The Order of Nine Angles – Labyrinthos Mythologicus

Diabological Dissent

Being Dissension From Some Mundane Misconceptions
Relating to Certain Esoteric Matters
Part One

The Ancient Wisdom of the Isles of Briton

Esoterically – that is, according to our aural tradition, deriving from the Camlad Rounwytha association – it is a mundane misconception that some or all of the indigenous population of the lands now known as the British Isles worshipped or made homage/sacrifices to specific named deities, divinities or spirits, in the manner – for example – of the Greeks and Romans, or the ancient Egyptians.

According to this aural esoteric tradition – which as always is to be believed or not, according to one’s own perception and empathy – there was no naming per se, since such a naming of specific entities is a contradiction of that undivided and empathic knowing of the natural world which formed the essence of the ancient wisdom of these Isles. An empathic knowing which by its nature is word-less and deems it unwise (an act of what we now term hubris) to give names to that-which or aspects of that-which (such as Nature) which is beyond the power of ordinary mortals to control (or even completely understand). This is a knowing of what is mysterious and numinous as such a mysterium is; that is word-less, unspoken.

This is the knowing – the ancient wisdom – of the natural balance; a knowing of mimesis, of community, and of propitiation: of us as mortals as living, as being balanced, between the earth and the heavens and thus not being separate from Nature. This is the knowing of such balance being necessary for good fortune, for good health, for good crops, and – importantly – of being natural and necessary for our immediate family and the extended family that is our community.

This is the knowing of some deeds being unwise because they can and do upset the natural and very delicate balance that exists between us, our ancestral communities, and Nature. This is the ancient knowing that pre-dates the separation of us – as an individual with individual desires and goals – from our ancestral community with the duties and obligations which such a natural belonging entailed.

A specific naming of specific entities, with individual personal evokations/supplications of and to them – implies that loss of this intuitive and ancestral knowing of ourselves as part our community, our folk; as part of the flow, the changing, of Nature. Such a loss is associated with and often derives from the move away from a shared rural agrarian communities (of free men and women co-operating together) to a more urbanized regimented way of live where there was often some kind of slavery or serfdom.

The majority of what have been assumed to be named entities of an indigenous British/Celtic tradition reveal either: (1) the influence of Roman culture, beliefs and practices, based as this culture was – at the time of Roman influence in these Isles – on a more urbanized, imperial, way of life where slavery, and division, and individual notions of being and thus of personal ‘destiny’ were the norm; and/or (1) later (post-Roman) Celtic/Irish myths and legends, or those of later invaders, such as the Vikings and Saxons.

Instead of individual personal (or even communal) evokations/supplications of and to specific named entities, there was in the ancient ancestral way only two essential things: (1) communal celebrations and ‘givings’ at certain times of year (determined by the cycle of Nature in relation to crops and seasons, often marked by the first seasonal rising of certain bright stars); and (2) the individual following of certain traditions and customs and which traditions or customs were said to bring good fortune or be able to divert misfortune. Among the former would have been the forerunner of our ‘harvest festivals’ where certain produce was set aside and left (often at certain sites of ancestral importance) as offerings, as gifts – a common folk custom all over the world. Among the later would have been the carrying or the obtaining of certain charms – again, a common folk custom all over the world.

Importantly, such gifts and such charms were, in living ancestral cultures, understood as means to maintain or regain the natural and necessary balance – often to placate or to please Nature, and those always un-named ‘spirits’ or sprites which were part of Nature, and/or the spirits of our own ancestors and those of our relatives.

These things arose from – were part of – how the individual functioned, lived; for their being – their knowing of themselves – was in such ancestral living cultures and communities not that of some named separate individual with a possible personal ‘destiny’ or some personal goal or aim of personal happiness, but rather as a natural, necessary, functioning part of the whole formed from their family, their folk community, the land where they dwelt and from Nature which gave that land, their community and they themselves Life.  Thus, they felt that what they did affected not only them but Nature, their family, the folk community, and their dead ancestors. And it is this non-individual connexion – this dependency, human, of Nature, and of beyond – which is the essence of the ancient wisdom of these Isles, of other living cultures, and of what has come to be called ‘paganism’.

In respect of named entities assumed to be part of an indigenous British/Celtic tradition, let us consider, for instance, the name Maponos. This has come to be regarded, by some people involved in or studying esotericism, as some British/Celtic divinity similar to Apollo. The early inscriptions and texts of this name are either in Latin or reveal a Latin influence. Furthermore, the modern etymologies given for this name are purely speculative, based on tenuous comparatives or even more tenuous suppositions – for example, some even giving the root, rather fancifully, as from the Celtic mab.

One therefore has the ridiculous spectacle of some esoterically-inclined folk in these Isles actually believing – on the basis of some Roman and post-Roman inscriptions and on the basis of some speculative etymology – that Maponos (or some such name) was a Celtic/Britannic divinity – ‘the divine son’ or some such nonsense – and therefore using this name in some rites they or others have concocted for some alleged or assumed esoteric aim.

However, those aware – empathically or otherwise – of the ancient wisdom of these Isles will know that the very naming of such a specific entity reveals both a non-indigenous influence (in this case, that of Rome) and also a move from the way of the communal, the tribal, the kindred, toward the cult, the idea, of the self and thence to the isolated rootless often urban ‘nuclear family’. That is, a move away from the pagan numen toward the material ethos of the Magian.

Anton Long
Order of Nine Angles
122 Year of Fayen