Wheel of Karma
Tree of Wyrd
The first represents the Tree of Wyrd with its 7 Spheres, representing the Seven-Fold Way of the ONA. The second is the Wheel of Karma; also known as the Dharma Wheel; with its 8 Spokes, representing the Eight-Fold Path of Buddhism. When we come to a refined understanding of the word “Wyrd,” and “Karma,” we dis-cover that the 7 and the 8 are esoterically the same in Essence.
It’s amazing how the philosophical system of the Buddha is entirely based on the Wheel of Karma. But what does “karma” actually mean? It comes from the Sanskrit root “KiR” which means nothing more then “Act,” “Action,” “or a “Doing.” In Khmer; which is a mutant vernacular of Sanskrit; “Kar” means “Work,” or “Labour;” and “Karm” (pronounced “Gam”) in Khmer is more related to the Latin word “Culpus,” as in the vernacular “Mea Culpa,” (My ‘Fault’) rather then what we generally understand in English as “sin” or even the English “Karma.”
Everything else we think karma means is crap. Karma isn’t some some law of retribution. It is just the law of Causal Effect. The law of a causal system. A causal system is a machine which gives you something, when you put something into it. A basic example of a causal machine would be a gumball machine, or your cellphone – you put money into the service, and you get to use your cellphone. There is nothing mystical or magical about it. It is just a natural process. And this natural process brings us to the secondary name for the Wheel – Dharma.
Like Karma, Dharma has been bastardized by to much philosophical input to mean everything from “religion,” to “hinduism,” or “buddhism,” or “law,” to something mystical; when it really isn’t. It’s Pali (the language the Buddha spoke) “Dhamma” is more easier to work with for me, since Pali is closer related to Khmer, and I don’t personally know much Sanskrit.
The closest English word to Dhamma would be “Way,” or “Law,” but the English word “law” is deceptive because it suggested some judge writing this law or some authority making it law. The noun form of Dhamma is “Dhammam.” Although spelled like that, the way it is pronounced in Pali is more revealing: “Tor-miang,” which reminds us of the Hebrew word for Law – Torah. But what kind of law are we talking about here? Well, we only have to “scroll” down a Pali dictionary for other words which uses Dhamma as a root.
In Pali the word “Dhammada” (pronounced: ‘Tom-ma-da’) means “Nature” or “Natural.” In Khmer, if someone were to ask me how I was doing, or ‘how are you today?’ And I answered: Dhammada; it means as the French would say: Sa Va or Com Si, Com Sa – Neither good nor bad, just NORMAL. “Dham” in Khmer means a “Plant,” and “Dhamcher” means a “Tree.” So we can see that all these words related to “Dhamma” has something to do with Nature, Plants, or a Natural state of being Natural. Dhamma in essence originally refers to the Effortless Flow of Nature – the Law of Nature – the “Forest Doctrine” as it is sometimes referred to in Buddhism. If this original meaning of Dhamma feels or seems familiar to an ONA Initiate who knows his craft well, it’s because it corresponds to something within the ONA called Physis.
[Qoute Ancient Hymn About Physis]
Orphic Hymn 10 to Physis (Greek hymns C3rd B.C. to 2nd A.D.) :
“To Physis (Nature), Fumigation from Aromatics. Physis, all-parent, ancient and divine, o much mechanic mother, art is thine; heavenly, abundant, venerable queen, in every part of thy dominions seen. Untamed, all taming, ever splendid light, all ruling, honoured, and supremely bright. Immortal, Protogeneia (First-Born), ever still the same, nocturnal, starry, shining, powerful dame. Thy feet’s still traces in a circling course, by thee are turned, with unremitting force. Pure ornament of all the powers divine, finite and infinite alike you shine; to all things common, and in all things known, yet incommunicable and alone. Without a father of thy wondrous frame, thyself the father whence thy essence came; mingling, all-flourishing, supremely wise, and bond connective of the earth and skies. Leader, life-bearing queen, all various named, and for commanding grace and beauty famed. Justice, supreme in might, whose general sway the waters of the restless deep obey. Ethereal, earthly, for the pious glad, sweet to the good, but bitter to the bad: all-wise, all-bounteous, provident, divine, a rich increase of nutriment is thine; and to maturity whatever may spring, you to decay and dissolution bring. Father of all, great nurse, and mother kind, abundant, blessed, all-spermatic mind: mature, impetuous, from whose fertile seeds and plastic hand this changing scene proceeds. All-parent power, in vital impulse seen, eternal, moving, all-sagacious queen. By thee the world, whose parts in rapid flow, like swift descending streams, no respite know, on an eternal hinge, with steady course, is whirled with matchless, unremitting force. Throned on a circling car, thy mighty hand holds and directs the reins of wide command: various thy essence, honoured, and the best, of judgement too, the general end and test. Intrepid, fatal, all-subduing dame, life everlasting, fate (aisa), breathing flame. Immortal providence, the world is thine, and thou art all things, architect divine. O, blessed Goddess, hear thy suppliants’ prayer, and make their future life thy constant care; give plenteous seasons and sufficient wealth, and crown our days with lasting peace and health.”
