occasionally Lesser Black Magical control of gullible minds still psychologically enslaved to
superstition.
Yet within carefully-crafted magical ritual environments, some Satanists had also sensed a
reality beyond that apparent to the ordinary senses. This was an entirely new and positive form
of “Satanism” that had almost nothing in common with traditional “Devil worship” except the
preliminary seriousness of formal atmospheres. It was a chill that went up one’s spine when
commencing, then culminating a Black Magical working. We were not just play-acting; we had
really opened, or at least begun to open a door which profane humanity had only vaguely
imagined to exist. What we would see when we got it fully open we did not know; we only sensed
that, for all of its faults and failings, the Church of Satan had somehow managed to discover its
key.
For me, the Book of Coming Forth by Night was the event that flung that door wide open. I
now knew of a certainty that there was a reality beyond the four-dimensional, and that within it
existed the actual centers of consciousness which mankind had dimly imagined as “gods”.
Pythagoras and Plato had come closer to them as Forms or Principles, and the ancient Egyptians
closest of all as neteru.
This realization forever transformed the core of my own consciousness, of course, as I’m sure
it would that of anyone else undergoing the same shock. I knew now that physical extension in
time/space was merely part of a much greater whole whose Mysteries awaited beyond.
I simultaneously realized that, as Crowley had observed in Book 4 above, such an
illumination - there is no better word for it - cannot possibly be described or explained to
intellects as yet within the purely-material realm of consciousness. It would be futile, even
dangerous to try, as in H.G. Wells’ famous parable of The Country of the Blind.
There was, however, another aspect of the Book of Coming Forth by Night which was both
communicable and practical. It pointed the way to a unique path of self-realization and
ennoblement that any suitably-intelligent individual could decide to pursue. It was not necessary
to comprehend its origin or ultimate implication - just its existence and availability. The Grail
was now there to be grasped and drunk from, for any with the awareness, courage, and resolve to
do so.
And so it has been these thirty years hence. Many thousands of humans have undertaken the
adventure invited by the Book of Coming Forth by Night - some with more success than others,
but all, I think, awakened and energized by their encounter.
There is, unfortunately, a less-pleasant side to this phenomenon. Some aspirants have found
themselves unprepared to step beyond a purely-conventional frame of intellectual existence. In
such cases the strengthening of consciousness can evoke, as in the science-fiction film Forbidden
Planet, “monsters of the id” capable of psychological harm to themselves or others. As it has
learned more about such dangers over the years, the Temple of Set has endeavored to dissuade
such personalities from seeking initiation, or shortstopping an effort that seems to be
miscarrying in ominous directions. I daresay this will remain one of the Temple’s more
important and compassionate responsibilities as long as it exists.
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The Book of Coming Forth by Night was so meaningful to me that I have since ordered my
life and philosophy by its principles. The other founders of the Temple of Set accorded it a
similar trust and respect. Even though they had not participated in the working itself, many
remarked, they felt that the text itself carried its own aura of authenticity and conviction. In the
years that followed, countless others have been moved by it in a similar fashion.
When I accepted the Book of Coming Forth by Night, it was in a deliberate, reflective way -
with a resolve to undertake the creation and care of the Temple of Set proper, and to patiently
allow history to validate or disprove any principles that the Temple might propose or practice.
This has remained my attitude ever since that serene and sublime experience.
As for the text itself, I am content to comment upon it as best I can, then let others judge it as
they will. For me it is now, as then, a simple, beautiful, and purposeful statement from the
sentient being whom mankind has loved, hated, worshipped, cursed, praised, and reviled as the
Prince of Darkness. To echo the words of G.B. Shaw in The Devil’s Disciple: “I promised him my
soul, and swore an oath that I would stand up for him in this world and stand by him in the
next.”
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3: Khemistry
Confronting Ancient Egypt
The Book of Coming Forth by Night, among other things, retired the iconography of Judæo/
Christianity in favor of that of ancient Egypt. This resolved the Church of Satan’s perennial
problem of being cast by others, if increasingly not casting itself, into an image of “anti-J/
C” [and presumably the “good” values J/C claims to represent].
A focus upon ancient Egyptian philosophy, religion, and culture, however, presented the
fledgling Temple of Set with a different, and equally formidable array of problems.
The topic of ancient Egypt generally has been one of both exhaustive examination by and
contentious debate between conventional Egyptologists and independent investigators.
The former group generally agree that Egypt was simply an agricultural society comparable
to that of other Mediterranean/Near-Eastern cultures of the time-period. It was notable for its
enigmatic hieroglyphic writing system, odd-looking formalized art, peculiar massive building
projects, and morbid, animal-totem religious cultism.
