Written for Operation Werewolf by Operative 413
Operatives from around the country and the world gathered at the second Lupine Equinox Conclave.
They trained. They fought. They learned.
They received words of fury and inspiration over blood and fire. They heard artists sing of death and revolt. They formed bonds of friendship and brotherhood that may last the rest of their lives.
There were also many things they did not do.
They did not talk shit. They did not idly boast. They did not pretend to be someone other than who they were.
You don’t see this often. It’s true that technology enables us to spread a message to the world… for now at least. We can find those of like mind wherever they reside.
But only in theory. We don’t really know who the person is on the other side of that bluescreen. We don’t even know if it’s a person capable of understanding. It could just be a tourist, a snitch, or a consumer looking for a cheap dopamine fix while he or she’s at work or on the subway.
There’s something inherently degrading about online text. It lacks handwriting’s vitality or even the mechanical precision of a typewriter. Even the most profound thoughts become pixels. It risks becoming just a collection of dots you look at while you’re bored.
Instead of meaningful communication, we get visual noise. Praise and insults are cheap because we don’t know if the avatar we see on the screen is real. In some ways, everyone is equal online, which means everyone is worthless.
“Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood,” said Nietzsche. How can one do this online?
We look to an older wisdom. “Each word led me on to another word, Each deed to another deed” were the words of the High One. To write with blood online, we must accomplish the most difficult of all things. Word must lead to deed.
Tribe is not online. Nor is honor, nor brotherhood. These things can only be found in the real world.
More than that, they can only be found in a group context. You can tell yourself you are a warrior, a hero, or a magician. You can lie to yourself. But you can’t lie to your brothers and sisters. They see you for what you are.
Each word written here is meaningless unless it leads to action. More than that, these words, no matter how perfectly expressed or presented, will not reach everyone. They aren’t meant for everyone. They are for a minority of a minority.
An even smaller elite within that group will act. Few indeed will do what Needs to be done without cowering from the resentful judgment of a decaying world.
Some of these few came to the home of the Wolves just days ago. They acted. Suddenly, they found that together, they were many.
Just by doing this, they separated themselves from the herd. They may not all make it to the end of the path. But they have at least begun the journey.
The first step from theory to practice is the most difficult. I salute them for the courage they showed.
It takes courage because action marks the departure from the ideal. Online, you can have some perfect theory. You can confidently declare the way things ought to be. You can decide how people should conduct themselves. If things don’t work out the way you predicted, it’s not your fault. It’s because people didn’t live up to your perfect theory.
You can critique. You can complain. You can hold yourself above the fray, never taking the risk of action, congratulating yourself on your own superiority. You can keep the illusion that you are better than everyone else… until that terrible moment of action.
You either lift that bar or you don’t. You get the girl or you don’t. You win the fight or you stare at your blackened eyes and swollen face in the mirror, meditating on your defeat and humiliation for days afterward.
If an action is hard, walking a path to the end is harder. Injuries and illness take their toll. Friends and lovers can betray you. The world throws obstacles in your path, demanding you fall to your knees and be weak, defeated, and submissive. That’s what this System wants you to be.
And yet we must accept the price for achievement. We must rise with holy defiance in our hearts and strength in our limbs. We must endure to the end. We must fight to bring that ideal into reality, not because it is easy, but because everything worthwhile is hard.
It is hard, but not impossible. I know it is not impossible because I see glimpses of the world that could be. I see it here, now, in this world. I saw it at Conclave.
This was not theory, or gossip, or wishes. These were people bringing the world they wanted into reality. For one day, in one place, it reigned. It existed. It was the rest of the world that was fake.
Operation Werewolf is not about vaguely motivating you. It’s not about making you work harder or get stronger. These aren’t bad things to do, but they won’t transform you. They won’t transform the world.
Operation Werewolf is a challenge for Total Life Reform. It’s an alchemical process with the goal of remaking yourself, and by so doing this, remaking the world.
This requires that you do more than read. It requires you act, and after that first awful step, continue to act, each deed to another deed.
It may seem intimidating. It is intimidating. We have all been on that precipice between thought and action. We who bear the Wolf’s head or the banner of the operation took that first step into the unknown darkness, searching for that fire.
Then you find that fire. There is a moment when you realize that out of that primal Need, you have created something. You’ve built a tribe. You’ve remade yourself. You slowly see that Ideal — battered, beaten but not broken — taking shape in the real world.
The most important things happening today are not online. They aren’t being covered by journalists, chronicled on social media, or tracked by Silicon Valley. Art and ritual, ecstasy and madness, struggle and victory… these things are outside the realm of the blue screen. They are beyond the reach of the Lords of Lies.
The words we speak at ritual and the oaths we take have more impact than anything ever written, or that ever could be written. The tribes we build exist here, now, and are creating a new world over the decaying ruins of the old. Not even death can separate the bonds we are forging.
The only thing that is holding us back from returning the Golden Age is fear. I know you have that fear. I had it too. Don’t let it define you.
If you have the eyes to see and the ears to hear this message, I urge you to act. To take the risk, to justify your existence, to move into the world of blood and iron and away from the fantasy of pixels and illusion. For everything written here is just a means to end.
What is the end? Realizing the Ideal we hold in our hearts and in our blood. I can see glimpses of it, advancing, taking shape, materializing in response to our grand evocation. Look closely in the shadows, in the flames, and on the banners of the divisions.
Perhaps you can see it too.
If you can, step forward.