I think it’s time that somebody in the ONA explains what the word “Esoteric” means, infers, and implies. It’s a word we use often to refer to certain classes of grades of ONA teachings and traditions, which some of us may grasp more then others. Then there are those of us who use the word “Esoteric” [and “Exoteric”] to mean very different “things” from what an occidental mind will understand of those two words. Such as myself.
First my use and understandings of the word “Esoteric/a” is related to its Greek cousins: Exo-Terikos [exoteric], and Hys-Terikos [hysteric]. Bet you didn’t know “hysteria” was related to “exoterica.” Back during Sigmund Freud’s time, the doctors of that era believed that hysteria [re: crazy people] was somehow caused by a malfunction of the uterus [hypothetically causing the fetus to develop improperly], thus the word “Hysterikos” meaning “Of The Womb/Uterus.”
So “Exo-Terikos” [exoteric] would then mean “That which is OUTSIDE of the Womb.” And thus, the word “Eso-Terikos” [esoteric] would mean, “That which is WITHIN the Womb.” “Womb” here does not always refer to an actual biological uterus. Men don’t have uteruses, and most mystics in the past who were esoterically inclined were men. “Womb” in this context, suggests the Womb of the Human Psyche; or the “Core” of a person’s subjective reality/essence.
My own two major sources of understanding such things as “exoterica” and “esoterica” comes from two very influential sources: My own Theravada Buddhism which I was born and raised in, and the absolutely great Alan Watts. I have to admit that I am an Alan Watts fanatic. If you don’t know or have never heard Alan Watts’ old discourses, then you know you don’t know jack shit about “esoterica” as is it’s essence in the orient, and Mr. Watts is an Englishman. So now you know the two [English] people who are responsible for most of how I think and see the world: Alan Watts and David Myatt [in no particular order of course].
What is “Esoteric” in the Occident, is “Sama Sambuddhi” in the Orient [Buddhism]. What is “Exoteric” in the Occident, is “Dharma” in the Orient.
The word “Sam[a]” in Pali means “The Self,” or “Oneself.” Sama Sambuddhi literally means “The Self Enlightening Itself,” or “The Self which is Self-Enlightened.” The word “Dharma” means roughly “Law” and refers to a Set of Teaching and Doctrines. Actually in most languages and dialects closely related to Classical Sanskrit, the word “Dharma” means “Religion.” A Buddhist or Hindu does not call their religions “Buddhism” or “Hinduism.” They simply call it “Dharma.”
I want you to read that again twice, because it’s very important because it should cause you to ask yourself: “If Dharma and Sama Sambuddhi are different; then does that obviously mean that a Set of Teachings or Doctrines of a Religion is different from “that which causes oneself to be self-enlightened?” When you have fully understood the essence of that question and its answer, you will grasp the essential meaning of what “Esoteric” and “Exoteric” means, infers, and implies.
Basically no amount of ethical codes, moral precepts, or doctrines of behavior and interacting with your fellow creatures causes enlightenment. If so, then your common variety boy scout and 5 year old is enlightened. If so then secular State laws, which governs our actions and behavior, should illuminate us with divine wisdom, shouldn’t it?
Not even the sacred myths and stories and teachings of a religion can and has ever caused Self-Enlightenment. Simply because those religious doctrines exists OUTSIDE the Womb of your own Human Psyche. When you read and accept a religious doctrine as being “true” and live by such teachings, you are only merely bring in, or “importing” foreign “things” which were not inside YOU before – which were manufactured, or which came from someone else – into yourself. Thus, you are not “Self-Enlightened” because someone else did your thinking for you.
In this context of importing in other people’s beliefs, opinions, myths, and fantasies into yourself, there was no actual Enlightenment occurring because you never changed essentially. You did not think for yourself before the adoption of such beliefs, nor did you think for yourself after you adopted such beliefs. You just passively accepted someone else’s beliefs and opinions. This is not Enlightenment. Not especially Self-Enlightenment.
