nor ready-made moral codes, nor plain sense of “sacred”.
We differ from manifestations of the Right-Hand Path by asserting an individual’s being and Becoming as the
focus of his existence, and by stressing one’s responsibility for one’s actions from that perspective.
We do not pray to our Patron; instead we seek individually to practice our Patron’s Gift of self-consciousness,
and by so doing to honor both him and ourselves.
The Temple of Set is legally incorporated as a “church”, which implies a “religious” organization. It is
meaningful in general terms for us as an organizational manifestation of the Black Flame of self-consciousness, and
as a school for its cultivation amidst the profane world of today.
If we look at the question of religiosity more closely, the picture is of course more complicated.
The concept of “religion” is, if not exclusively, at least very much a Right-Hand Path-saturated concept for a
general human experience of “there’s more to life than what there superficially seems to be” - all the way from the
“birth” of the concept’s modern meaning.
General answers to this human experience are given in abundance in various Right-Hand Path forms, in
which the general position and value of individual human being is seen as subordinate to some more higher and
powerful being(s) of some sort and its (or their) authority, aims, and will. With this general background to the
concept of “religion”, the “Left-Hand of religion” is easily a confusing concept.
My understanding is that a Setian “religious” experience refers to an Initiate’s conscious experience of his
separate self, of being aware of one’s conscious existence, its idea, of the borders and potential of one’s being via
one’s pursuit of Xeper.
The experience includes specific sense of truth, right, beauty, nobility, sacredness, majesty, power, and
metaphysical dimensions of meaning and purpose attached to them.
Members of the Priesthood have their individual experiences of Set, their individual interactions with that
entity being an essential part of the experience.
Thus I see that Setian “religiosity” is first of all defined and experienced via individual experience of Xeper,
not via such things as “supernatural”, “profane vs. sacred”- relation, nor “perennial concern”.
If we take the above as a definition and description of Setian “religious” experience, I think we can safely say
that Setian philosophy can also be “religious” in its initiatory focus and that we indeed are a “religion”.
I would, however, as a “religious” Setian myself, be interested to find a better, more precise, and less tainted
concept than the Right-Hand Path-saturated term “religion” to describe the experience from the Left-Hand Path/
Setian point of view - that of Xeper.
Written as a small reflection on the heart of being on the Year of the Essential.
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A94: On the Pentagram of Set in Ancient Egypt
- by Patty A. Hardy IV°
At the Set-XIV Conclave in London I was asked if the pentagram were definitely known and used in ancient
Egypt. I replied than state that Pythagoras had spent 22 years there and then started up his Brotherhood in Magna
Græcia with the pentagram as its supreme secret and badge of recognition.
Now I have archæological data. After much soul- and budget-searching, I obtained one of Guy Brunton’s three
volumes on the Qau and Badari excavations sponsored by the British Museum. Flipping through the volume, I
found a half-page of Old Kingdom pot marks that included two definite and unmistakable pentagrams - one cut into
the clay before firing by the potter, one scratched onto the pot by its owner. The bread pot with the potter-cut
pentagram was thought to be from the IV Dynasty. Brunton remarks on “the noteworthy pentagram used in quite
different ways and at different periods” in speaking of these pot marks.
After that I decided to go back to Brunton’s Matmar expedition notes and found a crude pentagram among the
pot marks documented there, again on a pot thought to date to the Old Kingdom.
I then consulted Flinders Petrie’s Tanis expedition notes published nearly forty years earlier. There I found
Dynasty.
So here are instances of the pentagram used to mark vessels in both Upper and Lower Egypt, in both early and
late dynastic times. In all these cases the pentagram does not appear to be an ornament or decorative element; it
stands by itself, without apparent reference to any other mark or inscription. Since I have only three expedition
reports in my possession, and all three included an instance of a pentagram cut or scratched into pottery, it seems
evident that the pentagram was known in great antiquity. It was found not on stelæ or tomb paintings, but on
pottery found in graves, suggesting that the symbol predates the strict artistic canons and religious formulæ
governing the work of scribes and artists in pharaonic Egypt - or arises from some tradition outside them.
What has been said so far concerns figures which are unmistakably pentagrams. The five-pointed star - in its
simplest form a five-rayed asterisk - is found everywhere in Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions and art. One never
finds six-pointed stars or hexagrams. A seven-pointed star is the symbol of Seshet, who appears to be a female neter
of records and site plans. She is always portrayed at the founding of new temples and monuments, either with reed-
pen and tablet in hand or assisting the king in driving the first peg that will be used to stretch cords during the
foundation’s layout. [Using the stars of the Thigh to orient the foundation is frequently mentioned in the text for
these scenes.]
