47 Regardie (Ed.) in Crowley, Aleister, The Vision and the Voice. Dallas: Sangreal Foundation, 1972, page #10.
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Upon comparing the facsimile Casaubon to the Golden Dawn, Crowley, and LaVey Keys, I realized the
extent of the distortion that had taken place. Being familiar with language and cipher construction, I set out
to unravel the original Keys to determine their linguistic lineage. After some weeks of work, I concluded that
Enochian is not a true language. Rather it is an artificial jargon, i.e. arbitrary words placed together in
roughly consistent sequences to simulate a true language. It is so cleverly done that it can fool non-linguists
fairly easily:
We have here fragmentary pieces of a very ancient tongue - a language which is far older even
than the Sanskrit. 48
Immediately after admitting that he is no philologist and is “without the least scientific knowledge of
comparative languages”, Regardie offers the above statement about Enochian - which may be discounted
accordingly.
The story continues, however: Aleister Crowley included virtually the same sentence in his Confessions
(page #612), again with no supporting evidence whatever.
Then Anton LaVey, assuming that both Regardie and Crowley must have known what they were talking
about, included virtually the same sentence in his Satanic Bible (page #155).
Later attempts to validate Enochian as a language or to place it historically - Donald C. Laycock’s The
Complete Enochian Dictionary (London: Askin, 1978) and Geoffrey James’ The Enochian Evocation of Dr.
John Dee (Berkeley Heights, NJ: Heptangle Books, 1984) - have met with similar failure. James, following
Laycock, reaches the conclusion that the unpronounceable words and random letter arrangements of
Enochian indicate that it was designed for non-material entities [lacking vocal cords]!
The last word was written by Hans Holzer in his The Truth About Witchcraft (1969), in which he called
the language “Inelkian” and labeled it “a form of distorted Hebrew”!
It is even possible to “write” in Enochian as Crowley did, altering suffixes to create the impression of
declension or conjugation. But a comprehensive grammar, essential to a true written or spoken tongue, is
lacking.
For an example of how a jargon may be used, see pages #181-201 of the Satanic Rituals by Anton
Szandor LaVey. Some years ago I ghostwrote the entire section on H.P. Lovecraft - introduction and rituals -
for the book. It was the work of about two months to develop the jargon that became the “nameless
language” [I called it “Yuggothic”] of the Ceremony of the Nine Angles and the Call to Cthulhu. A word that
sounded properly “Lovecraftian” would be constructed arbitrarily: El-aka = world, gryenn’h = [of] horrors.
Then the word would be used consistently throughout the text of both rituals. Slight modifications of
endings would suffice for different sentence constructions, and there you have a “language” every bit as
flexible as Enochian!49
Once I realized Enochian to be a jargon, I changed my approach. Now I suspected that it might be some
sort of cipher or code, Dee being famous for his use of same. I tested the first three Keys against a variety of
code-breaking techniques. 50 Once more I met with no success. I had not held high hopes that I would. The
loose alignment of Enochian words to their English counterparts, together with an entirely different
frequency of individual letters in the two languages [even cancelling out the most divergent letters], makes
cipher improbable.
Only pure code - with Enochian words or letters meaning something not revealed by their internal
design alone - remained. To uncover such a code, one would simply have to know the words or phrases in
English triggered by a given Enochian word or phrase, unrelated though the connection might otherwise be.
[For example, the otherwise random appearance of “vorsg” might be code for “for the Queen’s eyes only”,
etc.]Two avenues of investigation remained. First, if it were true that Enochian were neither language nor
cipher, then there was still the possibility that it might be a corruption of a genuine tongue. Regardie [citing
Mathers’ method], Crowley, and LaVey had all accepted Kelley’s comment that “He seemeth to read as
Hebrew is read”. 51 I decided to eliminate this Hebrew-letter pronunciation entirely, treating each word as a
phonetic unity and deemphasizing the vowels. [Thus “vorsg” should be pronounced just that way, rather
than “vaoresaji”.]
48 Regardie, The Golden Dawn, Volume II, page #266.
49 See Appendices #72-74 of The Church of Satan.
50 from my experience with the U.S. National Security Agency, concerned among other things with cryptography.
51 Casaubon, op. cit. , page #120.
Crowley (Ed. Regardie), Gems from the Equinox. St. Paul: Lewellyn Publications, 1974, page #408.
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My test case was the XIX Key, 30th Æthyr (TEX) on the assumption that there might be visual results
per Crowley’s experiences in The Vision and The Voice. 52 This time there was a certain success, in that I
experienced a sequence of unusual visions and dreams. 53
Finally, during the evening of May 30, I experimented with the XVII Key and was rewarded with
spectacular results - the “Sphinx and Chimæra” Working.54
Then, in the first week of June, something quite unexpected happened. I began to write a text in
installments of one or two hours per night. In the same style as the future Book of Coming Forth by Night,
it declared the Enochian Keys to be a remote corruption of something called the Word of Set. There
followed two “pure” Keys in English - called “parts” of the Word of Set. Before proceeding further I was
forced to break my concentration because of the sudden crisis in the Church of Satan, and so the Word of
Set remained unfinished for the next six years.