Now, from this point of view, you can see more clearly what is actually going on when say, a Jehovah’s Witness, or a Mormon Missionary sits you down and shares his religion with you. At first you erect a psychological wall as a defense shield to protect yourself from their teachings. You doubt, are suspicious, and question. And to every question you ask, they give you an answer based on what kind of person they have evaluated you to be, such that you heard what you want to hear or hear what needs to be heard. Eventually, if they are good at DEBATING, that is making themselves appear to have more and better answers then you have questions: your defenses are destroyed and you “covert.”
It is like the game a lawyer and prosecutor plays in a mundane court of law: a strategic maneuvering of words to break the opponents case/defense. This is not Enlightenment. It is the act of one person convincing you, asserting, exerting their own beliefs and opinions onto and into you. Accepting such beliefs in such conditions does not mean you have been Enlightened. It means you have a weak mind and that you were fooled into accepting someone else’s beliefs and opinions – other people’s memes.
It’s worse for you when you merely read a dead book, with dead letters, written by a long dead person, and you somehow allow that non-living book, which can’t even get into a debate or argument with you, and accept its dead beliefs and opinions. It’s worse for you because it virtually means you lost a mental fight with a non-living, non-intelligent book. You should be ashamed of yourself if you picked up a Bible and became Christian. Or the Satanic Bible and became a Satanist. And to even think that losing a fight with a book means that you are “Enlightened” is a joke. It means you are so mentally weak that a dead book can manipulate you to think like it wants you to think. Do what it wants you to do. Behave as it wants you to behave. So weak that this dead book can change your very reality by telling you what is real and what is fake. What to belief in and what not to believe in. You are no more Enlightened then a robot or computer that has been programmed.
The Buddha wasn’t the only person to be Self-Enlightened. He’s just the most well known. Many wandering hermits and ascetics have achieved Self-Enlightenment. Many genuine Adepts in China have also. All these men have several things in common. They all renunciated themselves from the common herd by actually isolating themselves from everybody. And they spend their lonely time in the midst of Nature. It was in a Forest, by a river, under a tree that the Buddha achieved Sama Sambuddhi. Do you think these Self-Enlightened individuals were arguing and debating with themselves, or with Nature to convince themselves to accept a certain belief or doctrine? No. Then from where did such people get their wisdom? From INSIDE their own Selves.
When you sit there and you meditate, contemplate, ponder on meaningless objective things as a flowing river, leaves falling, stars, and the movement of clouds. And in deep contemplative reflection allow such meaningless objective things to DRAW OUT or UNLOCK subjective insight dormant or hidden in your Own psyche. And allow such unlocked insights to make its way to your conscious mind. That is the act and process of Self-Enlightenment. That is the act of the Self Enlightening Itself. That insight which has its origins from within your own Womb, from within the Core of your Own Being, is what I refer to as “Esoterica” or Esoteric Insight.
And because we each are different and unique individuals. Each on a different level of understanding. Each endowed at our moments of progression with our “volume of reason,” each meaningless objective “thing” will unlock something different in us. Or that is, no two people will obtain the same esoteric insight from the same “key.”
Like when I contemplate on what is objectively a meaningless – doctrineless – river flowing, what that flowing draws out from the core of my own Self, is the thought and insight that I too am like that river, because although from afar that river looks as if it were the same river, if you step into it, you realize that it is never the same river twice. Such that, from that insight which that meaningless flowing river drew out of me, I come to realize that I am never the same “person” twice at any moment. The “I” I am now, is much different then the “I” I was just moments ago. In that not only have my thoughts changed, my feelings changed, but the very cells and atoms of my body have also changed, being replaced.
Nobody had to ever teach me this esoteric “doctrine.” It was not written anywhere for me to read. Nobody had to convince me to see things this way. That insight was always inside me. I just needed “something” to draw it out. These hidden esoteric insights that lay buried deep within our psyches is like the face we each have. We go about our beta wave conscious daily lives with a face, but we do not ever really know what we actually look like until “something” Reflects that face for us to see. In seeing that Reflection, we Realize – are Enlightened. That “something” – such as a mirror – did not Enlighten us. It is merely a “key” which just unlocked what was already there.
But we are not statues. Being still in front of inanimate “somethings” to ponder on them is not how Life teaches us. It is through our own Experiences that the inward Contemplating Self becomes Self-Enlightened. When that Self allows such Experiences it has cultivated in Life to Draw Out its own inner insights. Such that it Dis-Covers that which is not written.
