtain something referred to as “Sambuddhi” or Self-Realization, or Self-Enlightenment. Jainism and Buddhism are both descendants of this Shramana Tradition. A Jain monk is called a Samana; while a Buddhist monk under the age of 20 is called a Samanera meaning Little Shramana. The Greeks once knew the Buddhists as “Samanos.”
Shamanism
What is known loosely as “shamanism” is so ancient, and so old, and so ubiquitous, that even the word “shaman” is nearly universal; or at least one of its variants is used to refer to the same essential thing by indigenous people. Even some Taoism Adepts in China have certain medicine men that are called Sha Min or some form of that. I use the word and term “shamanism” in its anthropological sense, meanings “a range of beliefs and practices that regards communication with the spirit and supernatural world.” “Supernatural” meaning what is beyond our causal, natural perception and understanding of causal reality.
Being American, the best example I can give of a “shamanic” tradition besides my own indigenous tradition is the tradition of Native Americans. These Native Americans were animistic like my own culture still is. I dislike the way the West academically teaches what “animism” is. From such a dismissive scholastic perspective and etic understanding – laden with a superiority complex – animists seem like primitive stupid unscientific people that superstitiously believe that rocks, rivers, and inanimate object have souls and personalities or something.
If you were born and raised in an indigenous tradition that is “animistic” you just believe that Nature is alive. You’ve have to be dead inside if you walk through a forest and not see and feel life. Not everything of Nature is a living being. Rocks aren’t alive nor do they have souls to an animist. I have never heard anyone say that trees and rocks have “Prolung” which is the word for “soul-spirit.” But I was taught that trees have “jivit” [life] and that trees and animals and people have “vinyin” [consciousness/Life Force]. And sometimes some non-physical entity can inhabit rocks and trees. Or things like a place, or temple, or mountain, or forest, or object can have a sacred or supernaturally “special” quality inhabiting them, or imbued in them that is honoured, and held in high regard.
To us, Life Force survives bodily death. So that in my culture [Thai, Khmer, and Lao] there is something odd that can be observed. Even though we are “Buddhists” who are supposed to believe in some sort of idea of rebirth or reincarnation, we have this more ancient animistic belief that our ancestors are still a part of our family and clan and that they remain bound to us, so we still pay our respects and honour to them. Usually we have these home altars with their picture, and we burn incense and offer food to them. This is wrongly called ancestor worship.
In such indigenous cultures, there really is no such word for “god” or “worship,” what words we do use to refer to a god is borrowed from Sanskrit or Pali. Ask any missionary who has every tried to convert an indigenous population of animists in any part of the world about this and they will tell you that such cultures all lack a word for “god” and “worship” and that it was quite hard to translate the bible into their indigenous languages without having to be creative with words. No such concepts exists in Nature. Only spirit, Life Force, and Honour exists to a person or culture at-one with Life and Nature.
The olden Native Americans once also had these same animistic beliefs, and once also had a strong honour for their non-physical ancestors as well. Ways of Life and Natural ways of belief are often simple and uncomplicated. These Native Americans also had a belief and faith in “magic” and supernatural phenomena. These Native Americans – and all ancient Natural Ways of Life – also have Rites of Passage: where people go through trial and ordeals in some form or manner to become Initiates of Life, which transforms them inside into a new person.
Then there were those Medicine Men and Women – shamans – who went a step further beyond their tribesmates who struggled to live closer to nature, sometimes alone isolated in a forest. They would gradually learn about plants and what each plant did as far as curing sickness, and they would practice a certain form of magic where they would “meditate” to the beating of a drum or humming or chanting, sometimes intoxicated with hallucinogenic plants, enter a trance state where they speak with their totems, animal brothers, spirits, and ancestors; who teach them things in that state.
My own culture has a very similar practice. There is a certain kind of kru [shamanic teacher] that are not physical beings. You learn to meditate to “call” one of these krus to you. After you learn to go into a trance state from meditation, you can speak to this kru who teaches you things. Having one of these “spirit entity” krus is more powerful than having a human kru. Most people with this type of kru ask their krus to teach them magic. Many end up learning what’s generically called “black magic.”
But this “shamanic” aspect of ancient indigenous traditions also reminds me of something an ONA Initiate should be familiar with: Pathworking the Tree of Wyrd. It’s when you basically mediate on one of the sinister tarots, gradually enter a trance state, and in such a state certain entities and beings come to life and teach you things. If you’ve actually every diligently practiced this, then you will know what I mean by “come to life.”
So when we look closer at the ONA, its Dark Gods, Dark Traditions, and Sinister Seven-Fold Way, and we compare it to the more ancient and Natural Ways and Traditions that are older then state-religions; we dis-cover that the ONA shares a lot in common with such primal traditions. There is the almost animistic belief that Life Energy [Acausal] animates all living beings, and that the Cosmos, the Earth, and Nature, are Living Being themselves which should be honoured and respected. There are those aspects of ONA magic and tradition which is similar to “shamanic” practices the world over. We also have our own Rites of Passage which also incorporates trials and ordeals. We also incorporate sacrifice, just like many of these ancient and Natural Ways.
You see, from a perspective of frightened city citizens who are mental adherents of some restrictive forced belief system that live in the protected walls [physical or psychological] of some city/state; feral indigenous tribes that sacrifice animals and humans, head hunt, honour strange dark spirits, practice magic, etc, are “evil,” “savage,” and “sinister,” because such Natural Ways that are so much more older and Primal, threaten in a very real way the “sanctimonious” coherency and mechanic of that city/state, because if their citizens reverted to such ways of life, the city/state would stop working as a system.