[End Quote]
The Buddha had run away from his kingdom and lived in the forest as a hermit where he pondered on the problem of WHY people suffer in life. Whereon he dis-covered the natural law or the natural chain reaction that produces suffering. This he called the Eight-Fold Path, which are the spokes of the Wheel of Karma.
We will break the 8 Noble Paths into 4 basic “karmic” steps, which is represented by the spokes at the cardinal points: 1) Thought; 2) Emotions; 3) Action; & 4) Experience. The Buddha took these four basic links and expanded them into 8 links. These links forms a natural process of reaction.
What we think governs how we feel. What emotions we give life to, influences our actions. What acts we do in life, manifests as experience. The end result – the Experience – is the fruit of our Karmic input. In effect this natural process of reaction and manifestation is like a wheel – the chain reaction moves from Thought, until it “comes back” as an experience, in Eight logical steps.
From this most enlightening dis-covery, the Buddha saw two systems of chain reactions: The Ariya (Noble) and the Anariya (ignoble). Noble thoughts will manifest as noble results in life – Right Thinking, Right Feeling, Right Action – Right here does not refer to a direction or side. It means “Correct.” Incorrect Thought on the other hand, produces a negative chain reaction, and materializes as a negative result, which then is the Suffering – “Dhuga,” which also means troubles, problems, and heartache.
For example, as a causal being, you have something called free will. Not being able to feed your family, you act upon this free will and without thinking correctly, decide to rob a liquor store to get money to feed your family. Although the intentions were nice, the act of robbery will have its causal consequences – you go to prison – which in turn produces MORE suffering for your family.
Thus it is said that the Anariya – the Worldlings – produce their own suffering from a lack of INTELLIGENCE, and a lack of the understanding to the Dharma of Karma – The Physis of Wyrd – if you will. The only way for the Buddha to ease the suffering of the Anariya, is to educate them – what we term “Enlightenment.” In otherwords – if you give a fish to a begger, you feed him for a day; if you teach a begger how to fish, he eats for life. Acts of charity only temporarily covers the symptoms of stupidity and ignorance. Education annihilates the cause of the problem.
In turn, for the Nobles – the Intelligent – who understand the esoteric value of the Wheel of Karma, can learn to utilize the chain reaction to their advantage. Well thought out intelligent thinking, plus controlled emotions (passion, determination) focused onto a specific goal, governs one’s actions, which must materialize as fruitful results.
It maybe a little hard for someone involved with a single outer form of the ONA to see all this Dharma and Karma stuff in something like the Tree of Wyrd. But one’s eyes begin to see things when one learns the meaning of the word “Wyrd.” I’ll first quote Wiki then I’ll quote a better source to explain what Wyrd means:
[Quote Wiki]
Wyrd is a concept in Old English and Old Norse culture roughly corresponding to fate or karma. The word is ancestral to Modern English weird, which has acquired a very different definition. The cognate term in old Norse is Urðr, with a similar meaning, but also personalized as one of the Norns, Urðr (anglicized as Urd) and appearing in the name of the holy well Urðarbrunnr in Norse mythology. The concept corresponding to “fate” in Old Norse is Ørlǫg.