I remember when I was a little girl in school our teacher asked us to bring the seed of an avocado, but she didn’t tell us what for. So we brought our avocado pits and the teacher had us stick 4 tooth pick into it so that it would sit over a cup of water. Then we set our seeds along the window and left them there. And the seeds grew into plants. The teacher never sat us down to go over the scientific process of DNA and how seeds turn into plants. She just allowed us to cultivate the Experience and Realize things on our own. And if you have the inner potential back then to allow that simple experience to draw out insights – like me – you Realize that if a seed or living things have the right things it needs such as food and light, that Life takes care of itself without effort.
Or I remember sitting and having a talk with one of my old grandfathers who is an 80 year old Buddhist monk. I was talking to him about charity. At the time I thought being “compassionate” with people as Buddhist Darma teaches was good or the proper thing a genuine Buddhist would do as it would help alleviate the sufferings of needy people. My grandpa just shook his head and said to me that he was too old to think about compassion because he was going to die soon anyways, as he puffed on his cigarette as most of the old monks in that Wat smoked. So he ended our conversation by leading me to a giant statue of the Buddha near which was a silver bowl. And he said to me pointing to the bowl: “See that holy silver bowl over there?” I said yes. He said: “Help out the Wat and put in your allowance money into it every week. Have a little compassion for us old folks here.”
So I did. I put in all my allowance money into the holy silver bowl every week for about 5 months. And during those months I actually felt like I was doing something righteous or something, like a good Buddhist. Until one day during the 5th month we had gone to the Wat to pick up the several monks to take them to a gathering. I saw the achar [he’s a civilian who is suppose to take care of the monks] do his usual thing and empty the holy silver bowl into a purse like thing and we all got into our cars. My grandpa made sure I got to sit in his car with the achar and the other monks. I sat in the passenger seat because if you’re a girl you can’t touch a monk and vise versa, and the achar was driving. As I was choking on all their cigarette smoke, we stopped by a cigarette store and I saw the achar go in with the purse of my money. Then he came back out with a shit load of cigarette cartons, came into the car and said: “There, that should do us for a month, look I bought us cool lighters too.” I glanced over at my grandpa and noticed him laughing, because he knew I had “Self-Enlightened” myself about “compassion” that day.
He sat me down after that day and asked me: “What did you learn grand daughter today?” I said: “I learned that feeling sorry for people and doing things for them out of compassion does not change the person.” He asked: “And if that person does not change inside?” I said: “Then that person will continue to do what they do.” My grandpa said: “And if they continue to do what they do, such as smoke?” I answered: “Then they continue to suffer and my compassion has done nothing at all.” He said: “Very good, I didn’t even have to teach you.”
I realized that day that to be charitable to a person in need only temporarily covers the symptoms and does not cure or fix the actual cause. And that charity actually prolongs a persons sufferings because such cause of that suffering is not actually addressed. I also learned that day how a wise person teaches without teaching. How my grandfather “taught” me this without forcing or asserting his beliefs and opinions on me. How he allowed me to Experience things on my own, and how he allowed me to come to my own understanding and revelation at my own time.
So these are the different ways the Self becomes Self-Enlightened. By meditating, or contemplating or reflecting on things and by Direct Experience. And this is the way in which the ONA teaches its actual “Esoterica.”
It is via what objectively meaningless – exoteric – symbols and such exoteric things as our Mythos that we come to draw out from within our own individual esoteric insights. As the objectively meaningless symbol of the Dreccian Moons of Baphomet which is given an exoteric or superficial “meaning” acts like a key to those of us with the right mind to use it to draw out or unlock an esoteric insight.
It is the reflective mind – struggling to evolve – in a state of not knowing, that sets that contemplative mind on a Promethean Quest, and it is what that mind experiences on that Quest which actually teaches. It is the meaninglessness of Life and the Mystery of it all – Life and the Cosmos – and not knowing anything about it, that sets that reflective and contemplating minds on that same quest. That struggle to Dis-Cover the “secrets” of a mystery and to find meaning in what seems to be meaningless, is what draws out from within each of us what Numinous Insights we have within, that causes the Self to become Self-Enlightened. This is how Life teaches. And it is how anything genuine and numinous teaches. By drawing out from within your latent insights and potentials.
