Temple of Set does], they take the easy way out and sell their product by attacking the TLO
competition. They portray “this life” as merely a test of obedience, on which the individual will
be judged at the point of transition into LAD - which they hold to be far more important because
it is eternal.
Since uninitiated humans fear the unknown and prefer to be safe rather than sorry, the
LAD merchants have been able to use fear and threats as effective propaganda devices. Although
they are in effect “selling a totally undetectable and unverifiable product” for the greatest price
the customer can conceivably pay (a lifelong abstinence from various pleasures) they have been
generally successful - as is attested to by the unbroken grip of LAD religions, from Osirianism to
Christianity, on the bulk of humanity throughout its recorded history.
1. Jewish and Christian Afterlifes
Within the Western cultural tradition it is rarely realized that its two major religions -
Christianity and Judaism - are actually at extremes apart on this issue. Christianity in all of its
many forms upholds LAD as reason for abstinence in “this life”. Judaism, on the other hand,
insists upon TLO and absolutely rejects justification for human behavior on any grounds other
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than YHVH’s direct instructions to living humans. Comments Arthur Schopenhauer in Parega
#I, 13:
The Jewish religion proper, as described and taught in Genesis and all the historic books until
the end of Chronicles, is the crudest of all religions because it is the only one which has no theory
of immortality - not even a trace of it. Every king and every hero or prophet is buried, when he
dies, with his fathers, and there is an end of the matter; no trace of any existence after death;
indeed, as if intentionally, every thought of this sort seems to have been removed.
Schopenhauer is only partially correct. The ancient Hebrews drew no distinction between
human souls and the animating force common to all animals ( nephesh). Although some part of
this animating force was thought to survive the destruction of the body, it was regarded with
superstitious terror and referred to ambiguously by the terms elohim and rephaim. By the 2nd
century BCE Hebrew doctrine had changed to include the revivification of the material body, but
Hebrew theologians never extended this principle to the Pythagorean/Platonic concept of an
independently-surviving psyche.
Not surprisingly the original Christians continued this Jewish tradition of corporeal
revivification, using the Greek term psyche to mean much the same thing as the Hebrew
nephesh. In Matthew 10:28, where the soul is mentioned as distinct from the body, their
posthumous reunion is promptly suggested. The most conclusive example of this doctrine, of
course, is that of Jesus’ own material resurrection [as in Luke 24:36-43], but by the time of Paul
the distaste with which sophisticated Greeks regarded this “animation of corpses” ( anastasis
nekron) induced that apostle to modify Christian teachings in the direction of Pythagoreanism.
Paul was further aware of - and presumably sought to overcome - the challenge of Gnostic and
Hermetic Christianity, being a blend of basic Christianity with various Egyptian and Hellenic
mysteries. 65
In I Cor. 15:35 and II Cor. 5:1-2 Paul offers a mixture of Pythagorean and Hebrew ideas,
whereby the posthumous soul is given a “spiritual body” ( soma pneumatikon) which
nevertheless requires a bodily form. Despite Paul’s efforts, Christianity has never succeeded in
breaking free from the notion of reanimation of the original corpse, which at least has been grist
for the mill of horror-film producers.
While there have been many explanations for Christian antipathy towards Judaism, one of
the most crucial had todo with Jews’ failure to be posthumously accountable in any way for their
incarnate conduct, implying that they are self-serving and indifferent to ethics. Observed
Dietrich Eckart, initiate of the Thule Gesellschaft and mentor to Adolf Hitler and Alfred
Rosenberg, in 1919 ( Auf gut deutsch):
It is now evident that a people which completely denies the existence of life after death must
choice. But a people can only grow up with such an emphasis on worldly matters if it
fundamentally lacks any need for immortality, which in turn is possible only if there is no trace of
feeling in its basic character for the eternal in mankind. Wherever the soul manifests itself, no
matter how faintly, a sense of immortality necessarily follows. The individual is not always
consciously aware of this; indeed there are many who refuse to understand it - who are so
ignorant concerning the concept of immortality that they habitually denounce it, even while their
unselfish actions clearly reveal that each one of them senses the soul and therefore eternity within
himself.
65 The 1945 discovery of thirteen original Gnostic codices at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt has shed much light on
the ideas with which Paul had to compete. The codices themselves date to 350-400 CE but are probably copies of
2nd century CE originals.
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Although Pauline Christianity attempted to appropriate the Pythagorean/Platonic concept of
the “soul distinct within and ultimately freed from the body”, it was unable to sustain this
concept without the vehicle of the body. Christian artistic representations of posthumous
Paradise are invariably sterile and dull. It will be recalled that Christ’s ultimate promise upon his
Second Coming was to reunite all souls with their ex-bodies, so that they would once again enjoy
their original corporeal shells.