As to the “breaking” of the Keys “by the doctrines of Anton LaVey”, therein lies still another tale.
Anton’s principal contribution to the Crowley Keys was to render them in what might be called a “Black
Mass” form, with Heavenly references arbitrarily changed to Infernal ones. One might presume that this
would invalidate the statements of the text. Oddly enough, however, the use of these “Black Keys” by the
Church of Satan produced magical results that were, if anything, far more powerful than those of the “pure”
system.
In my Working on the Word of Set, I used an approach similar to Anton’s, seeking words to express
what I seemed to sense the Keys were actually intended to say. In short I was endeavoring to present the
Keys in a still “Blacker” version than that which appears in the Satanic Bible.
Moreover the North Solstice X Working which resulted in the Book of Coming Forth by Night was
begun with this new First Part of the Word of Set rather than with the First Enochian Key. Such would seem
to be the basis for the Book of Coming Forth by Night’s reference to the “breaking” of the old Keys.
Six years later the Working of the Word of Set was finally completed - on April 13, 1981 (anniversary of
John Dee’s initial Working).
In the Satanic Bible the Enochian Keys, even in their altered form, are still garbled and unintelligible.
Hence Anton felt the need to venture an interpretation of each one preceding its text. These interpretations
&
nbsp; have no basis in previous documents, and indeed previous commentators - including Dee himself - had
been unable to integrate the Keys into a coherent translation.
After completing the Working of the Word of Set, I found that the new translation needed no external
interpretation - at least not for those to whom it was evidently addressed. Obviously it is idiomatic and not a
word-for-word translation - as are all translations from original hieroglyphs.
In 1980, furthermore, I learned that the Casaubon account of the Dee Keys was not as error-free as I
had previously supposed. My benefactor was an Initiate of the Temple of Set who kindly provided me with a
complete microfilm of the original Dee diary Keys from the British Museum. Hence the “Enochian” text
reproduced with the Word of Set is an exact copy of the original as John Dee penned it, including
capitalization.
As I have noted above, this original does not lend itself to grammatically-based translation or to word-
for-word correlation with Dee’s own English “translation”. [The most recent efforts to do so - in Donald
Laycock’s Enochian Dictionary - resulted in an arbitrary subdividing of the Enochian text and the addition
of a modern-English-based punctuation in order to “force” a correlation. The quality of the result is self-
evident.]
An “Enochian purist” might question the translation provided by the Word of Set in that it is not the
English version recorded by John Dee in his diaries. My answer is simply that I approached the Keys not as
a historian seeking to reprint what Dee did, but as a magician seeking to operate the same “magical
machinery” that Dee did - and to operate it with greater care and precision than he did.
Hence it is not a case of my “corrupting Dee”, but rather of my uncorrupting something which predated
Dee’s own existence, and which was, after all, not of his [or Kelley’s] authorship. Were one to take the
position that the Keys are a Dee/Kelley creation, then they would be fraudulent as a GBM Working - and
merely an uncommonly-successful LBM stunt which has mystified and obsessed occultists these many
centuries.
As it appears here, then, the Word of Set is an eighteenfold sequence of statements addressed to the
original (“third ordering”) Initiates of the Temple of Set in ancient times. The 19th Part is not so much a
statement as an operative invocation to be used for access to what Dee referred to as the “thirty aires or
æthyrs”. Use of this invocation is best described in Crowley’s Liber LXXXIV vel Chanokh; see also The
Vision and The Voice.
52 Crowley (Ed. Regardie), Gems from the Equinox, pages #408-591.
53 See the record of one such example in Chapter #1.
54 Appendix #1.
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What exactly is an “æthyr”? Cabalistically these are “rings” or “spheres” [of consciousness] progressively
closer to the universal godhead. Per Crowley, each æthyr also awakens certain kinds of dispositions and
perceptions in a magician who focuses his attention towards it - and may also provide him with access to
related magical tools and/or weapons. The æthyrs will stand further exploration, in light of the Initiatory
advances of the Æon of Set, and should provide a rich opportunity for Setians to test their GBM sensitivity
and skills.
I am the ageless Intelligence of this Universe. I created HarWer that I might define my Self.
All other gods of all other times and nations have been created by men. This you know from
the first Part of my Word, and from my manifest semblance, which alone is not of Earth.
The Universe as a whole is mechanically consistent, but it does not possess a “God” personality that
favors one of its components - such as mankind - above others. The Set-entity, however, is a finite
intelligence within the Universe and can draw such distinctions. Set is a being operating independently of
the order of the objective universe, not in enforced or unconscious concert with it.