Such as the strange seemingly meaningless names of Dark Gods of our Dark Tradition, and in our desire to understand what they “esoterically” may mean. We may apprehend these names in different ways, and “interpret” such names in different ways. But it is the act of looking within ourselves for a meaning, the act of drawing out from inside of us a meaning to give to such names, that the value of such names genuinely lies.
It is the Traditional Rites and Rituals we have inherited, which may have its superficial – exoteric – meanings and when we seek for deeper meaning such that these rites draws out from within us what lies hidden inside – such esoteric insights – that the true evolutionary – Promethean – value of such rites and ceremonies lies – besides the acausal forces presenced. It is the act of experiencing the several grades, tests, and ordeals of the Septenary Way, and what inner insights such experiences draws out that Enlightens. That teaches us – those of us labouring to become Adepts – the Unwritten or “Secret Doctrine.”
It is Anton Long’s admonitions for us to struggle to go beyond our limits: Our physical limits, our emotional and psychological limits, the limits society, religion, and the State encloses us into – when we go about applying in practical deeds the Sinister Way. That the ONA teaches the unteachable without teaching.
When we learn to see the ONA as a system of Outer Forms put together to be as keys for unlocking what esoteric insights that we each already have buried within us; we come to realize that the ONA is an esoteric school, which sets us on a genuine Quest of Self Dis-Covery and Self-Enlightenment. Each of us, ultimately Enlightening our own Selves with what Inner Wisdom we each have. So that there is no indoctrination, or debating, or convincing, or assertion of Myatt’s beliefs and opinions onto us; or any man’s beliefs and opinions. Through our own effort, our own experiences, our own striving, our own going beyond, our own struggle to apprehend Life and Nature, we each come on our own time to our own Promethean Illumination. Enlightened by an Inner Fire.
Chloe 352
Order of Nine Angles
121 yf
OV:LXXI
Footnotes: Greek Etymology of Exoteric and Esoteric
ἐξω-τερικός , ή, όν, opp. ἐσωτερικός, A. external, belonging to the outside, τὰ ἐ. the exterior members, such as hands and feet, Arist. GA786a26; ἐ. ἀρχή foreign dominion, Id.Pol.1272b19; ἐ. πράξεις external activities, ib.1325b22; ἐ. ἀγαθά ib.1323b25; οἱ ἐ. Persons outside the Pythagorean school, Iamb.VP32.226.
II. οἱ ἐ. λόγοι popular arguments or treatises, opp. οἱ κατὰ φιλοσοφίαν, Arist.EE 1217b22, Pol.1278b31, Metaph.1076a28, EN1102a26, al.; “ταῦτα-κωτέρας σκέψεως” Id.Pol.1254a33; ἐ. λόγοι, opp. ἀκροαματικοί or ἐσωτερικοί (q. v.), Gell.20.5.2; ἐ. διάλογοι, opp. τὰ ἠθικά, τὰ φυσικὰ ὑπομνήματα, Plu.2.1115b; cf. ἐσωτερικός.
ἐσωτερικός , ή, όν, A. inner, esoteric : ἐσωτερικά, τά, of certain Stoic doctrines, Gal.5.313 ; “ἐ.μαθήματα” Iamb.Comm.Math.18 ; of persons, -κοί, οἱ, the disciples of Pythagoras, Id.VP17.72 ; μέμνησο τὸν μὲν ἐ., τὸν δὲ ἐξ. καλεῖν (of Aristotle),
Luc.Vit.Auct.26. (Prob. coined to correspond with ἐξωτερικός (q.v.).) Henry George Liddell. Robert Scott. A Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1940.
Selected References: ἐσωτερικός
1) Aristoteles de Generatione Animalium (Philosophus iv B.C. Ed. I. Bekker, Berlin 1831-70)
2) Iamblichus de vita Pythagorica, ed. A. Nauck, Leipzig 1884
3) Aristoteles Ethica Eudemia (Philosophus iv B.C. Ed. I. Bekker, Berlin 1831-70)
ἐσωτερικός
1) Galenus Medicus ( ii A.D. Ed. C. G. Kühn, Leipzig 1821-33)