2. Beyond Judæo-Christianity
The Christian concept of “Satan”, being as it was a crude scarecrow of everything
Christianity didn’t like, was thus as “confused in reverse” as Christianity itself was. This is clearly
evident in Anton LaVey’s Satanic Bible, wherein Satan is said to stand for indulgence in fleshly
life and rejection of posthumous judgment. As Anton plagiarized from Ragnar Redbeard’s Might
is Right:
Life is the great indulgence - death the great abstinence. Therefore make the most of life -
here and now! There is no Heaven of glory bright and no Hell where sinners roast. Here and
now is our day of torment! Here and now is our day of joy!
Viewed in this context, the Church of Satan’s initial Satanism was, in effect, Judaism with a
YHVH who would let you do anything you wanted rather than one who was a vengeful sadist. Yet
both systems - the nice (Satanic) one and the vicious (Jewish) one - came to a screeching halt at
the grave. [Anton explained the many memento mori decorations of his home as reminders of
death’s being just around the corner, hence of the need for Satanists to get as much out of
incarnate life as possible.]
Elsewhere in the Satanic Bible, however, Anton made a statement which, while largely
overlooked during the Church of Satan’s span of existence, is one of the more crucial in his entire
philosophy:
If a person has been vital throughout his life and has fought to the end for his earthly
existence, it is this ego which will refuse to die, even after the expiration of
the flesh which
housed it ... It is this vitality that will allow the Satanist to peek through the curtain of
darkness and death and remain earthbound.
Here Anton’s concept of life was still the TLO one common to Judaism and his original
Satanism. In wishing to live rather than die, he could conceptualize immortality only in terms of
an extension of TLO through force of will. He likened it to the refusal of a child to go to bed
when there is something exciting going on; in this sense it was a denial that there could be any
kind of life for the psyche other than “earthbound life”. To “go to bed” is not to move into
another mode of existence, but simply to cease to exist. Anton’s original Satanism thus combined
a “friendly YHVH” (Satan) with the promise of endless material existence for the psyche -
providing that the psyche could project the strength and coherence of will necessary for that
existence.
As discussed at length in my Church of Satan history, Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan
were never able to resolve the dilemma of Satan’s actual existence: Was he real or just symbolic?
If he were real, it would seem to open the door to the entire Christian concept of the universe.
If on the other hand he were merely symbolic, then he didn’t really exist as a self-conscious,
willful force which could actualize Satanists’ ritual-magical desires or which could even care
about the existence of the Church of Satan. In that case magic would be reduced to mere stage-
trickery, and the Church itself would be nothing more than a club for spooky psychodrama.
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The Temple of Set resolved this dilemma in 1975 CE by asserting the actual existence of
“Satan” (as Set - the original, pre-Judæo/Christian entity) while at the same time removing the
concept of his existence entirely from the Judæo/Christian tug-of-war.
The essence of the psyche, stated Set in the Book of Coming Forth by Night, is such that its
existence is neither dependent upon the material nor imprisoned in it for testing or task-
fulfilling purposes. Rather the physical body provides a vehicle in which the psyche can become
aware of itself and then reach out towards the limitlessness of its conscious
existence. [It is this process which the Temple defines by the hieroglyphic term Xeper.] “This
life” may be likened to a springboard or launching-pad towards the psyche’s ultimate Self-
awareness and state of Being.
As for Set, he neither cracks a whip over humans in TLO nor sits in judgment over them in
LAD. Rather he is understood as the source of the potential for Xeper in each human animal.
Whether or not each individual recognizes this potential and takes steps to develop it (what we
mean by “initiation”) is not Set’s prerogative, else his own psyche would simply displace the one
within each self-aware human.
Such illuminated awareness is eloquently articulated in Her-Bak as one of the central
secrets of the ancient Egyptian Priesthoods:
What is life? It is a form of the divine presence. It is the power, immanent in created
things, to change themselves by successive destructions of form until the spirit or activating
force of the original life-stream is freed. This power resides in the very nature of things.
Successive destruction of forms, metamorphoses, by the divine fire with rebirth of forms new
and living is an expression of consciousness. It is the spiritual aim of all human life to attain a
state of consciousness that is independent of bodily circumstance.
