From the field of military science comes the concept of the “opposing force” or “OPFOR,” elite cadres of soldiers trained and equipped to think and fight like the enemy of the fighting force to which they belong.
During the Cold War, for instance, when the Soviet Union was the nation’s designated enemy, the US Army faced off against OPFOR trained in Soviet military doctrine and equipped with simulacra of T-72s and BMPs. During the War on Terror, when Muslim insurgents in the Middle East were the nation’s designated enemy, the OPFOR transformed into lightly-armed skirmishers who fought like their real-life Afghani and Iraqi counterparts.
Today the emerging consensus among the sharpest thinkers of the Dissident Right here on substack is that America is fighting a spiritual or occult war. In this article I want to explore the spiritual war from the point of view of the OPFOR.
The Nature of the Enemy
Long before the rise of the Dissident Right on Substack, and long before American Christians realized there was a spiritual war, Traditionalists such as Rene Guenon and Julius Evola had already identified the existence and nature of this war.
According to the Traditionalists, the culture war between tradition and modernity is actually an occult war between the forces of cosmos and the forces of chaos. This occult war has been ongoing since ancient or Biblical times and throughout that time, the forces of chaos have been the cause of every ideology and influence that disintegrates, subverts, and degrades traditional society. Those forces have worked indirectly, to subtly influence human hearts and minds in ways that lead them to degeneration. The forces of chaos had, until the early 20th century, worked primarily to negate tradition, but that project of anti-tradition was effectively completed by the mid-20th century. Thereafter, the forces of chaos began to focus on the creation of a counter-tradition, openly predicated on a debased, infrahuman, and inverted spirituality. The ultimate goal of this counter-tradition, the Traditionalists believed, would be to establish a global totalitarian empire and church that parodies and inverts the true empire and true church of Tradition.
But what establishing a global totalitarian empire isn’t the final objective of the spiritual enemy? What if the objective is actually far more diabolical?
Professor Bruce Charlton, on his blog Charlton Teaching, has written extensively about the nature of evil. According to Charlton, there are three types of evil. Luciferic, Ahrimanic, and Sorathic. As he explains,
This ordering is reflected in several ways, which are related.
First it describes the ordering of dominance in history, secondly the degree of evil-ness, and thirdly it reflects the societal hierarchy of The Masses, The Establishment, and The Satanic powers.
By societal hierarchy I mean that Luciferic evil dominates the Masses - who are evil in impulsive, short-termist ways; Ahrimanic evil is typical of the Global Establishment and its managerial-class servants - who regard Men as merely human resources towards abstract goals; and the Sorathic evil of negation, value-inversion and destruction of The Good is characteristic of the demonic overlords.
Let’s explore each a bit.
Luciferic Evil
Luciferic evil is named for, and symbolized by, Lucifer’s rejection of God’s sovereignty: “I will not serve.” It represents the first stage of evil, in its anti-authoritarian, individualist, and rebellious aspect which seeks to overthrow cosmos (natural order) to maximize freedom of action. Luciferian evil is often attractive, in the lustful blood-and-song manner of ancient pagan heroes, pirates, and rebels.
Charlton argues that Luciferic evil dominated the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s as well as certain aspects of the Libertarian movement. According to Charlton:
The Luciferic is (roughly) the impulsive, instinctive, self-gratifying, psychopathic kind of evil - as characterised by the frenzied violence and torture of unbridled war; or the greedy lustfulness that drives the sexual revolution… The 'sixties impulse' was Luciferic.
I would add that some members of the Dissident Right probably also have some Luciferian evil in our souls, shouting “I do not consent” to clown world not so much out of support for God but simply out of refusal to pay homage to what we disagree with. (Certainly I am guilty of this.)
Another blogger from the Charltonsphere, William James Tychonievich, explains:
Those who follow Lucifer are motivated by pleasure rather than the avoidance of pain, and are willing to embrace risk, danger, adventure, even a sort of heroism, in its pursuit. They do not shy away from violence and may even revel in it. Alcibiades, Casanova, Blackbeard -- Falstaff, even.
What Charlton and Tychonievich call Luciferic evil equates to what Guenon and Evola called anti-tradition. By exploiting human selfishness, individualism, and lust, it toppled the Traditional world.
But in the 20th century there came a turning point, when Luciferic evil gave way to Ahrimanic evil, and anti-tradition gave way to counter-tradition.
Ahrimanic Evil
Ahrimanic evil is named for Ahriman, the Zoroastrian adversary of Ahura Mazda. Unlike Lucifer, Ahriman is not a rebel; he is rather a full-fledged counter-sovereign implacably opposed to God, though one lacking in the creative capacity. Charlton explains:
Ahrimanic evil aims to create a system of value-inversions (virtue becomes vice, while sin is encouraged and rewarded; truth becomes hate-facts and fake-news, while lies are science... etc.). This System will (by such means as law, media propaganda and corporate regulations) subversively 'process' people into a social structure that is anti-God, anti-Christian, anti-Good.