“HarWer” or Har-ur (“Harœris” in Greek) was one of the most ancient forms of the Egyptian god Hor
(“Horus” in Greek). [The English translation of Hor is “face”.]
In predynastic and Old Kingdom times, Horus was the god of light, complementary to Set as god of
darkness. Together the two gods also symbolized the unity and wholeness of the Egyptian nation: Horus as
the god of the north (Lower Egypt) and Set as the god of the south (Upper Egypt). This union was
represented on monuments by the ritual gesture of samtaui, showing Horus and Set binding the heraldic
plants of Upper and Lower Egypt around the stem of an AnX, symbol of divine life.
The roles of Horus and Set as the original state gods of Egypt were further emphasized by the pharaohs’
famous Double Crown ( SeXet), being a composite of the Red Crown of Horus ( Teser) and the White Crown
of Set ( Het/“Great One of Spells”). 55 And the Tcham sceptre, with the head and forked tail of Set, became a
symbol of power and authority for gods and pharaohs alike.56
Horus, originally a solar deity, was later adopted into the Osirian mythos as the son of Osiris and Isis.
Egyptologists generally distinguish the original and the corruption by the terms “Horus the Elder” and
“Horus the Younger” respectively.
HarWer is a form of Horus the Elder combined with Wer (“The Great God”), a transcendent god of
in Greek). At the same time the Udjat was also considered to partake of the essence of Set. “This is the
Uræus which came forth from Set.” 57 Mounted both on the SeXet and on other national crowns and
headgear, the Udjat became another symbol of the pharaoh.
According to the Book of Coming Forth by Night, the dual Set/HarWer entity is the only “god” that
possesses intelligence independent of the objective universe. The Universe as a whole is not intelligent, if a
requirement of “intelligence” is an active, distinct personality; there is nothing for the Universe as a whole
to act upon or be distinct against. [This principle refutes the doctrine of “deism”, in which God is assumed
to be identical with the totality of existence.]
The only quality common to the entire objective universe as such is internal consistency [which is not to
say that such consistency is a simple thing to incorporate]. And other gods, whether Egyptian or foreign, are
derivative of Set or of the human mind. This does not imply that they are “imaginary” in the vulgar sense
[except when crudely conceptualized by vulgar imaginations]. The disciplined, educated, and experienced
mind is capable of substantive creation; it can give life to stereotypical, archetypical, and/or unique gods
and dæmons. This creative ability distinguishes the magician from the superstitious believer: The former
conceives and actualizes such entities consciously and deliberately, while the latter is controlled and
conditioned by externally-imposed images of them.
The “Set-animal” of portraits and hieroglyphic inscriptions has remained the object of considerable
controversy. Its long, curved snout, stiffly-upraised and forked tail, and tall, brush-like ears (?) appear to
rule it out of any known animal category. The most extensive and thorough treatment of Set’s image to date
is by H. Te Velde in his classic work Seth, God of Confusion. 58
55
Ions, op. cit. , page #62.
56 Te Velde, op. cit. , pages #89-90.
57 Utterance #683, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, R.O. Faulkner (Trans.). London: Oxford University Press, 1969.
58 The “-th” ending is the result of spellings of “Set” using the Greek letter q. In hieroglyphic writing, according to Budge, the
name should be pronounced with a hard “-t” ( Egyptian Language, page #53). Similarly I write the name of Set’s divine
consort as Nepthys, not the q-heavy “Nephthys”. It is fair to point out, however, that the name of Set has appeared in phonetic
hieroglyphs in at least a dozen variations (Te Velde, op. cit. , pages #1-3). The Temple of Set uses the name with a hard “-t”,
after the Book of Coming Forth by Night.
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Among the animals he cites as past candidates for the Set-animal are the ass, oryx antelope, greyhound,
fennec, jerboa, camel, okapi, long-snouted mouse, aardvark or orycteropus, giraffe, hog, boar, hare, jackal,
tapir, long-snouted Nile mormyr, and the Egyptian Nh-bird. Dismissing each of the above as essentially
different from the portraits and statues of Set, Te Velde takes the position that the question cannot be
resolved from the information currently available to Egyptologists.
Concerning the hieroglyphic image of Set, Te Velde states that it does not show the characteristics of an
actual, living animal, and expresses doubt whether the hieroglyph can be traced to any animal which ever
existed in the area of Egypt. 59
In his magnum opus From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt, Sir E.A. Wallis Budge attempts to associate
the Set-animal with the Saluki dog of Arabia. By way of evidence he cites the dog’s characteristically
aggressive nature, ignoring the fact that it displays none of the aforementioned physical features. Hence
Budge’s identification must be rejected.60
In hieroglyphic and pictorial representations, Set was also the only god shown with red-toned skin.
Most of the others were flesh-colored, save that Osiris and his principal attendants frequently had pale
green complexions (symbolic of corpse-flesh).
One may note that Set was by no means the only “fabulous” creature ever portrayed by Egyptian artists.