[End Quote]
[Qoute Arlea Hunt-Anschutz]
The most fundamental concept in heathenry is wyrd. It is also one of the most difficult to explain and hence one of the most often misunderstood. Here’s my stab at an accurate yet relatively brief discussion of how wyrd works and how we can work with wyrd.
The Anglo-Saxon noun wyrd is derived from a verb, weorþan, ‘to become‘, which, in turn, is derived from an IndoEuropean root *uert- meaning ‘to turn‘.[1] (If you noticed the redundant use of “turn” in the previous sentence, good. The use of the modern English phrase “in turn”, illustrates wyrd in action. Watch for it throughout this article.) Wyrd literally means ‘that which has turned’ or ‘that which has become’. It carries the idea of “turned into” in both the sense of becoming something new and the sense of turning back to an original starting point. In a metaphysical terms, wyrd embodies the concept that everything is turning into something else while both being drawn in toward and moving out from its own origins. Thus, we can think of wyrd as a process that continually works the patterns of the past into the patterns of the present.
A good metaphor for wyrd is spinning with a drop spindle. As the fibres turn round and round, they twist together and become thread. In Norse mythology three female entities called the Norns are responsible for shaping lives out of ørlög, the layers of the past. Their names are Urðr (Wyrd) ‘that which has become’; Verðandi (related to the Anglo-Saxon weorþan, see above) ‘that which is in the process of becoming’; and Skuld (Should) ‘that which should necessarily be’. In the Eddic poem Helgakviða Hundingsbana 1, the Norns twist the strands of the infant prince’s ørlög (which in this case can be seen as his heritage, since he has no personal past to speak of) to create a golden cord representing his life.[2]
Another way of understanding wyrd is through a weaving analogy. In the Anglo-Saxon Riming Poem, the narrator says of his life circumstances Me þæt wyrd gewæf, ‘Wyrd wove this for me’[3]. In the Icelandic Njal’s Saga, valkyries weave out the course of a battle on a loom made of weapons and threaded with human entrails.[4] Imagine a patterned piece of cloth being woven on a loom. The horizontal threads (the woof) are woven in in layers along the vertical threads (the warp). The horizontal threads represent layers of past actions. The vertical threads represent a time line. The colour of each horizontal thread as it is woven in will add to the pattern that is already established and influence the pattern that emerges. The threads already woven in cannot be changed, but the overall pattern is never fixed. Existing designs can be expanded into new forms. New designs can be added. Everything we do adds one more layer to the pattern.
One ramification of wyrd in personal human terms is that our past (both our ancestry and our personal history) affects us continually. Who we are, where we are, and what we are doing today is dependent on actions we have taken in the past and actions others have taken in the past which have affected us in some way. And every choice we make in the present builds upon choices we have previously made.
The philosopher Schopenhauer voiced the notion that “our lives are somehow irresistibly shaped into a coherent whole by forces beyond our conscious will”.[5] He believed that neither chance events nor inborn character were enough to explain the consistency and direction in the life course of an individual, and so he postulated “the intention of Fate” to explain this controlling force in our lives. Many people have equated the notion of wyrd with this sort of “fate” concept, and the Norns with the Moerae or Parcae, the Greek and Roman Fates. However, to do so is to ignore the constant interplay between personal wyrd and universal wyrd and the role we each play in creating our own destiny.
The key Schopenhauer seems to have missed is that what he calls “the intention of Fate” is itself created by an interplay between the events that happen to us and our inborn character. We interact with wyrd (that which has become) to create certain personal patterns which affect and are reflected in universal patterns. Those universal patterns, in turn, exert forces which shape our lives.
For example, say I happen to find myself in a situation where someone insults me. I can “freely” choose any one of a number of immediate reactions, from ignoring the person to slapping her. But my choice at that moment is obviously going to be constrained by a number of patterns of wyrd already in place, including my inborn personality characteristics, my social conditioning, my past experiences with being insulted, my relationship with the person who has insulted me, even my hormone levels.