The latter group, while differing in the details, see Egypt rather as a remarkable, indeed
startling exception to its primitive neighbors. It was uniquely a civilization and repository of
great sophistication and wisdom - in some respects so much so, indeed, that the very ability of
the Egyptians themselves to have generated such utopian wonders is called into question in favor
of Atlanteans, extraterrestrial visitors, and/or incarnated gods.
Each camp routinely ridicules the other. The conventionalists denounce the independents as
unscientific dreamers and “pyramidiots”. The latter are equally contemptuous of the former,
considering them as merely a brittle academic self-protectorate afraid to violate modern taboos.
And there are two taboos in particular which institutional academia does not dare to
transgress - or even openly acknowledge as taboos.
First, modern [Western] civilization is assumed to be at the zenith of human sophistication in
all respects. It has been steadily improving over the last five thousand years (after recorded
history officially began ca. 3000 BCE). Since the passage of time mandates social evolution and
improvement, it is heresy to suggest that an ancient civilization, particularly one at the very
beginning of this progression, could actually have been superior to its successors, including
those today, in some if not all respects.
Secondly, the world today is divided into three major monotheistic religions: Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam. All, even in countries where they have become largely propaganda
devices for the control of the lesser-intelligent masses, are as exclusive and intolerant as
politically permitted. Despite their doctrinal differences, however, they are all agreed that there
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exists but one God - the Hebraic JHVH. Thus all polytheism, whether new or old, is false and
fictitious. It follows that any such fiction cannot possibly be as, much less more sophisticated
than Hebraic monotheism [as triple-modified]. Egyptian religion may be studied, exploited for
artistic purposes and horror movies, but never actually believed in.
The Church of Satan had been accused by its critics of championing the worship of evil. Not
so: What it actually did, as exemplified in the Diabolicon, was to maintain that “God” was in fact
evil and “Satan”, as a repudiation of that evil, was truly good. This was a new interpretation of
“evil” as human denial of personal responsibility for moral decisions, as well as hypocrisy in the
executing of such moral decisions as were ventured. True goodness was accordingly to be found
in genuine personal responsibility and full acceptance of the consequences of one’s decisions.
This is what made the Church of Satan, despite its bizarre facade, feel so refreshingly virtuous
next to the repulsive, corrupt Hebraic monotheism it rejected.
Now the Temple of Set was challenged to take one step beyond. The entire Hebraic
monotheism, to include even its Satanic reinterpretation as the actual benchmark for evil, would
be thrown into the dustbin. JHVH, Satan, Moses, Christ, Mohammed - collectively discarded in
all of their social, physical, or metaphysical contexts and pretensions.
In their stead would arise not a mere revival of polytheism per se, but a polyfaceted divine
individualism, in which the energy of each such personal consciousness is realized to derive from
a Universal inspiration: Set.
This was a Set far more subtle and complex than the superficial character described by the
Egyptologists. Just how much so it would take the Temple of Set many years to discover; in
many regards it is still doing so.
The other Egyptian “gods” were also reperceived. In conventional Egyptology they too, like
Set, were merely two-dimensional dolls in a hodgepodge of folk tales and parables. Now the
individual human consciousness, each as energized by Set, was seen to be capable of seeing past
the physical surface of natural phenomena, into the living essence underlying each. These are the
Forms described by Plato in his Dialogues, and more originally the true neteru comprehended
by the priesthoods of ancient Egypt.
To the extent it has been noticed by conventional society over the years since its [re]founding,
the Temple of Set has occasionally been maligned and attacked on various alarmist pretexts:
“Satanism”, “cult”, “political extremism”, “mind control”, etc. All such nonsense serves merely to
illustrate how ignorant such critics are of the actual distinction and significance of the Temple as
summarized here. It is nothing less than an entirely new way of looking not just at self-conscious
humanity, but at the physical and metaphysical realities beyond that humanity,
Egyptian History
Let us now review those aspects of ancient Egypt on which most scholars, the academic and
the arcane, might be expected to find some common ground.
The earliest existing evidence of human culture in the Nile valley dates to more than 250,000
BCE, as the remnants of hand axes and other stone tools have been uncovered 50-100’ below the
Nile’s silt terrace.
Sometime between 10,000 and 7,000 BCE, according to conventional archæology, a most
important event took place - the domestication of the wild African goat and the subsequent
freedom to begin cultivation of grain. This effectively heralded the beginning of human
civilization, as for the first time primitive man was free to turn his thoughts to matters other
than a constant search for food.
