The uncanny attraction of the Third Reich - Nazi Germany - lies in the fact that it
endorsed and practiced both dynamism and life-worship without restraint and to a world-
shaking degree of success. In The Revolution of Nihilism (1939), Herman Rauschning
said:
This irrational element in National Socialism is the actual source of its strength. It is
the reliance on it that accounts for its “sleepwalker’s immunity” in the face of one practical
problem after another. It explains why it was possible for National Socialism to attain
power almost without the slightest tangible idea of what it was going to do. The movement
was without even vague general ideas on the subject; all it had was boundless confidence:
things would smooth themselves out one way or another ... Its strength lay in incessant
activity and in embarking on anything so long as it kept things moving ... National
Socialism is action pure and simple, dynamics in vacuo, revolution at a variable tempo,
ready to be changed at any moment.
Similarly the life-worship of the Third Reich was not what the “Mediterranean” mind
understands by this term. The “life” is the life of the state, or more precisely the Volk
(perhaps best translated as the “soul of the people”). The individual achieves self-
realization as, through his efforts, he contributes to the strengthening of this “soul”.
Just as the Third Reich’s dynamism got out of hand, leading it to embark on irrational
and destructive foreign invasions, so its life-worship - which could have been a truly
evolutionary synthesis of the most sublime concepts of Hegel and Nietzsche - became
perverted into crude xenophobia, hatreds built upon superficial notions of “race”, and
ultimately a maddened stampede towards a Wagnerian Götterdämmerung in defiance of
a return to rationalism. Said Heinrich Himmler on April 21, 1945:
We have made serious mistakes. If I could have a fresh start, I would do many things
differently now. But it is too late. We wanted greatness and security for Germany, and we
are leaving behind us a pile of ruins, a fallen world ...
The Order of the Trapezoid (O.Tr.) extracts the positive, the constructive, the exalted,
and the Romantic from the Germanic magical tradition - and just as carefully avoids and
rejects those excesses, distortions, and cruelties which have made this tradition an object
of the most extraordinary fear, condemnation, and suppression in the postwar period.
The Germanic tradition is also part of the legacy of the Prince of Darkness, hence is
appropriate to an Order within the Temple of Set, which embraces all manifestations of
the Powers of Darkness in the world.
Nevertheless the care required in any investigation into this tradition cannot be
overemphasized. Magical and research ability are not enough; ethical sensitivity and
social discretion are just as important. The prospects for new and wondrous perspectives
on the Black Art are exhilarating, but success will come only if the Order conducts its
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affairs with the same dedication and nobility that have made the Temple of Set a legend in
its time.
Lineage of the Order
The O.Tr. was founded as an informal Order within the Church of Satan by the
authority of Anton Szandor LaVey as High Priest. Its existence was first announced in the
December V/1970 Cloven Hoof:
The O.Tr. is the “board of directors” and security staff of the Church. Its functions are
many, and its members are chosen by appointment, according to the special abilities and
attributes of each. All Priests and Priestesses are automatically admitted into the Order,
although the identities of most members of the Order are unknown even to each other.
Members of the Governing or Grand Council of the Trapezoid are known only to the High
Priest, who solicits their aid when required.
There was a strong Germanic element in the rituals of the early Church of Satan,
deriving from the musical imagery of Richard Wagner and from the visual imagery of
Weimar-era Expressionism (Max Reinhardt, Hans Poelzig). The significance of the
trapezoid itself came from its suggestion of perspective and the distortion of that
perspective in such UFA films as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and The Golem. From ritual
use of similar angles and planes in such ceremonies as “Die Elektrischen Vorspiele” [in
The Satanic Rituals], Anton LaVey made observations culminating in his “Law of the
Trapezoid”:
All obtuse angles are magically harmful to those unaware of this property. The same
angles are beneficial, stimulating, and energizing to those who are magically sensitive to
them.
In the December V/1970 Cloven Hoof article, five literary sources for this principle
were identified: William Mortensen’s The Command to Look, Louis McCarty’s The Great
Pyramid Jeezeh, Sheila Ostrander & Lynn Schroeder’s Psychic Discoveries Behind the
Iron Curtain (Chapter 27), Frank Belknap Long’s The Hounds of Tindalos, and H.P.
Lovecraft’s The Haunter of the Dark. The Council of the Trapezoid, alternatively
identified as the Council of Nine, was in fact an informal, unofficial cabinet without fixed
membership, terms, functions, or binding authority. In X/1975 it attained formal status as
the corporate board of directors and supreme executive body of the Temple of Set.
Apart from early Council meetings, which ceased ca. late 1970, no Order meetings or
functions distinct from those of the Priesthood were held in the Church of Satan. In VI the
Order was officially defined as comprising the III°-V° initiates within the Church, i.e. the
collective Satanic Priesthood. In 1973 Anton LaVey again reconstituted the Order, this
time to identify significant contributors to and representatives of the Satanic tradition,
within or without the formal Church and Priesthood. Again there were no meetings,
functions, or publications of this Order.
