According to the Order's own claims, it was established in the Welsh Marches of Western England during the late 1960s by a woman who had previously been involved in a secretive pre-Christian sect which survived in the region.

It advocates a spiritual path in which practitioners are required to break societal taboos by isolating themselves from society, committing crimes, embracing political extremism and violence, and carrying out acts of human sacrifice.

[28] According to the Order's account, one of those whom the grand mistress initiated into the group was "Anton Long", an individual who described himself as a British citizen who had spent much of his youth visiting Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

[29] Long claimed that prior to his involvement in the ONA he had been interested in occultism for several years, having contacted a coven based in Fenland in 1968, before moving to London and joining groups that practiced ceremonial magic in the style of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley.

[25] He also claimed a brief involvement in a Satanic group based in Manchester, the Orthodox Temple of the Prince run by Ray Bogart, during which time he encountered the ONA Grand Mistress.

[29] After examining these texts, the historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke stated that in them, Long "evokes a world of witches, outlaw peasant sorcerers, orgies and blood sacrifices at lonely cottages in the woods and valleys of this area [Shropshire and Herefordshire] where he has lived since the early 1980s".

[39] Myatt's text on A Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution, in which he advocated violent militancy in aid of the neo-Nazi cause, was cited as an influence on the nail bomber David Copeland.

[49] Religious studies scholar George Sieg expressed concern with this association, stating that he found it to be "implausible and untenable based on the extent of variance in writing style, personality, and tone" between Myatt and Long.

[32] In 2008, the ONA announced that it was entering the third phase in its history, in which it would once again focus heavily on promotion, utilising such social media as online blogs, forums, Facebook, and YouTube to spread its message.

Nexions and other associated groups have been established in the United States, Australia, Brazil, Egypt, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Serbia, Russia and South Africa.

[77] In the ONA's terminology, the terms Drecc and Niner refer to folk-based or gang-based culture or individuals who support the Order's aims by practical (including criminal) means rather than esoteric ones.

[37] Religious studies scholar Graham Harvey wrote that the ONA fit the stereotype of the Satanist "better than other groups", something which he thought was deliberately achieved by embracing "deeply shocking" and illegal acts.

[36] Monette writes that "a critical examination of the ONA's key texts suggests that the satanic overtones could be cosmetic, and that its core mythos and cosmology are genuinely hermetic, with pagan influences.

The ONA claims that current Western civilization has a Faustian ethos and it has recently undergone its Time of Troubles, with its final stage, an "Imperium" of militaristic governance, due to commence at some point in 1990–2011 and last until 2390.

[109] The group's writings state that while Western civilization had once been "a pioneering entity, imbued with elitist values and exalting the way of the warrior", under the impact of the Magian/Nazarene ethos it has become "essentially neurotic, inward-looking and obsessed", embracing humanism, capitalism, communism, as well as "the sham of democracy" and "the dogma of racial equality.

[109] Both Goodrick-Clarke and Sieg note that these ideas regarding the "Magian soul" and "cultural distortion" brought about by Jews were derived from the works of Oswald Spengler and Francis Parker Yockey.

[110] The ONA praises Nazi Germany as "a practical expression of the Satanic spirit ... a burst of Luciferian light – of zest and power – in an otherwise Nazarene, pacified, and boring world.

[111] The group believes that a neo-Nazi revolution is necessary in order to overthrow the Magian-Nazarene domination of Western society and establish the Imperium, ultimately allowing humanity to enter the Galactic civilization of the future.

However, some ONA texts state that members should embrace neo-Nazism and racism not out of a genuine belief in Nazi ideology, but as part of a "sinister strategy" to advance Aeonic evolution.

[116] The Order is thus far more overtly politically extreme in its aims than other Satanic and left-hand path organisations are, seeking to infiltrate and destabilise modern society through magical and practical means.

[119] The sevenfold system is reflected in the group's symbolic cosmology, the "Tree of Wyrd", on which seven celestial bodies – the Moon, Venus, Mercury, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn – are located.

[124] Most of the ordeals that allow the initiate to proceed to the next stage are publicly revealed by the Order in its introductory material, as it is believed that the true initiatory element lies in the experience itself and can only be attained through performing them.

[citation needed] According to Jeffrey Kaplan, an academic specialist of the far right, these physically and mentally challenging initiatory tasks reflect "the ONA's conception of itself as a vanguard organization composed of a tiny coterie of Nietzschean elites.

"[107] Within the initiatory system of the ONA, there is an emphasis on practitioners adopting "insight roles" in which they work undercover among a politically extreme group for a period of six to eighteen months, gaining experience in something different from their normal life.

[141] Among those Dark Gods whose identities have been discussed in the Order's publicly available material are a goddess named Baphomet who is depicted as a mature woman carrying a severed head.

[143] Sieg drew comparisons between this belief in Vindex and the ideas of Savitri Devi, the prominent Esoteric Hitlerist, regarding the arrival of Kalki, an avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu, to Earth.

[149] The sacrifice is then carried out through either physical or magical means, at which point the killer is believed to absorb power from the body and spirit of the victim, thus entering a new level of "sinister" consciousness.

[53] Monette noted that no ONA nexion cells publicly admitted to carrying out a sacrifice in a ritual manner, but that members had joined the police and military groups in order to engage in legal violence and killing.

[101] The ONA's advocacy of human sacrifice has drawn strong criticism from other Satanist groups like the Temple of Set, who deem it to be detrimental to their own attempts to make Satanism more socially acceptable within Western nations.

[161] ONA influence extends to some black metal bands such as Hvile I Kaos, who, according to a report in the music section of LA Weekly, "attribute their purpose and themes to the philosophies of the Order of Nine Angles".