What I have just said concerns the living spirit bestowed on the man already quickened,
like every living thing, by a rudimentary soul, which makes of such a man a creature superior
to the animal-human kingdom. He who recognizes the divine meaning of life knows that
knowledge has but one aim, which is to achieve the successive stages that liberate him from
the perishable. For things die only in their body; the spirit, the divine Word, returns to its
source and dies not. Unhappy is the Ka that fails to recover its soul. 66
Such an explanation generally represents the perspective of the OU priesthoods, which
sought to interpret and explain humanity within that envelope. They were forced to
conceptualize incarnate humanity as a temporary particularization of the general OU, each such
human uncomfortably aware of this tension and striving to eliminate it through re-absorption
into the OU. While this Sage suggests that this is done by successive, progressively-more-refined
incarnations (a general premise of reincarnationism), there is little in original Egyptian
metaphysics to support this. 67
Had Her-Bak’s initiation been into the Priesthood of Set rather than that of Isis, he would
presumably have been answered much in the vein of this book; but that would have necessitated
a far different exposure to the OU reality surrounding him than he received. Repeatedly and
remorselessly his complete separateness would have been dramatized to him, removing the
reassuring and relaxing prospect of both incarnate and disincarnate OU-inclusion.
66 Schwaller de Lubicz, Isha, Her-Bak: Egyptian Initiate. New York: Inner Traditions, 1967, page #35.
67 In Secrets of the Great Pyramid Peter Tompkins has suggested that a crucial rationale of Egyptian
mummification was precisely to prevent further terrestrial reincarnation. Permanent preservation of the body gave
the more material emanations the anchor they needed until the multifaceted MindStar could fully integrate itself in
a completely independent environment.
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Thus Setian initiation exposes and incites a crisis in the initiate which initiation through the
other, natural neteru avoids. This crisis is definitive and exhilarating to the Setian mentality, but
can be devastating to one of the other neteru. As starkly summarized by H.P. Lovecraft:
Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer dæmoniacal
hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous. Science, already oppressive
with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species -- if
separate species we be -- for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal
brains if loosed upon the world. 68
As we have seen, conventional visions of post-incarnate immortality tend to the OU-totality
model, fumbling between either immediate OU-reabsorption or some sequence of progressive or
karma-varying terrestrial reincarnation. In the absence of a non-natural telos, humanity is
forced into either free-will or deterministic OU-Mechanism. Envisioning immortality within
such constraints leads to only one result: dissolution of the self, the independent consciousness.
To the OU-initiate this is indeed expected and even anticipated, often with the assumption
that one’s personality will not in fact be extinguished, but rather melded into that of the
collective gods/God. Such an outcome would indeed relieve the tension and exclusiveness of
separateness; it is less comprehensible how it would permit any vestige of the previously-
individual life-being to continue.
In his book Life After Death, the eminent philosopher Maurice Maeterlinck addressed his
perceived reliance upon bodily definition of self:
I care not if the loftiest, the freest, the fairest portions of my mind be e
ternally living and
radiant in the supreme gladness; they are no longer mine; I do not know them. Death has cut the
network of nerves or memories that connected them with I know not what centers wherein lies the
point which I feel to be my very self. They are thus set loose, floating in space and time; and their
fate is as alien to me as that of the most distant stars.
Yet Maeterlinck is not so certain that the physical body’s materials and mechanisms are the
whole story. He senses that the entirety of himself is more than the sum of such tangible physical
parts, and indeed may be completely apart and distinct from them, using them only as an OU-
interactive device. He continues:
All that befalls has no existence for me unless I can recall it within that mysterious being
which is I know not where and precisely nowhere and which I turn like a mirror about this world
whose phenomena take shape only insofar as they are reflected in it. 69
Maeterlinck used the term “ego” [in a non-Freudian sense] to refer to this individual identity
somewhere/somehow beyond the purely physical, in which he defined “mind” as physically-
driven brain functioning:
This ego, as we conceive it when we reflect upon the consequences of its destruction - this ego,
therefore, is neither our mind nor our body, since we recognize that both are waves that roll by
and are incessantly renewed. Is it an immovable point, which could not be form or substance, for
these are always in evolution, nor yet life, which is the cause or effect of form and substance?
In truth it is impossible for us either to apprehend or define it, or even to say where it dwells.
When we try to go back to its last source, we find little more than a succession of memories, a
mass of ideas, confused, for that matter, and unsettled, all connected with the same instinct, the
68 Lovecraft, H.P., “Arthur Jermyn” in Dagon and Other Macabre Tales. Sauk City: Arkham House, 1965, page #47.
69 Maeterlinck, Maurice, Our Eternity. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1914, pages #50-51.
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instinct of living: a mass of habits of our sensibility and of conscious or unconscious reactions