Legends, Myths, Tests - and Laughter
Let us not forget that the Sinister Path involves a lot of fun - a lot
of laughter and pleasure - as well as a certain dark, and sometimes
even grim, striving. There is and should be ecstasy; exultation - as
there must be, beyond the stage of novice, the ability, as I have
wriiten elsewhere, to not take one's self too seriously: to have fun at
one's own expense.
It is one of the many signs of the failures - of those who pose at
being Satanists - that they take themselves too seriously, and can
become obsessed, with themselves, with others, with "things". Our way
means self-understanding and self-honesty - we have to know, and admit,
when we are wrong and so - knowing and admitting - we can move on,
learning from our errors of experience.
Those along our Way should always test themselves - as those, being
guided, will sometimes be tested. Always, there should be questions, a
striving to understand, to know, to not be satisfied with what is
given, or read, or shown, or told. What is important is the practical
experience, the following of the Way, the learning that results -
nearly everything is a form, a presencing, and thus only a beginning, a
move toward that genuine understanding which is beyond all causal forms.
Thus, legends, myths, traditions - even those of the ONA! - may be interesting and they may (or
may not) possess some aspect or aspects of a certain causal truth,
often limited to a certain causal time. Mostly, such things are tools,
a means - to create what is beyond them, which is of the essence from
which such "things" derive. All these things should therefore be
related to this, their context. But it is up to each and every novice,
and Initiate, to study such things - to analyze them, and to form their
own conclusions about such things. Their conclusions may be wrong - but
so what?
There is a real truth in the seeming riddle that the ONA is, and is
not, a tradition. Like a numinous musical creation, there are many
layers, just as many and diverse "meanings" can be projected onto the
ONA. But in the end even the ONA, public or esoteric - what is found or
given or discovered by each new Initiate and Adept - is but one means
to take us from this lowly causal existence to the realms where true
magick and real living begin..... And what fun can we have on the way!
"One of the least-known but important signs of a genuine Adept of our Dark
Tradition, our sinister way, is the ability to not take one's self too
seriously - to laugh, at one's self, and especially at others: those who fall
for the japes, the games, the riddles, the tests, that we as Adepts set for
neophytes, for the poseurs, for the supine masses. For we revel in such
things, in such games, which we create and play for our own amusement, and
that of others like us, just as we love to be changelings and cause confusion,
misunderstanding, doubt, uncertainty - and, occasionally, the light of
insight, dawning as it can and does upon one person possessed of our own
evolutionary and magickal abilities, perchance propelling that person towards
us and our ways..." (The Laughter of the Adept)
Anton Long
115yf