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A95: On Racial Memory
- by Patty A. Hardy IV°
The concept of “racial memory” has acted powerfully on the imaginations of those who watched such
presentations during our first decade. Academics once hostile to any hint of “outer mysteries” have admitted to their
ranks a new field, Cognitive Science, devoted to the Gift. This multidisciplinary field arose in response to the
realization that neither psychologists nor neurologists nor computer scientists nor evolutionary biologists could
independently hope to fathom the complexity of the human mind.
It is a fledgling field, but one that I think holds promise - and of course concerns a topic of great significance
to us. The continuing remanifestation of the First Thought, and the ensuing dialogue with the Other present at the
birth of the First Thought, is the mystery.
Have a look at Merlin Donald’s Origins of the Modern Mind as well as Gerald Edelman’s Bright Air, Brilliant
Fire. Both of these take the approach that the mind is a web of complex associative chains whose creation requires
specific topological features of the brain (or whatever - Edelman says he’s not a “carbon chauvinist”, though he
makes very clear that the mind is not algorithmic). Both attempt to explain how this neural architecture might have
arisen.The evidence presented by Donald and Edelman was of two kinds: clinical and archæological. Study of
aphasias, specific types of impairment of language ability, has allowed neurologists to figure out that language
appears to be “spread” over two different regions of the brain. The parietal-occipital-temporal associative
area, or
Wernicke’s area, receives and associates information already processed in specialized regions of the brain. It is
known to be one of the two areas where damage impairs language ability. Broca’s area appears to be specifically
involved with speech itself.
Among other examples, a case was presented of a person having seizure activity of an unusual kind: he lost
the ability to comprehend language for several hours at a time. During these seizures he recognized what was
happening and tended to activities that required no language comprehension; at intervals he would turn on a radio
to check to see if his seizure was over! The types of activity he pursued without the ability to understand language
nevertheless implied reflective and purposeful thought at a level beyond what we see with apes.
From the perspective of a cognitive scientist, it looks as if Wernicke’s area handles temporal sequencing of
sensory feedback and voluntary motor action. From an evolutionary perspective, this is precisely the capability that
would have developed to go from “monkey see monkey do” to self-directed learning, emulation, intentional
repetition, self-evaluation and eventual mastery in a human learning how to flint-knap or weave a basket or paint
cave art or perform a ritual dance. None of these things require speech! But they do require a capacity for
abstracting, reviewing and replaying. From the linguistic perspective, this would solve the grammar problem, the
fact that human infants learn to speak without enough exposure to language to reconstruct a grammar: rules of
grammar are being constructed, not from hearing sentences, but from abstract models of reality created from
experience. From our perspective, this cascading ability to isolate elements of experience, pay attention to them
and imbue them with meaning, evaluate them, and will change in the subsequent flow of experience is the ability
to Come Into Being.
The archæological evidence involves looking at artifacts left by different species of Homo and
Australopithecus, judging complexity of the actions required to produce these artifacts, and examining fossil cranial
endocasts to make some guess about the gross morphology of the brain. It appears - this is still a topic of dispute -
that Australopithecus, while bigger-brained than our modern apes, shows no sign of the development of Werncke’s
area that seems characteristic of Homo from Homo erectus onward.
(This would also explain why apes like Koko pick up sign-language vocabularies but show no acquisition of
grammar: they don’t make abstract models of experience. I’ve heard nothing to indicate that Koko finds anything
unusual about ASL, except that the cat doesn’t understand it. Compare this to Helen Keller’s electrifying account of
“getting” her first sign.)
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A96: On the Genetic Code and the Gift of Set
-by Ronald L. Barrett II°
The Scroll of Set #XIV-3, June 1988
Beyond you who are the third ordering shall be those of the fourth, who shall again come into being
by a first, to recall the high orderings of the past and to witness those of the lower orderings in their
mindless self-annihilation and labor, and to continue the exalted work of the second and third
orderings.
- The Sixth Part of the Word of Set
Sometime about a million years ago on the southern African bush there appeared a most amazing creature.
Treading on two legs, and bearing stone tools in the place of sharp teeth and claws, this being was otherwise
defenseless in his environment. Yet he was somehow able to survive while in competition with predators such as
saber-toothed tigers and hyenas the size of small horses.
This small creature, the ancestor of our kind, was unlike any other that had ever roamed our planet. His
unique characteristics stemmed from his ability to give meaning to his perceptions and experiences, and is to this
day unprecedented in any other species. Today we carry on his legacy - and more, as we take the Gift of Set to the
outer limits of Xeper and Remanifestation.