And when I say “revert” I mean it in a very real sense, unlike Islam. I think it’s silly to believe that we are all born Muslim. As if we are born with the name “Allah” etched in mind and genes in us; as if we are born with these arbitrary random stories of Moses and Ishmael; as if we are born facing Mecca, with some instinct to pilgrimage to some arbitrary city in Arabia. And that we somehow lose our natural Muslimness when we convert to other religions, so it is said we “revert” back to being Muslim when we convert to Islam.
But you look at the human species as a whole; and you consider the vast amount of time and mileage between illiterate ancient indigenous cultures, and you examine all the Natural similarities that such primal cultures share in common with each other: you will begin to realize that such Natural Ways of reverence and Honour for Nature, belief in “supernatural” phenomena, magic and mystery, rites of passage, sacrifice, gods and spirits, etc, are so common, and so essentially the same, that it’s just Natural and Human. So that when we each become tired of the forced and arbitrary belief system of the City/State, and we abandon that conditioned urban weltanschauung, and we let ourselves go to flow with Nature, we realize that we gradually to go back to a more Natural Way of Life: a Reversion to what is and was ancient, Natural, and Human.
Quod Erat Demonstrandum
On a personal level, I “know” and feel that the essence of the ONA and the essence of its Dark Tradition are as old a humanity. But I can’t give that “knowing,” and feeling to you. It’s something that each of us must dis-cover on our own. It’s only in our own ignorance and cultural myopia, that when we look at something such as the ONA that we grasp for the nearest “occult” thing we know of in the West to measure and compare the ONA with. And in doing so we miss the mark; we restrict our understanding of the ONA inside the State Cultus of the Occidental Urbanite Paradigm, Weltanschauung, and Cosmology: which we already know is delusional, restrictive, arbitrary, out of touch with Time, Nature and our own Humanness in the first place.
So we grasp for things like some necronomicon or some pseudo-mythology of some Western writer and we use those things to explain and dismiss the ONA with. Never realizing that nearly all of the fundamental “components” that makes up the ONA, its anti-statism, its Dark Gods, its Dark Tradition, its Sinister Way, and its Seven-Fold Way, all have very real mirror images in nearly every ancient “primitive,” “savage,” living indigenous primal culture and traditions. Which we never noticed before, because our Westernized eyes have been hoodwinked or misdirected by our Western priests, politicians, teacher, Mundanity, and conditioned mundane perception to only see what is Western and Materialistic, and to dismiss anything else as being stupid and backwards. And by “indigenous culture” I also mean the pre-christian indigenous cultures of pagan Europe.
We can understand that urban cults and magian paradigms are delusional, but yet some of us have a hard time removing the ONA out of that matrix, so that it might be seen in a much different light. So this writing is just my attempt at trying to yank the ONA out of that delusional and arbitrary magian paradigm and urban cult matrix, so that some of us may see the ONA in a much different way. And even perhaps gain a much deeper appreciation for it: when we understand that this way – that which is dialectically and diametrically opposed to the paradigm of magian “city-state cultism” – is more ancient, more natural, and more Human, than urban conditioning of mind or any urban religion.
This is one of the reasons why I – being who I am: one born into an ancient and still living indigenous culture – like the ONA so much and hold onto it and dedicate so much time to it. From my ancestral and cultural perspective, the ONA feels “close to home” such that I can honestly say that the only real difference between my own indigenous way – that Way which pre-dates Buddhism – is the superficial names of these primal beings [Dark Gods]; otherwise, the essence and methodology are the same; but with an added and relevant evolutionary addition: the great objective of inhabiting space and other galaxies.
I wish I knew where David Myatt got the core or “seed” that grew into the ONA from. It could have been from a Lady who had an ancient tradition pasted to her. Or this Dark Tradition could have past through David Myatt like he were a nexion or bridge. Or perhaps it is both, a Lady may have had an old animistic, shamanic, pagan tradition she got from her ancestors; and DM got this and evolved it. Either way, based on what I intimately know and feel, and based on what I have studied: wherever the ONA’s Dark Tradition comes from, it shares so much in common with these ancient animistic and shamanic traditions, that beneath the superficial differences, it’s virtually the same “creature” just re-presenced. It’s not important to me where and how DM got it anyways. To me, its similarities and shared commonalities with very real ancient ways of life and ancient traditions our species have used for ages, is its own testimony. I just hope that in time, I won’t be the only one in the ONA that can appreciate this.
Hopefully this writing has added a new perspective, angle, and dimension of Time to our understanding of the ONA, Humanity, Ancient Primal Traditions, and Nature. We sometimes forget that we are dealing with great spans of Time. That our Humaness and intelligence, ability to honour and live at-one with Nature goes far beyond a mere several thousand years of urban-agrarian “religionism.” There is 189,000 years of Humanity living ferally in tune with Nature left unaccounted for, left often unspoken of, and unconsidered.
When I say “ancient,” “Natural,” and “primal” I mean those lost years of our species that the religions, priests, and politicians of these Nations-States would rather have you forget and dismiss. How were our Human ancestors living back then? What did they believe? What did they practice? What were their world views? How did they see Nature and their place in Nature, so long ago before cities, settlements, Nation-States, political ideologies, and urban belief systems corrupted and defiled our Humanness? Is there a Way back to that primeval Humanness we have lost and left behind somewhere, deep within us?
Chloe 352
Order of Nine Angles
121 yf
