The Numinous Dark
David Myatt: A Mage For Our Times?
Introduction - The Names of David Myatt
David Myatt has many names - the majority attributed to him by others,
and some which he himself uses, or has used. Perhaps the name most
associated, by others, with him is that of Anton Long, GrandMaster of
the sinister Occult group The Order of Nine Angles (1).
Another
name, conferred on him some decades ago by some of his closest friends,
is The Mage, and this name has now passed into more general usage
among the worldwide sinister-kindred of the ONA in the form of either
The Mad
Mage (2) or its American variant of Mad Mu Mu, a
variant conferred upon
him by two young women of the ONA nexion (WSA352) based in Orange
County, California, and now in general usage among the
sinister-kindred of the ONA, with Mu-Mu also being a kind of esoteric
code for the Numinous Dark Way
which WSA352 and its kindred groups propagates, based as this Way is on
what is called the new clans of the ONA:
" As Myatt
pointed out, Clans are the future and a causal manifestation of putting
the principles of empathy and compassion into real practice. To
empathize with our own Clan folk. To care for them, as they will for
us. To provide for them, as they will provide for us. To labor for
their needs and interests, as they will work to satisfy our own needs
and interests. To work together towards self-reliance for the sake of
our progeny, so they may inherit a better life, free of the suffering
that plagues our own.
By adopting and implementing the
“Myattian Imperative,” and working
towards a reasonable manifestation of a functioning Clan; our 352 will
be setting itself apart from other ONA nexions; and other modern
institutions. Taking a progressive step forwards into the future, if
you will. Thus, we can’t convert or force others to join our nexion.
This nexion of ours must itself attract to it those that resonate with
our aura who will live by our oaths, rules, laws, and by the Code of
Honour; and the Myattian Way. With time, so long as our children and
generations continue to reach for the stars, we will slowly make our
way towards that Numinous Dark above. " Kayla: Toward The Numinous Dark (First Epistle of
WSA352)
Mage Myatt
Conventionally, a Mage is defined as a sorcerer, or wizard, and -
slightly less conventionally - is the name given to a Tarot card, one
of the Major Arcana, more normally called The Magician or The Juggler.
As often in such matters, the Order of Nine Angles has its own
definition of the term Mage, stating that it is one of the seven stages
of their Seven Fold Sinister Way, associated with the stage, or
esoteric grade, of Grand Master/Grand Mistress. That is, it refers to
an individual who, by virtue of their practical experience, and
knowledge of, the sinister (the Dark Side; the Left Hand Path) has
achieved a great understanding and knowledge of themselves, and of
esoteric matters in general, and who has acquired, and practised,
certain esoteric (Occult) skills. These skills, according to the ONA,
include those relating to the use of Aeonic Magick.
What is especially interesting is that the ONA associates the Mage (and
to a lesser extent, the Master/Mistress of The Dark Arts) with skill in
shapeshifting; by which they mean not the mythological ability of a
living human being to somehow transform themselves into animals or even
into an entirely different human body, but rather the practical ability
to successfully assume various rôles, identities, or personae: to
live,
to be, to act out the life, undetected, of someone else, and all for
the purpose of attaining self-knowledge and self-understanding, and for
the doing of deeds of sinister Aeonic Magick (3).
This proficiency in the dark and esoteric art of shapeshifting - one of
the qualities of a genuine Mage (according to the ONA and other
sinister groups) - most certainly applies to the life of David Myatt
himself, whose rôles, identities, and personae, have included
hermit,
monk, drifter, neo-nazi street thug, convict, poet, mystic, radical
Islamist preaching Jihad, lothario, theoretician of terror, and
sorcerer.
The Mythos of Vindex and The Mage of Dark Imperium
In this instance of shapeshifting, there are some possible parallels
with the legendary life of the mythological figure Merlin, to whom was
also attributed the skill of shapeshifting. Indeed, there are some
other similarities between Myatt's varied life and the legendary lives
of
the wizards Myrddin Wyllt and Myrddin Emrys
on whom the mythological, archetypal, figure of Merlin is said to be
based.