It is both ironic and amazing that the most perplexing phenomena we as mankind have encountered in the OU
is the vessel of our very own SU: the human psyche. We turn our gift to look at itself, and we ask questions. How is it
that this super-entity bestowed the gift of intelligence upon a pathetic primate so long ago? And what the hell is this
damned thing called “intelligence” anyway?
I have a few ideas on the subject, and I would very much like to hear what other Initiates “make of it”. What
follows is a synthesis of perspectives through three lenses: anthropology, molecular biology, and Black Magic.
My approach is this: If I were the Prince of Darkness, how would I create an intelligent biological organism?
Creating the creator is no simple task. But considering the entity involved, the wielding of such dark power is not
only the exception but the self-made rule. So for now let’s leave aside the issue of what the essence of intelligence
really is and concentrate on the basic mechanics of the physical transformation.
Starting with an organism already possessing a degree of potential to start with, my selected creature would
have to be physically capable of manifesting subjective genius into adaptive advantage. After all, it would hardly be
fair to give intelligence to a sea anenome. Higher-order primates make for good starting material in this regard.
Their fingered hands with opposable thumbs give them the dexterity to manipulate their environment in subtle
ways. They possess a reasonably-large cranial capacity and the most state-of-the-art brain that random mutation
has been able to provide. Additionally they live in a somewhat friendly ecological niche. Possessing few natural
enemies in the treetops of the most plentiful rain forests, they would have some chance to grow and develop before
things started getting tough.
Now on to that pesky little problem of transformation. True genius would involve an elegantly simple
mechanism, one that would require minimum change to actuate maximal effect. To merely change the physical
structure of the organism is completely out of the question: Even if the creature possessed the Gift, it would not be
passed on to the next generation unless the genetic blueprint itself were changed. In fact that is all that would have
to be changed for the ugly little critter to be able to give birth to its future masters. To create a new program
designing a new species, it is simply a matter of getting into the gonad, into the nuclei of the sex cells (sperm and
ova), and reprogramming the molecular blueprint of the old species. In other words, the way to transform an ape
into a man is to reprogram him.
Reprogramming an ape into a man: In the nucleus of every cell composing every living organism on Earth,
there is a blueprint for that entire creature contained on an enormously long molecule known as DNA. This DNA is
like a “floppy disk” containing programs (genes) that will direct the construction of the creature in every detail,
including its brain. To make the creature intelligent, you change its mind; to change its mind, you change its DNA.
The change would not have to be a very large one. Comparisons of human and chimpanzee DNA indicate that
they are 97% identical, yet we are quantumly different beings in terms of mental ability. Apparently a very small
change in programming has gone a long way. How?
There are known to be special kinds of
genes, called regulatory genes, that can control the expression of other
genes. These regulatory genes can effect amazingly different physical manifestations simply by turning other genes
on and off in different combinations. This is why the cells composing the brain, bone, muscle, and other tissues of
your body can perform entirely different functions using identical sets of genetic information. Additionally it has
been recently discovered that in two species of closely-related amphibians, the only genetic difference between them
lies in a set of regulatory genes controlling their adolescent development.
Now I have a critter (the ape), the material I wish to change (DNA), and the kind of reprogramming I intend to
do (regulatory gene). I could either change an existing regulatory gene or genes, or add one or two of my own. The
methods for making these sorts of changes are beginning to be worked out by molecular biologists, and are currently
being used for many kinds of applications in science and industry. “Cloning” is the popular term for a collection of
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techniques in which genes are spliced in various sorts of ways and inserted into a single-celled, bacteria-like
organism, thereby transforming it. These transformed organisms can thus be reprogrammed to become biochemical
factories for fun and profit. The techniques are simple and have been taught to high school students in a single
afternoon.
Humans aren’t the only creatures that can reprogram DNA. There are some very simple “life”-forms that do it
much better than we have been able to so far. They comprise a certain class of viruses known as retroviruses. They
consist of only genetic material and an enzyme in a protein capsule. Depending upon the virus, they can insert their
genes into the DNA of a host cell in such a way that the once-normal cell is transformed into a virus factory. Again
depending upon the virus, this can be lethal for a whole set of cells of a certain type.
Not all viruses are lethal, however, and some have made genetic changes without any detrimental effect on the
host. There is now some evidence for the possibility that we may contain genes which were the result of a retrovirus
infecting our ancestors sometime in the distant past. These genes are called proviruses and are believed to be no