 The ONA describe their occultism both as "Traditional Satanism", and as a "mystical sinisterly-numinous tradition". According to Jesper Aagaard Petersen, an academic specialist of Satanism, the Order present "a recognizable new interpretation of Satanism and the Left Hand Path", and for those involved in the group, Satanism is not simply a religion but a way of life. The Order postulates Satanism as an arduous individual achievement of self-mastery and Nietzschean self-overcoming, with an emphasis on individual growth through practical acts of risk, prowess and endurance. Therefore, "[t] he goal of the Satanism of the ONA is to create a new individual through direct experience, practice and self-development [with] the grades of the ONA system being highly individual, based on the initiates' own practical and real-life acts, instead of merely performing certain ceremonial rituals". Thus Satanism, the ONA assert, requires venturing into the realm of the forbidden and illegal in order to shake the practitioner loose of cultural and political conditioning. Intentionally transgressive, the Order has been characterised as providing "an aggressive and elitist spirituality". Religious studies scholar Graham Harvey claimed 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.