For instance, Myrddin Wyllt is described as "mad", and as having taken
to living in the wilds after being overcome with sorrow at the
suffering he had caused in one battle after another; which rather
reminds me of Myatt's recent life as a rural recluse, and his recent
development (2006-2009) of his Numinous Way based, as he described it,
on his pathei mathos and his
sorrow at the suffering (and deaths) he had caused and incited in the
decades of his violent political and religious activism.
For instance, Myrddin Emrys is described in some (often aural)
pre-Malory accounts as falling rather hopelessly in love with a
beautiful and enchanting woman, the Nimue of later embellished legend,
with this tragic love leading - in those early accounts - to Merlin's
return to solitude and to the death of Nimue by drowning in a lake (4), with later accounts embellishing and changing the
story to have Nimue bewitch Merlin, steal his esoteric powers, and be
the cause of his death, with her becoming a femme fatale akin to Morgan
le Fey. This rather reminds me of the events leading to the suicide of
Myatt's fiancée in 2006; for he, by his own account, had fallen
deeply
in love with this beautiful woman - described in a letter to Myatt by
one of her close friends as "an enchantress; she resembled nothing so
much as a deity of the ancient world. And like such a deity she was
wilful, capricious, and we didn't care because we were too taken up
with adoring her. It's been a privilege to know her..." (5)
It was, possibly, this one tragic very personal event that led
Myatt to reconsider yet again all his previously held beliefs and
views, to his return to a more reclusive existence, to his further
development of his Numinous Way philosophy, and thus possibly led to
his
recent rejection of Islam as his chosen way of life.
However, there are some other, perhaps more interesting and certainly
more relevant, parallels, also. In particular, Myatt's mythos of Vindex.
It is this mythos - an integral and important part of the ONA - which,
in my view, sets Myatt (aka Anton Long) apart from all his
contemporaries, both esoteric, and otherwise, and which clearly
distinguish him from the likes of currently better known Occult figures
such
as Crowley and Anton La Vey, which figures Myatt claims are part of the
Magian distortion - part of the problem - and not a solution to them.
Myatt's mythos of Vindex - which he has expounded in his book The
Mythos of Vindex (6)- is fundamentally not
some mere millennial vision or even some academic theory, but rather a
carefully crafted and sinister methodology
whose aims are the creation of both a new type of human being and a new
type of society. These aims are grounded in the person Myatt calls
Vindex, the revolutionary warrior leader who challenges the Old Order
by
force of arms and who, with his (or her) clans and allies, establishes
new communities based on clan and tribal lines, and who thus becomes
the
genesis of a future "Dark Imperium".
It is my view - which I explained in my essay David
Myatt and The Quest For Vindex (dated
June 2009 AD) - that
" Myatt conceived, created and
implemented
the ONA to achieve certain goals, one of which was and is to counter
the Magian ethos and another of which was to train individuals and send
them out, into the world, to undermine and disrupt the status quo as a
prelude to the
practical revolution Myatt has always regarded as necessary for
the destruction of the Old Order and the emergence of a new order based
upon his law of personal honor. "
That is, the ONA - and the people involved with it and inspired by it -
are one practical means whereby Vindex can be anticipated, aided by
dark sorcery, aided by practical means, and the enemies of Vindex
fought on both the practical, and the Occult, level.
In my essay David
Myatt and The Quest For Vindex I also wrote that
" There is, in my view, a rigorous
consistently
to Myatt's life, writings and involvements, which his many, and vocal,
detractors have overlooked. Myatt has also undertaken, it seems,
something
of personal, interior, spiritual, quest - leaving behind the racism of
National Socialism (and, now, apparently according to some rumors, also
radical Islam) to
develope his own, unique and ethical, philosophy, that of The Numinous
Way, based on the principles of empathy, compassion, and personal
honor;
which philosophy he now regards as the way of life appropriate to and
for the new type of human beings who, he envisages will explore and
settle the planets around the star systems of our Galaxy. "
Myatt's complex Vindex mythos is also thus a prophecy - of events yet
to
be, events which he and his ONA associates darkly desire to be made
reality, and which they actively seek to bring about by their deeds,
both through practical means and by means of dark sorcery.