By the same consensus, it was in the pre-dynastic Gerzean period (commencing about 3600
BCE) that the first communities of the future Egyptian nation came into existence. A great war of
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unification commenced in approximately 3400 BCE. After more than two centuries of
intermittent conflict between Upper and Lower Egypt, the land was finally united under Menes
(or Narmer), the first pharaoh of the I Dynasty. 16
Inhabiting a land characterized by the regularity of the elements (behavior of the winds, the
Nile, the climate, the Sun, and the skies), the Egyptians sought perfection in stability, harmony,
symmetry, geometry, and a cyclical [as opposed to progressive or linear] concept of time.
In modern culture we take progressive/linear time for granted. It is as inevitable and
inexorable as the hands of the wristwatches to which we are gently, yet firmly manacled. We see
our lives, and indeed the entire known universe, as a terrible struggle against entropy, ending
ultimately in the death, decomposition, and obliteration of each separate person or thing.
It is further this perception, and the fear of it, which has lent Hebraic monotheism a vampiric
persistence far past the 17th-18th Century “Enlightenment” which, intellectually at least, exposed
it as a sham. For the Christian and Muslim versions, if not the Jewish, promise continuation of
and obeying them now.
The Egyptians, however, envisioned neither themselves nor the world about them to be
entrapped in such a fearsome forced-march. They saw the Sun, Moon, and firmament behaving
in recurring cycles, as also the rise and fall of the Nile, the regular seasons, plant life. If humans
and other animals were born, lived for a time, and died, it stood to reason that they too
participated in an eternal cycling of a more subtle color. Egyptian records would accordingly
document specific personalities and events, but without any particular attention to related
change or innovation. Harmony with the cycles of things, not defiance of them, was the Egyptian
ideal - which explains why the essential character of Egyptian society remained little changed,
except to meet external intrusion, for thirty dynasties extending over 3,000 years. 17
Former Director of Cairo’s French Oriental Archæological Institute Serge Sauneron
comments:
To understand the attitude of the Egyptians, it is necessary to emphasize the striking contrast
between their view of the world and ours. We live in a universe which we know is in perpetual
movement; each new problem demands a new solution. But for the Egyptians this notion of time
which modifies the current knowledge of the world, of an alteration of factors which forces a
change in methods, had no place. In the beginning the divinity created a stable world, fixed,
definitive; this world functions as a motor well oiled and well fed. If there are “misfires” - if the
motor fades, if one of the parts making it up is worn out or broken - it is replaced and everything
starts off again better than before. But this motor would always remain the same; its mechanism,
its appearance, its output would always be identical.
If some problem intrigues the mind, therefore - if some serious event arises to disturb the
customary order of things - it could not really b
e new; it was foreseen with the world. Its solution
or remedy exists in all eternity, revealed in a kind of universal “manner of use” that the gods
defined in creating the universe itself. What is necessary, therefore, is to find in the ancient
writings the formula that foresaw such-and-such a case. Before a given event - a physical
phenomenon, a catastrophe striking the whole country - the scholar would not seek to discover the
actual causes in order to find an appropriate remedy. Rather he would examine with scholarly
ardor the volumes of old writings to find out if the event had already occurred in some moment of
the past, and what solution had then been applied to it. 18
16 Fairservis, Walter A. Jr., The Ancient Kingdoms of the Nile. New York: New American Library/Mentor #MY-843,
1962, Chapters #1-2.
17 The XXX Dynasty is generally considered to be the last native Egyptian one. Subsequently there was a Persian one
(XXXI) and a Ptolemaic Greek one (XXXII), ending with the death of Cleopatra VII and Roman rule in 30 BCE.
18 Sauneron, Serge, Les pretres de l’ancienne Egypte. New York: Grove Press, 1980, pages #118-119.
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In accordance with their cyclical perception of reality, therefore, the Egyptians’ achievements
tended to be in “timeless” areas such as astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and architecture.
These, along with Egyptian religion and art, are often oversimplified in many modern
treatments, due in part to the absence of verifiable data in later history until the deciphering of
hieroglyphics by Champollion in 1822. Because of the destruction and despoliation of ancient
Egyptian records and works of art by religious fanatics of later eras, it is estimated that modern
archæologists have at their disposal less than 10% of that country’s cultural creations from which
to reconstruct its values. 19
Egypt was divided into 42 nomes (provinces), each dominated by the priesthood of one or
more neteru. A particular priesthood might also influence more than one nome. The monarchy
was closely controlled by the various orders of priesthood, with the pharaoh acting as an Earthly
deputy of and interpreter for the neteru.
Governmental, judicial, and political systems were responsible for their ethics to the neteru,