Order of Nine Angles#

Overview#

The Order of Nine Angles, usually abbreviated ONA or O9A, is a decentralised occult network that developed in Britain during the 1970s. Its literature combines Satanism with neo-Nazi ideology and the deliberate rejection of accepted moral restraints, including advocacy of violence.[1]

The name covers independent individuals and groups, often called nexions. There is no clearly defined central administration or reliable membership count. The network has spread beyond Britain through its publications and online activity.[1]

History and context#

Origins and Anton Long#

The Order’s own histories describe Anton Long bringing together three earlier groups: Camlad, the Noctulians and the Temple of the Sun. Little is independently known about these supposed predecessors.[2]

Long became the principal name associated with its teachings. He is widely identified with David Myatt, who denies the identification. Shanon Shah, Jane Cooper and Suzanne Newcombe find textual evidence supporting it, while declining to make a definitive judgement about Long’s identity.[2]

Texts associated with the movement include Naos, Hostia and the Black Books of Satan. The Mapping Militants Project describes a period of reduced public activity during the 1990s and early 2000s, followed by renewed online promotion from around 2008.[1]

A documented criminal case concerns Ethan Melzer, a former United States Army soldier. In March 2023, he received a 45-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to attempted murder of service members, providing and attempting to provide support to terrorists, and unlawfully transmitting national defence information. According to the US Department of Justice, he shared information about his own unit with O9A associates to facilitate an attack on it.[3]

In December 2025, New Zealand designated the Order of Nine Angles as a terrorist entity. The designation was announced in the New Zealand Gazette on 10 December.[4] The following day, the Gazette corrected the statutory section cited in the notice; the correction did not retract the designation.[6]

Beliefs or practice#

Cosmology#

ONA writings distinguish the causal, the ordinary physical world, from an acausal realm associated with the Dark Gods. They describe magical practice as a means of bringing influences from the acausal into human experience. A nexion can therefore mean a connection between these realms as well as a group of practitioners. These are claims within the Order’s cosmology.[5]

Its symbolic system includes the Tree of Wyrd, arranged around seven celestial bodies. One explanation of the Order’s name adds the complete system and the practitioner to these seven, producing nine angles. Other explanations appear in the literature; there is no single uncontested interpretation.[5]

The Order also describes history as a succession of aeons, during which civilisations rise and decline. Its projected future includes a supposedly superior humanity expanding into space. This vision is bound to a racial account of Western civilisation and antisemitic claims that Jewish influence obstructs its development.[5]

Initiation and transgression#

The Seven Fold Way is a system of initiation through seven grades. It combines occult study with physical ordeals and changes in the practitioner’s way of life. Its literature also describes insight roles: extended involvement in unfamiliar or opposing settings, including extremist organisations, presented as a way to acquire knowledge through experience.[2]

Some ONA texts advocate killing under the term culling, while others describe sacrifice as symbolic or historical. Shah and his co-authors examine these contradictions without dismissing the writings’ endorsement of violence.[2]

The Order’s ideas have also circulated among neo-Nazi groups outside its immediate occult circles. The Mapping Militants Project documents the adoption of ONA material within the Atomwaffen Division. Such borrowing helps explain its influence beyond people who follow its full religious system.[1]

References

  1. Mapping Militants Project, Order of Nine Angles (2022) · Research profile of the decentralized network and its connections to violent extremism. (accessed 2026-10-01) ↩
  2. Shanon Shah, Jane Cooper and Suzanne Newcombe, Occult Beliefs and the Far Right (online 2023; journal issue 2026) · Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 49(1): 61–81. Open-access research, with qualification of the Anton Long identity claim. (accessed 2026-10-01) ↩
  3. US Department of Justice, Former US Army Soldier Sentenced to 45 Years in Prison (3 March 2023) · Official prosecution and sentencing account of Ethan Melzer. (accessed 2026-10-01) ↩
  4. New Zealand Gazette, Designation of Two Terrorist Entities, notice 2025-au7135 (10 December 2025) · Official notice confirmed in indexed Gazette results; see the 11 December 2025 corrigendum, notice 2025-au7194, for correction of the statutory section. (accessed 2026-10-01) ↩
  5. Shanon Shah, Order of Nine Angles, CDAMM (2021) · Scholarly account of the network’s cosmology, millenarianism, and extremist context. (accessed 2026-10-01) ↩
  6. New Zealand Gazette, Corrigendum, Designation of Two Terrorist Entities, 2025-au7194 (11 December 2025) · Official correction to the statutory section cited in notice 2025-au7135. It does not retract the designation. (accessed 2026-10-01) ↩

This encyclopedia covers traditions beyond the High Satanic Church. Church doctrine is identified as such when it appears.