The Ahrimanic evil is more modern; it is the despair-inducing, soul-destroying, utterly-demotivating Iron Cage of totalitarian bureaucracy - where all is a single system and all Men are merely cogs to serve it. This is the evil of late Soviet communism, of The Borg, of the overpromoted-middle-manager, Head Girl Type (e.g. the-3-Ms - Merkel, May, Macron) that increasingly runs large organizations, corporations and Western nations.
Tychonievich describes Ahrimanic evil in contrast to Luciferic evil:
If Lucifer seeks pleasure, Ahriman seeks control. Note that this is not necessarily the same thing as seeking power. Those who serve Ahriman may seek to be in control themselves, but more often their goal may simply be that everything be under control. Hierarchy is of Ahriman, because even those who are far from the top have no objection to it. Even an Ahrimanist who has the ability to control things personally will generally defer these personal decisions to a system or algorithm, personal responsibility being unpleasantly risky. A near-perfect example of Ahrimanic man is the 2020s birdemicist, happy to submit to house arrest, universal surveillance and censorship, and forced medical procedures -- rather than take a chance of catching the flu. "Non serviam" is Lucifer's motto, not Ahriman's; if Ahrimanism were condensed into a two-word motto, it would be, "Safety first" -- or, if more than two words are needed, "None are safe until all are safe.
What Charlton and Tychonievich call Ahrimanic evil equates to what Guenon and Evola called counter-tradition. Having allowed Luciferic evil to “clear the field” of the physiocratic or cosmic order based on beauty, goodness, and truth, Ahrimanic evil proceeds to implement the Black Iron Prison of our contemporary consensus, a system of control over our thoughts and actions.
The Traditionalist analysis of the occult war stops with Ahrimanic evil. Charlton and his cohorts, however, believe Ahrimanic evil is being subsumed by its successor, Sorathic evil.
Sorathic Evil
Sorathic evil is named for Sorath, who Rudolf Steiner described as “the sun-demon of Revelations, whose number is 666.” (For more on Steiner’s description of Sorath, read this essay.)
Charlton explains Sorathic evil as:
…. the purest, most absolutely negative form of evil.
If Luciferic evil is motivated by short-termist pleasure; while Ahrimanic evil is motivated by God-denial, spiritual blindness and reductionism towards a meaningless world of mechanical procedures; then the Sorathic impulse is driven by negative impulses - primarily fear, resentment and hatred.
Sorathic evil will therefore tend to destroy both the lustful pleasures of Luciferic evil, and the complex functional bureaucracies of Ahrimanic evil….
Tychonievich describes Sorath like this:
By Sorath I mean the principle of evil at its purest, the devil of all devils, Goethe's "spirit that negates." God is the love-motivated Creator, and Sorath is the hate-motivated anti-Creator, who opposes all creation -- who thinks it "better nothing would begin" and that all that has begun "deserves to perish wretchedly."
Sorath's ultimate goal is that nothing at all exist, including Sorath himself.
There is no equivalent of Sorathic evil in Tradition; Evola and Guenon wrote their most important works during the inflection point when Luciferic evil began to give way to Ahrimanic evil. Neither lived to see the final stage, the stage at which we have arrived.
For, according to Charlton, the world we inhabit is actually already Sorathic:
A world in which the Luciferic lusts of sex/ drugs and the rock-and-roll lifestyle are forbidden and punished; and also a world in which the global system is being disabled and destroyed - even as its Ahrimanic architects have successfully accomplished a silent global coup, and are trying to perfect it into the grandiose schemes of The Great Reset/ Agenda 2030.
In 2020 we observe all modern institutions, corporations and every kind of bureaucracy as rapidly declining in efficiency and effectiveness - under pressure from an ever-increasing culture of fear, victimology, entitlement and resentment.
Sorath divides Mankind into more-and-more, smaller-and-smaller, self-identified victim groups; each resentful-of and pitted-against each other. The aim is eventually for each person to feel alone, consumed by feelings of thwarted entitlement, and hatred of the world; and living in permanent fear of a whole world of other people, each of whom resents and hates the solo-victim just as he hates them.
And then - eventually - Sorath's intent is that everyone, without exception, should die in fear and despair.
Even those of us who are living it can be misled as to Sorathic evil’s objective really is. Indeed, most of the servants of evil don’t even understand it:
[The tripartite nature of evil] leads to considerable mutual incomprehension looking upwards.
The evil Masses simply cannot recognize the evilness of the Establishment-managerial class; they cannot comprehend that the Establishment's vast and comprehensive agendas, plans, schemes are a kind of evil.
The Masses cannot see this as evil because it is so abstract, so impersonal. Ahrimanic evil has very little 'fun'; it is dull drudgery - meetings, tick-boxes and flow charts.