To the extent that my reaction is determined by these patterns, wyrd is shaping my life at that moment, and my reaction may feel to me as though it were predestined (if I want to deny responsibility) or the only “right” choice (if I want to claim responsibility for it). To the extent that I am aware of certain recurring patterns in my life, I might feel as though the person was fated to insult me at that moment. But no matter which way I chose to react to the insult, my reaction will add to the patterns in place and constrain my future actions (if I’m insulted a second time, my reaction will be determined in part by how I behaved when I was insulted the first time.) So, at the same time I am caught up in experiencing certain patterns of wyrd, I am creating them.
Moving from the personal to the universal, my reaction will also add to the patterns affecting the behaviour of the person who insulted me. As a result of my response, she may change her behaviour towards others which will, in turn, change her personal ørlög, and so on. Ultimately, each little choice we make affects universal forces which can come back to affect us in weird ways. The larger patterns of wyrd created by individuals in a particular time and place is the source of the zeitgeist (spirit of the age) which informs the beliefs and behaviour of everyone in a society. Thus, “that which has become”, wyrd, both creates and is created by individual actions, states, and choices.
The metaphor of the “Web of Wyrd” is often used in modern popular sources to illustrate how the actions of individuals can have widespread effects.[6] If we imagine the universe as a big spider’s web and imagine that each node where two strands meet represents an event (or a person or a life) we can visualise the interconnectedness of things. We can see how some things are directly connected whereas others are more distantly connected through a series of links. We can also see how nodes which are closely connected from one perspective (following a single strand from the centre outwards) can be distantly connected from another perspective (following the spiral that continually expands its radius as it moves from the centre). Furthermore, we can see that if we were to disturb any part of the web –say by blowing on it or shaking it, the entire thing would reverberate –though the parts closest to the disturbance would react the most strongly.
With an understanding of wyrd comes a great responsibility. If we know that every action we take (or fail to take, for that matter) will have implications for our own future choices and for the future choices of others, we have an ethical obligation to think carefully about the possible consequences of everything we do. But even if we manage to make all the right choices, we are bound to find ourselves facing difficult circumstances or tough decisions at various times in our lives as a result of the past choices of those connected to us through the web. Since we can’t control everyone else’s actions, nor can we change the past, sometimes we just have to live with what’s been woven for us. In such a case we still have choices. We can ignore our problems in the hope that they will go away, we can burden other people with them, or we can boldly face up to them and do our best to overcome them. A verse from the Anglo-Saxon poem The Wanderer[7] observes:
Ne mæg werigmod wyrde wiðstondan,
ne se hreo hyge helpe gefremman.
For ðon domgeorne dreorigne oft
in hyra breostcofan bindað fæste;
A weary mood won’t withstand wyrd,
nor may the troubled mind find help.
Often, therefore, the fame-yearners
bind dreariness fast in their breast-coffins.
Through the Web of Wyrd may force us into circumstances we would never have freely chosen for ourselves, we always have some choice about how we react in those situations. And how we choose to react will always make a difference, if not to the world at large, then at least to our own ørlög.
[End Quote]
We can see, when the word Wyrd is studied in its native context, that it also is associated with a wheel – a spinning wheel; and the meaning of Wyrd and the spinning wheel is essentially the same as the Wheel of Karma.
By understanding what Wyrd is, we come to a gradual realization – Chronomorphic or Five Dimensional – that we as living beings are not a localized event. But rather a living phenomenon which transcends localized time. That “Now” is an illusion. That the decisions, choices, thoughts, words, emotions, and actions we make in life ‘becomes and turns into’ what we shall experience.
The Spheres of the Tree of Wyrd in the ONA represent planets or stellar bodies. The Sun at the center; the Moon below the Sun; Saturn above the Sun; Jupiter to the northeast; Mars to the northwest; Mercury to the southwest; and Venus to the southeast. These stellar bodies in the Tree of Wyrd actually helps the initiate of the ONA gain a better understanding of the essence of Wyrd – if these Spheres are understood in a slightly different way. Which I will demonstrate.