From 1975 to 1979 the Order was again used as an alternate designation for all degrees
within the Priesthood of Set, and at the Set-I Conclave in 1979 the Council of Nine
replaced the Satanic trident in its emblem with the Tcham sceptre of Set. At the Set-III
Conclave in 1981 the Order was once again reconstituted, this time as an honorary
designation for all present and past members of the Council of Nine, and its emblem was
condensed to a pentagram within a trapezoid.
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In the Walhalla or “Hall of the Dead” at Castle Wewelsburg, Westphalia - the
subterranean sanctum sanctorum of the German castle which Heinrich Himmler had
reconstructed for his own Workings in the Black Art - Michael A. Aquino VI°, High Priest
of Set, conducted a Working on October 19, 1982. One of the results of this Working was
the reconstitution of the O.Tr. as a truly functioning Order under the authority of the
Temple of Set.
The O.Tr. is an Order of knighthood characterized by strict personal honor and
faithfulness to the quest for the Grail. The Order is a knighthood in that its members are
pledged to the traditional chivalric virtues as appropriate to each situation encountered.
By honor is meant a sense of justice, ethics, and responsibility prior to personal comfort,
convenience, or advantage. This honor is known by
one’s faithfulness to the Quest for
the Grail, which is the self, soul, or psyche made perfect through conscious refinement
and exercise of the will. Attainment of the Grail results in transformation of the individual
into a state of dynamic existence energized by the psyche, not by the physical body
derived from the objective universe. Hence the O.Tr. is the gate to psychecentric
immortality beyond physical death.
The insignia of the O.Tr. is an inverse pentagram whose four upper points define the
limits and angles of a phi-trapezoid. From the nethermost point of the pentagram radiates
the Black Flame of Set, whose nine tongues signify the Council of Nine and complete the
angular relationships of the pentagram and trapezoid. Rising from the Black Flame is a
Tcham sceptre, symbol of Pharaonic authority in ancient Egypt, bearing the head and
forked tail of Set. The sceptre faces to the left, symbolic of the Left-Hand Path of Black
Magic. The space between the Black Flame and the Tcham sceptre forms the letter “W”,
signifying Walhalla. This is both the name of the chamber in the Wewelsburg, Westphalia
wherein the Order was consecrated; and the famous hall of eternal life to which ancient
Teutonic heroes were brought by the Walkyries and admitted by Wotan. Thus the letter
“W” has a fivefold meaning (including the Motto of the Order) in addition to its primary
reference. In the topmost three gaps between the pentagram and the trapezoid are the
numbers 666, symbolic of the Prince of Darkness and of the First and Second Beasts
revealed of him. The three sixes add to XVIII ÆS, the first Working Year following the
creation of the Church of Satan, and the year in which the O.Tr. was returned to life. In
the entire emblem there are no curved lines, signifying the Black Magical power of
angular relationships and the Law of the Trapezoid. It is further mathematically keyed to
the phi-ratio.
Admission
Admission to the O.Tr. is by invitation only. To be considered, one must first achieve
the degree of Adept II° in the Temple of Set, and evidence a sufficiently comprehensive
involvement in the Temple as a whole to preclude over-concentration in the magical
philosophy of the Order.
As a general policy Oaths of the Order will be administered in a lodge setting, either at
Conclaves of the Temple of Set or at lodges of the Order presided over by the lodge-master
or a Master of the O.Tr. Masters of the O.Tr. may authorize special alternative
arrangements as necessary.
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Runes is the newsletter of the O.Tr. It is named in honor of the Runen newsletter of
the Germanen Orden, an esoteric society in pre- and post-World War I Germany. The
Fenris Wolf on its masthead comes from ancient north European mythology. Fenris was
one of the dæmonic offspring of Loki, and the brother of Hel and of the Midgard Serpent.
Growing up in Asgard among the gods, he eventually became so huge and fierce that the
gods decided to bind him. The only cord which could hold Fenris was made of the
elements of the Earth by the dwarves. It was said that at Ragnarök, the end of times,
Fenris would break free. According to the Völuspa (ca. 9th century CE), a text from
Norway and Iceland:
The chains that hold the Fenris Wolf are rent asunder, and the Wolf courses about.
Brothers shall fight and slay one another; sisters’ sons shall break the bonds of kinship. It
shall fare hard with the world: great whoredom, an axe-age, a sword-age, shields shall be
cloven, a wind-age, a wolf-age, ere the world sinks in ruin. No man shall spare the other.
