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196 Order of Nine Angles
Free Thought Societies. It displays works of
Satanic Music and Art, artistic expressions of
all Free Thought, and Left-Hand
Philosophies. The Order is dedicated to
showing all those interested that Satanic Art
isn’t just about devils and demons and blood
and death and evil and gothicism. It’s about
freedom of expression, and the freedom to
explore yourself with whatever artistic forms
you please. (OIL, website)
The order sees itself as addressing what Anton
LaVey referred to as the “Ninth Satanic Sin: Lack
of Aesthetics.” The OIL opposes so-called pop
culture, which it perceives as thinking for people
rather than stimulating independent thought. In
contrast, creativity promotes self-understanding
and the sense of achievement that is the goal of
Satanic aestheticism. Also, pop culture is seen as
the single most destructive force influencing the
youth of today, and therefore must be challenged
in the hope that it may one day be destroyed.
For Further Reading:
The Order of Infernal Light official website:
http://www.infernal-light.org
Order of Nine Angles
The Order of the Nine Angles (ONA) is a secretive
British Satanist group that acquired notoriety
by openly advocating “culling,” namely human
sacrifice. Victims are not to be chosen randomly,
but rather chosen so as to make a “contribution to
improving the human stock [by] removing the
worthless, the weak, [and] the diseased (in terms
of character).” This may be accomplished via
magic or by assassination. Whether anyone in the
group has ever actually taken a life is unknown,
but most outsiders reject ONA’s discourse about
culling as either macho posturing or a strategy for
attracting attention by creating controversy.
According to one online source who interviewed
one of the members, “[ONA is] a nucleus of four
middle aged men surrounded by up to ten
younger aspiring acolytes, again all male. The
group uses homosexual rites and although they
may well have contact with the far right are highly
unlikely to be capable of carrying out numerous
murders as darkly hinted at” (Hexagon Archive,
website).
A perusal of ONA’s literature (many short
essays are posted on the worldwide web) makes it
clear that the order is more a Left-Hand Path
(LHP) magical group than a group in the tradition
of Anton LaVey. ONA, in fact, explicitly
denounces organizations like LaVey’s Church of
Satan for presenting Satanism as a “good” religion.
For example, in a 1994 interview incorporated
into Gavin Baddeley’s Lucifer Rising, the
pseudonymous Christos Beest (Stephen Brown)
asserts that “A lot of people at the Temple of Set
and the Church of Satan are trying to reestablish
Satanism as a moral religion. Something which is
sanitized, something which is misunderstood
and really quite nice. What the ONA is doing is
countering that by saying, ‘No, it isn’t.’ It’s regaining
the original darkness of what Satanism is,
because if Satanism isn’t evil, what is”(Baddeley
1994, 164)
ONA proclaims its aims as being:
1. To increase the number of genuine Adepts,
Masters/Lady Masters, by guiding individuals
along the path to Adeptship and beyond.
2. To make the path to Adeptship and beyond
[the “Seven-Fold Sinister Way”] more widely
available, enabling anyone, should they
possess the necessary desire, to strive toward
the ultimate goal.
3. To extend esoteric knowledge and
techniques—i.e., to (a) creatively extend our
esoteric knowledge and understanding and
thus increase the consciousness of our species;
(b) develop new techniques which make this
new knowledge and understanding useful to
those following the Seven-Fold Sinister Way;
(c) implement this knowledge and
understanding in a practical way, thus causing
change(s) in society/societies. Areas of
importance for the immediate future are: (i)
music; (ii) Art/images/“film” etc.; (iii) the
creation of an “esoteric” community; and (iv)
the development and extension of an abstract
symbolic language (“beyond the Star Game”).