Beginning with the Moon – the Inner Self – from which originates our thoughts and words. We never pay much attention to where our own thoughts and words come from. But if you were to closely examine yourself, you will realize that you don’t consciously plan every thought you will think or every word you will say – they just come to you. Like the moon, the Self has many faces, all of which makes up an integral entity. The new moon phase represents the ultimate source – the acausal. As the moon waxes the inner Self transitions into the casual.
The Moon’s twilight radiates to the Sphere of Mercury. Mercury, according to myth, is the Messenger of the gods. Messenger meaning he carries the Thoughts and Words of the gods – from the acausal to the causal if you will. Mercury here represents Thought/Word. Thought being as fast as “Quicksilver.”
From Mercury we traverse to Venus. Venus here represents Emotion – of course. Thought, now transforms into Emotions.
From Venus, we move the Sun. The Sun is the transitioning period when an Emotion gains momentum and begins to fiercely burn with passion and determination which are the alchemical fuel needed to transform Venusian emotions into action.
From the Sun, we go to Mars. Mars in mythology is the god of war – action – causal action. The Sphere of Mars represents what strong Emotions has burned with a fierce passion to become real world action.
From Mars, we go to Jupiter/Zeus. Like a lightning bolt out of the sky falling to the earth. Or the regal decree of a King manifesting into law and order which governs his kingdom. What actions we do – heaven born (having manifested from the acausal) – strikes the earth like a thunderous imperial decree which effects the kingdom.
Finally from Jupiter, we come to Saturn. In mythology, Great Saturn, was the god of Corn and Vegetation – growing things. Jupiter’s imperial decree sprouts into fruition – causal experience – it bares fruit. We must all reap, what we sow. Thus Saturn’s symbol is the Sickle of Harvest.
In the Saturnian Sphere, the Initiate become Master – of his own destiny – his own life. If he or she understands the Turning of Wyrd right. Mastership of oneself involves a conscious and intelligent control of one’s thoughts, feelings, and actions. As a skilled driver controls Three Horses pulling a cart to a specific direction. Lack of control – of Master of the Self – is like an incompetent driver, being aimlessly pulled by three wild horses to no particular direction. Self Mastery involves an Inner Alchemy – as Rumpelstiltskin is said to have used this same Spinning Wheel – Wyrd – to turn ordinary straw into Gold.
These Seven Spheres/Phases of becoming, can be seen in all things. For instance Islam. What once began as a Lunar acausal birth deep within the psyche of one man, which inspired Mercurial thought and poems that captured the minds of men. The sacred words of the Holy Quran transformed Muhammad’s thoughts into a Venusian force that provoked the hearts, emotions, and passions of his fellow tribesmen. These emotions stirred until it burned with Solar passion. Until the Martial phase came when Islam flooded its deserts with war and blood. In it’s Jovian phase, Islam was a force and power that stretched from Morocco to Indonesia.
Then it blossomed in its Saturnian phase as an advanced and sophisticated civilization, without which, dark age Europe would not have emerged out of the dark. But stale orthodoxy crept into Islam. It’s old progressive nature was lost, and it went dormant for many centuries. Until now, when Islam has returned to the Spinning Wheel once more with a specific goal and collective purpose: Destruction of Western civilization. Islam’s second round on the Tree of Wyrd is in its Martial phase – there is no argument here, we can see from all the bombings and fallen towers.
Wyrd rewards anyone who knows how to use its creative force with power and dominion. It destroys all those that go against the flow of it’s nature. The Light of the art and science of Wyrd has been long lost as a craft and skill because of Christianity. But the Seventh Way of the ONA has rekindled this heathen Light to empower a new generation towards Mastery of Self, and Progression of Civilization.
Thus, there is more to the Sinister Seven Fold Way of the ONA, and its Satanism then just mindless indulgence – slavery to one’s own impulses. Where profane satanism is a weak excuse to indulge and worship the ego or some other god; the ONA is a Science – a Methodology – of Mastery of Life, Self Mastery, and Casual Progression. It teaches control and mastery of oneself. Only then is the Initiate truly Master of his own Life and Destiny. From that Mastery of the Tree/Wheel of Wyrd, he or she may then help manifest – materialize – the aims/destiny of the ONA – Galactic Empire and a Stellar Humanity.
Chloe
352:O9A