Thus, the relation of Myatt to Vindex as quite similar to the relation
between Merlin and Arthur. Vindex is the champion of Myatt's Law of the New Aeon, which is
personal honor; and Myatt - and his sinister ONA cohorts, present and
future - are the sorcerers and the sorceresses who nurture, aid,
advise, and protect, Vindex and his (or her) elite warrior clans. For
Myatt, Vindex is above all else a practical warrior, who "by practical
deeds, brings-into-being a new way
of life and who confronts, and who defeats, through force of arms,
those forces which represent the dishonour and the impersonal tyranny
so manifest in the modern world..." (7)
One of Myatt's recent ONA associates, a young Californian woman,
interestingly of Latino ethnicity, wrote that
" Whether it was for
National-Socialism, his Numinous Way, or his Order
of Nine Angles; he [Myatt] imbued the same Myattian ethos, concepts and
vision
into all his writings and institutions he fathered. Calling our eyes up
towards the Cosmos to awaken us to our galactic destiny and providing
us a means for striving for that distant dream. " Toward The Numinous Dark (First Epistle of
WSA352)
One of these means is Vindex; another is Myatt's concept of new clans
and tribes based upon his Law of Personal Honor, his Law of the New
Aeon. Another is his Weltanschauung of Ethical National Socialism,
embodied in his Reichsfolk group. Another of these means is his
mystical philosophy of The Numinous Way. Yet another of these means is
the ONA itself, whose stated aim is to create a new type of human being
(partly using various esoteric Dark Arts) and have these new human
beings create new types of societies. As the young Californian
woman writes in the article quoted above, these are
"the theories and principles of a new
and progressive humanity..." They are all thus - according
to Myatt's associates - prophecies of an entirely new age; prophecies
made by Myatt, The Mage, who has captured, refined and expressed an
entirely new ethos.
The Ethos of Cosmic Exploration and
the Progression of Humanity
Myatt's new ethos is particularly expressed by three things. By the
fact
that his Vindex can be (or may already be) a man or a woman. By
the fact that Myatt does not limit or link Vindex and his (or her)
warrior clans to any specific ethnicity or any specific culture; and by
the fact that Myatt places the law of personal honor at the very centre
of things, thus making it the very practical foundation of the new way
of life that Vindex introduces, based as this way of life is on clans
and tribes rather than upon nations and States. (8)
Thus, Myatt's ethos - his Mythos of Vindex just as much as his
practical and Occult deeds as a sorcerer, a Mage - is most certainly
not what most if not all of his critics have assumed. That is, Myatt is
not now - if he ever was, as himself, as
The Mage - propagating some form of violent racism and white
supremacist neo-nazism, and not, ultimately, seeking to create some
fascist State or some fascist Empire or even some Islamist Khilafah.
Rather, he is propagating a progressive methodology to, in his words,
"establish an
entirely new and conscious and thus more potent
expression of the numinous itself. This new and numinous way of living
replaces the impersonal tyranny of the State with the way of the clan
and the tribe; it replaces the abstraction of politics, and of
democracy, with personal loyalty to an honourable, noble, clan or
tribal leader..."
Hence, he, and his various associates currently scattered around the
world, are striving to replace the old ways of nation and State - and
their laws - with a new type of clan and tribe centred around the law
of personal honor and the personal dignity that abiding by a code of
honor brings to individuals, with these new clans and tribes forming
new cultural communities, and while neither Myatt nor (so far as I
know) any of his associates uses or has used the term a new golden age, that is,
essentially, what they are about, with this new era having to be,
according to Myatt, brought into being by force of arms under the
leadership, the guidance, of Vindex, whose warriors will become akin,
in my view, to
new "Knights of a new Round Table".