And when the Global Establishment look upwards to their demonic overlords; they too fail to see that demonic evil is of a very different nature from the complex Ahrimanic, international, bureaucratic systems that are so laboriously, so tediously, being constructed at present.
Our overlords though the plan was a new world order… but the real orders are to end the world.
OPFOREVIL
Let’s now return to our original premise. Let’s assume that the Charltonists are correct in asserting the tripartite nature of spiritual evil; correct that evil proceeds in stages; and correct that we are now at the Sorathic stage. Let’s put ourselves in the mindset of a Sorathic opposition force - OPFOREVIL.
What is the strategic situation in which we seek to implement our evil plan? While we can’t be certain, the following conjectures seem plausible given our framework:
OPFOREVIL’s forces are genuinely spiritual — concretely, they are the demons, djinn, and devils of religion; or, abstractly, the “subtle lower forces” of Tradition. In either case, Sorathic evil is not just a metaphor for men who want to see the world burn. Those men are merely its tools.
OPFOREVIL is not unopposed. The reality of spiritual evil necessitates (or at least strongly suggests) the reality of spiritual good. Angels, heroes, saints, and above all, God, are the OPFOREVIL’s own opposition force (OPFORGOOD).
OPFOREVIL’s objective is the destruction of the world and the annihilation or damnation of every living creature within it.
OPFOREVIL has the capacity to bring about the destruction of the world, or at least most of it, through manipulation of material means, e.g. it controls the world’s nuclear arsenals, biological weapons, etc.
However, our material world is not “all there is.” Even if this world were to be annihilated, the higher realms of God (Heaven, Paradise, etc.) would continue to exist, as would the souls of those who had ascended to those heights. If a great many souls escape annihilation or damnation, that is a defeat for OPFOREVIL and victory for OPFORGOOD.
Souls ascend to the higher realms (e.g escape annihilation) through religiosity that encourages the correct spiritual action (faith in God, doing good works, submission to Allah, or whatever else one deems to be true). We can remain agnostic about the exact spiritual action required, simply acknowledging that the Luciferic anti-tradition and Ahrimanic counter-tradition work against all of them.
Now consider:
The global population is higher than it has ever been before. There are more souls available for annihilation or damnation today than ever before in history.
The global birth rate has collapsed and the global population will soon begin to decline. Therefore, there are more souls available for annihilation or damnation in our era than there will be in the future.
The level of religiosity in the world’s population is lower than at any time in history. A record number of people have become agnostic or atheistic, and even among the religious, their religiosity is generally thinner and weaker than in prior eras. If true religiosity is what leads to the spiritual action that permits the soul to escape annihilation or damnation, then a huge percentage of the world, probably the highest percentage in history, is vulnerable.
There is an argument to be made that the decline in religiosity might begin to reverse itself, for two reasons. First, that religious people are more likely to have children, who are in turn more religious than the children of atheists; second, that as spiritual evil becomes more apparent, more and more people seek out spiritual good.
The global capacity for self-destruction is probably as high as it has ever been. Arguably, it was a bit higher at the height of the Cold War, when the nuclear arsenals were far more vast; but even if the nuclear threat is somewhat diminished, the bioweapon threat is greatly increased, the food chain is more fragile, etc. Meanwhile, the unstable “Thucydides Trap” of our current geopolitics has set the stage for world war.
If the above are true, then the time for OPFOREVIL to strike is… right about now.
The capacity for destruction is about as high as its ever been; the opportunity to launch a total global war is as high as its ever been; the population available for annihilation and damnation in that war is higher than it has ever been; and the population available for annihilation and damnation in the future will soon be lower both in raw numbers and relative percentage of the religious.
From OPFOREVIL’s perspective, there is no time to waste. They need to learn to stop worrying and love the bomb! That is, if this analysis holds, we can and should expect OPFOREVIL to attempt to bring about a total war with the objective of mass death and population genocide. Something like, well, this:
Now, it must be said that I am myself not entirely convinced of the analysis. A convincing case could be made, for instance, that global population might continue to grow, that religiosity might continue to wane, and that therefore OPFOREVIL should wait.
A convincing case could also be made that this is all B.S.: Evola, Guenon, Charlton, and Tychonievich are engaged in conjecture, not scientific assessment of probabilities and I certainly don’t have any evidence that anti-tradition and counter-tradition were actual strategies carried out by evil forces, nor that Luciferic, Ahrimanic, or Sorathic evil are real. Indeed, in my prior tenure as an atheist-materialist, I would have found the entire notion to be pure crackpottery, and there is part of me that still does.
But there is another part of me that looks at our world, deeply in the grip of insanity and evil, falling apart in a crisis of competency, teetering on the brink of total war, and thinks this analysis is entirely correct. If the world isn’t run by Sorathic demons steering us towards destruction, man it sure looks like it could be.
I will continue to contemplate it on the Tree of Woe.