Fenris as Runes’ masthead thus symbolizes the Powers of Darkness temporarily
constrained by the objective universe. It is also a reminder that the price of loosing the
Wolf - to energize evolutionary consciousness in humanity - is to risk chaos in the natural
order by lesser humanity’s misuse of its power over nature. This is the Æon of Set, when
the human psyche can soar free of its animalistic fetters; but it is also a wolf-age in which
much of the planet suffers through human carelessness and callousness - the result of
corruption of the powers of high intelligence. The O.Tr. seeks to allow Fenris to run free in
his magnificence - as the Prince of Darkness created him - but further to show that his
freedom through initiation of the Will will exalt, not debase mankind. The artistic
rendition of Fenris is reproduced from the cover of the August 1941 issue of Germanien,
official journal of the Ahnenerbe, the elite section of the SS concerned with the theory and
practice of the Black Arts.
Let none who fears
The spear of Wotan
Adventure across this fire!
- Richard Wagner, Die Walküre
If the scope of the Temple of Set weren’t already broad enough, I think it can be seen here
that that of the O.Tr. added several more extensions and dimensions to it. [And this was just the
first of many new and highly-sophisticated/highly-visionary Orders.] Whereas the cultural and
iconographic orientation of the Temple had previously taken its inspiration from ancient Egypt,
the O.Tr. had now opened the door to the equally vast, and in many ways even less-studied and
more-obscure metaphysics of ancient northern Europe. Particularly ominous in this was that
Nazi Germany, and especially its feared SS, had also taken especial interest in this same area of
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archæological, philosophical, and magical research, and it was obvious that the O.Tr. would be
reopening some of the same doors that had been slammed shut by the rest of the world on
Well, until this problem could be carefully and constructively addressed, the Order had
plenty of other avenues of interest to explore and enjoy, among these scientific magic (including
mad scientists and their mad laboratories), architectural magic (haunted houses and
Lovecraftian geometry), and artistic magic (particularly in such fields as Expressionism, noir,
and Art Deco). This was going to be fun, not just for the Order, but for the whole Temple!
Runes spent its initial years as a Temple-wide newsletter, mailed out on alternating months from
the Scroll, and a sampling of some of my articles for it during that time appears here as
Appendices #58-65.
As interesting and entertaining as such an Indiana Jones romp through the Twilight Zone
might be, it was also conspicuously clear that this new Order of the Trapezoid’s Germanic-lore
roots were very shallow, extending back little farther than the Romanticism of Wagner and the
Art Nouveau/Deco/Expressionism of the early 20th century. I tracked down and combed
through a good deal of Ahnenerbe-SS documents in the Library of Congress and the U.S.
National Archives microfilm files, but exclusive reliance on Nazi research into Germanic
antiquity was precarious. The SS obviously had an ideological agenda to maximize and glamorize
the “Aryan” myth, and Ahnenerbe historians and archæologists who wished career advancement
knew what they were expected to find. [This of course is the same in any other community
wishing to polish its pedigree, but Heinrich Himmler was pushing against 2,000 years of Judæo-
Christian worldwide indoctrination, and a mere 12 years (the last half of which was complicated
by Wor
ld War II) was not enough to break through even the less-factually-based bastions of
“established” academia.]
More than once in the odyssey of the Temple of Set [and indeed the Church of Satan before
it], an individual, event, or circumstance has appeared at precisely the moment it was needed.
“Once,” said Auric Goldfinger to James Bond, “is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third
time it’s enemy action.” In our case it might not be “enemy” action, but as such catalytic
phenomena have continued to proliferate to our furtherance and improvement, one might well
appreciate in them the hand of the Prince of Darkness.
On January 13, 1984 the Temple of Set received the following letter:
Order of the Shining Trapezoid
Austin, Texas
Hail Keepers of the Temple!
Recently a relatively small but dedicated circle of people here have begun a semiformal
Satanic working group. Our basis has generally been the system of the Church of Satan, of which I
have been a member. However the particular constellation of elements which seem to be present
in the workings of the Temple of Set are very interesting to me - especially since I have extensive
knowledge of and experience in various schools of German occultism [and I have also been a
member of the Armanen Order in Germany].
Information that you could send us would be appreciated. I am sure that we have information
in which you would probably be interested, but at this point we are mainly intrigued by the system
of the Temple of Set with an eye toward perhaps joining and aiding in its development. We are
looking forward to hearing from you, and anticipate the day when we can begin to work together
in earnest.
Heil Satan-Wotan!
Polaris
Our information was duly sent, and on February 2 Polaris (Stephen Edred Flowers) replied:
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Dear Priestess Ford, Executive Director,
First let me thank you for your prompt reply of January 20th to my letter, and for the
impressive material you sent. I and my closest associate here were both very excited by the nature
of the work of the Temple of Set and Order of the Trapezoid.
In view of the quality of the work, we have decided to disband the Order of the Shining
Trapezoid and to plight our troth with the complex represented by the Temple. I am very much