According to Myatt
" Vindex restores to the modern world
the fundamental principle
of true, natural justice: the personal justice based on the rule of
personal honour, which thus gives to the individual a genuine freedom.
" Vindex and The Defeat of The
Magian
This restoration will, according to Myatt, begin the necessary change
that will lead, some time in the future, to the exploration and
colonization of the star-systems of our Galaxy, which exploration and
colonization, will be, according to Mage Myatt, the practical genesis
of not only news ways of living and new communities, but also of our
continued and necessary evolution as a species.
As one of Myatt's associates writes
" The ONA is the Methodology thru which
those theories and principles are
transmutated into future galactic civilization..... Aeonic engineering
is required to consciously create a future... Thus the ONA as a means
to apply and use
such principles via aeonic engineering, to manifest a willed future is
a crucial [an alchemical crucible] factor/nexion between the theories
and principles we have today – and the evolved humanity and celestial
civilization of tomorrow. "
Accordingly, one might conclude that it is Myatt as sinister Mage who
will be remembered, and that it will be his mythos, his prophecies,
of Vindex, and his practical work to prepare the way for Vindex, that
will be his enduring legacy, long after his outward, shapeshifting,
rôles as neo-nazi and radical Islamist have been forgotten.
JR Wright
Oxford
August 5, 2009 AD
Footnotes:
(1) I, along with many other people who have studied
the life and works of David Myatt, am of the view that Anton Long was
and still is a pseudonym used by Myatt, and thus that the ONA
represents Myatt's alter ego
- one of Myatt's many and very diverse personae; or, more correctly, the
ONA is an important, if not the central, part of his inner and outer
life.
For an overview of the ONA, refer to such ONA manuscripts as The Quintessence of the ONA:
The Sinister Returning (dated 119 Year of Fayen) and A Brief Explanation of The Dark Tradition,
and Sinister Mythos, of the Order of Nine Angles [ONA Esoteric
Notes 103a] (dated 119 Year of Fayen).
(2) The term "Mad Mage" was first used in a
self-mocking way by Myatt himself in letters written to a
"long-standing academic friend" of his in the 1980's, and whose letters
to Myatt often began Dear Mage.
Myatt has since stated that he has no objection whatsoever to anyone
applying the term Mad Mage to him, in either a friendly, or less than
friendly,
manner, because he is "rather averse to adulation and especially to
sycophancy" and so believes that describing him thus deflates his own
ego and might help toward an objective assessment, by others, of his
life and works. Private Letter to JR
Wright, dated 13.vi.09 CE
(3) Refer, for instance, to ONA manuscripts such as An Introduction to Insight Rôles
(dated 119 Year of Fayen) where both personal and aeonic Insight
Rôles
are discussed.
(4) This death (her suicide by drowning) became one
basis for the legend of The Lady of The Lake, with Nimue being reborn,
after her mortal death, as The Lady of The Lake.
(5) The letter is dated 5th June 2006 (a week after her
death), and Myatt read aloud to me the relevant paragraph during his
visit to me on the second anniversary of her death, thus honouring - by
so reading aloud only that part - the letter writer's stipulation to
"show this [letter] to nobody else..."
(6) So far, only extracts from the first two parts of
this work, by Myatt, have been published (both in 2009).
Part One is entitled Vindex and The
Defeat of The Magian, and Part Two, The Ethos of Vindex In Historical Context.
However, the mythos is explained and described in many ONA works, and
in many of Myatt's other writings, both published and unpublished,
dating from 1984 to 2008 AD. Thus, his book The Mythos of Vindex is more a
compilation, and an elaboration, of these other, older, scattered works
of his.
(7) Quoted from Vindex
and The Defeat of The Magian, Part One of Myatt's work, The Mythos of Vindex.
(8) For these points, see, for example, Part One of Myatt's work, The Mythos of Vindex.
