1. The Abyss

What has been separated - into apparent opposites - is the sinister and the numinous, and the necessary preparation for Entering The Abyss (as briefly mentioned in The Methods and Tradition of The Seven Fold Way, below) involves the Internal Adept, over a period of several years (around three years is the expected and necessary norm), living in an empathic and numinous way and thus learning from such a living. This living is not, however, an extended Insight Role, but instead a complete and deliberate re-orientation of the consciousness, emotions, psyche, and way of life of the individual, and is often made manifest in a necessary practical manner by the aspirant Master/LadyMaster becoming, for example, an artisan (and thus learning an appropriate craft), or working in a caring profession, or pursuing artistic/musical /cultural pursuits consistent with such empathic and numinous living.

This living is not an Insight Role because Insight Roles are specific and a personal choice. Here, there is no personal choice of type of living (in terms of deciding something opposite to one's personal character) and no specific containing restraining role. There is only a flowing of numinosity through the individual, grounded by some practical means, such as being an artisan. This numinous living is obviously in stark contrast - and seemingly opposed - to the previously experienced sinister aspects of someone following the Seven Fold Way, and it is for the individual to resolve in their own manner in their own causal Time whatever conflicts - personal, moral, psychic or otherwise - that may arise. A resolution that leads - if the individual decides to continue and after a duration of causal years - to a natural integration, the necessary alchemical synthesis; the individual then having the experience, and the esoteric empathy, to know when such a synthesis of sinister and numinous has occurred.

There then follows a taking of The Oath of The Abyss and thence the Grade Ritual - the Rite of The Abyss - where the annihilation of both sinister and numinous, and of the new amalgam formed from their synthesis, occurs.

Order of Nine Angles 122 Year of Fayen

2. The Methods and Tradition of The Seven Fold Way

Introduction - The Methods

The Seven Fold Way of the traditional nexions of the Order of Nine Angles is a difficult and life-long personal commitment, and involves three basic methods:

(1) practical experience, both esoteric and exoteric; (2) a learning from that experience; and (3) a progression toward a certain specific personal goal.

1. This means the individual acquires practical experience of both of the Occult/TheDarkArts [External, Internal and Aeonic sorcery] and of doing sinister (amoral and exeatic) deeds in the real world.

2. This means that the individual learns from their errors, their mistakes, and their success - a learning requiring self-honesty, interior reflexion, and a rational awareness of themselves into relation to their life-long quest: that is, in relation to the goal.

3. This means that (1) and (2) occur again and again until the long-term goal is reached - a process traditionally represented by the seven stages of the Tree of Wyrd, involving the progress from Neophyte to Magus/Mousa. The actual aim is to progress toward, into, and beyond, The Abyss: which rencounter is: (a) exoterically, the genesis of the new type of human being which it is one of the aims of the ONA to facilitate, as prelude to our New Aeon and as a manifestation, a presencing, of that new Aeon; and (b) esoterically, the genesis of individual wisdom and a prelude to a possible transition toward the next and final stage, that of gnosis, of ‘immortality' in the realms of the acausal.

These methods are personal, direct, individual. They require that the individual take responsibility for themselves; is not bound by any restrictions or any morality, and learns not from books or texts or from someone else but rather by practical experience extending over a period of several decades.

The Tradition of Esoteric Learning

For millennia, according to aural tradition, esoteric knowledge - the methods, the means, required for an individual to acquire wisdom - The Philosophers Stone (aka the stage of Immortal) - has been learnt from a few reclusive Adepts, with this knowledge being concerned with three traditional things: (1) the slow process of an internal, alchemical, decades-long change in the individual as a result of direct esoteric and exoteric personal experience and the learning from that experience - that is, the numinous authority of pathei- mathos; (2) a certain and limited personal guidance - from one of those more experienced in such matters - on a direct individual basis (person to person), if such advice be sought; and (3) the cultivation of the virtue of &petń, manifest as this is in a noble, a cultured, a learned, personal character.

Such qualities, such an appreciation, and such understanding of the slow personal progress toward esoteric wisdom, are what have now been overlooked, forgotten, or scorned, by those who in their hasty search for answers have come to rely upon, or who value, the modern rapid means of modern communication that have been developed.

Order of Nine Angles 122 Year of Fayen (Revised March 123)

Some Notes On The Transition Between Internal Adept and The Abyss

The transition between Internal Adept and the next stage - that of Master/Lady- Master (Mistress of Earth) - is both long and arduous, requiring as it does - among other things - (1) a personal and practical experiencing, and integration, of both Sinister and non-Sinister aspects of living, and of the personality of the Adept; (2) practical experience of Aeonic Magick and of all forms of The Star Game; (3) contributing, through fulfilling their personal Destiny, something unique, and redolent of the Sinister, to human knowledge, achievement, understanding and/or to that presencing “which is beyond human words” and which is often manifest in works of genuine artistic, and/or magickal, genius and originality. In summation, they will have presenced the Sinister both within, and external, to themselves, and externally to a sufficiency that casual effects are noticeable, as they will have both understood and to a certain extent have experienced, the acausal reality which lies behind the nexion of our causal lives, and behind the causality of appearance and forms.