original Hebrews were a unified, foreign culture which entered Egypt during the time of
Rameses I, there are no Egyptian records substantiating this. It is more probable that the actual
participants in any “exodus” were people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. 30 Possibly the
Hebrews’ hated “Satan” derives from one of the honorific titles ( Set-hen = Eternal Set) accorded
the state deity of the regime they were fleeing.
Following the passing of the two Setian dynasties, the increasing influence of a priesthood
not courted by the Ramesside pharaohs - that of Osiris - boded ill for the Priesthood of Set. The
Osirians recast Set as Osiris’ treacherous brother and mortal enemy of Osiris’ son - for whom
they appropriated the neter Horus. Not content with attacking Set personally, they further
appropriated his consort and son from the original triad of his cult - Nepthys and Anubis - whom
they now described respectively as a concubine of Osiris and a son of Osiris by Nepthys.
Comments E.A. Wallis Budge:
Between the XXII and the XXV Dynasties, a violent reaction set in against this god [Set]; his
statues and figures were smashed; his effigy was hammered out from the bas-reliefs and stelæ in
which it appeared. 31
29 Ibid., pages #183-184.
30 Romer, John, Testament. New York: Henry Holt, 1988, page #58: “Hard evidence of the Exodus event in the
preserving deserts of the Sinai, where most of the biblical Wandering takes place, is similarly elusive. Although its
climate has preserved the tiniest traces of ancient bedouin encampments and the sparse, 5,000-year-old villages of
mine-workers, there is not a single trace of Moses or the Israelites. And they would have been by far the largest body
of ancient people ever to have lived in this great wilderness. Neither is there any evidence that Sinai and its little
natural springs could ever have supported such a multitude, even for a single week. Several 19th-century vicars
recognized this fact within a day or two of the start of numerous expeditions in search of Moses’ footsteps. “Escaping
from the rigours of an English winter,” as one of them says, “in a land of the flock and the tent to which our only
guide was the Bible” they quickly realized that the biblical Exodus was logistically impossible and that the Bible was
a most ambiguous guide to that desolate region. The biblical description of the Exodus, then, flies in the face of
practical experience. Indeed the closer you examine it, the further it seems removed from all of ancient history.”
31 Budge, The Mummy. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1973, page #276.
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Various reasons for this reaction have been proposed by Egyptologists. It is been suggested
that Set fell into disrepute through being associated in the popular mind with the Sutekh of the
invading Hyksos. Possible, but improbable, as the Hyksos invasion occurred prior to the XIX-XX
Dynasties when Set was preeminently in favor - and the presiding neter over Egypt’s greatest
period of imperial glory.
Set’s eclipse may well have been due to a more subtle, yet pervasive sentiment sweeping
Egypt. As Sauneron and many other Egyptologists have acknowledged, Egyptian philosophy was
based upon a millennia-old conviction of the absolute presence and influence of the neteru, and
in the virtue of a social system in which the preservation of cyclical harmony was all-important.
While the New Empire of the XIX-XX Dynasties extended Egypt’s influence to Palestine and
Mesopotamia, it also made the Egyptians aware that there were many other functioning cultures
in which the neteru were unknown [at least by their Egyptian names]. Moreover the concept of
Egypt as just one among a number of nation-states competing for power and influence in the
Mediterranean, rather than as the one civilization at the center of existence, must have been a
most unsettling one to this ancient culture - which previously had been able to discount its
neighbors as mere uncultured, barbarian tribes.
Egypt’s solution to this problem was to turn gradually away from a glorification of this life
and towards an orientation on the afterlife, where such disturbing dilemmas could be assumed
not to exist. This would explain the growing influence and popularity of the Osiris cult during the
post-XX Dynasty Egyptian decadence, as Osiris was a neter of the afterlife.
As the Osiris cult portrayed Set as Osiris’ nemesis rather than an independent and
preexisting neter with no particular interest in Osiris, this would also explain the simultaneous
new dynasty, in an attempt to establish its own “timelessness”, often doctored monuments and
records to eliminate inconvenient inconsistencies. Presumably the Osirian dynasties followed
suit, defacing or rewriting all references to Set that did not support their portrayal of him as a
“Devil”. 32 And that was the distortion of Set which survived in later Mediterranean legend -
principally through Plutarch, who described it in some detail in his Moralia. 33
Commencing in 1975, therefore, the Temple of Set sought to return to an original,
undistorted apprehension of Set. In keeping with our modern levels of knowledge, of course, this
image has been both enhanced and refined. Enhanced in that we now understand better than the
ancient Egyptians how the material universe functions, refined to exclude facets of the human
personality that are natural, externally-controlled functions.
At the same time, contemporary civilization’s impatience and superficiality - its restless
inability to study anything metaphysical in any depth - have tended to condense the delicate,
complex study of Egyptian cosmology into a crude caricature capable of being digested by
modern minds in a few hours at most. Initiates of the Temple of Set must resolve to take the time
to apprehend and appreciate Set - and the other Egyptian neteru - in the same contemplative,
reflective, and above all unhurried fashion that their ancient predecessors did. Only then will the
magnificence, subtlety, and depth of this metaphysical system be realized and appreciated. Only
then can its principles be applied meaningfully within our current environment.
In the first few years of the young Temple of Set, we weren’t quite so clear about this. We duly
plunged into many works of conventional Egyptology, some of the more useful of which are still
included in the Egypt/Historical and Egypt/Philosophical categories of our Reading List.
Various Setians contributed some research articles of this genre to the Scroll, Ruby Tablet, and
32 Ions, op.cit. , pages #72-78. The Osirian legends on this subject are treated comprehensively in J. Gwyn Griffith’s
The Conflict of Horus and Seth (Chicago: Argonaut Publishers, 1969).
33 Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, Volume V in Moralia.
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Order & Element publications. But it soon became clear to us that, absent an empathy for Egypt
- a sensation of its innate soul, as it were - all such studies were sterile and lifeless exercises.
The greatest breakthrough for us came in our encounter with the writings of René Schwaller
de Lubicz and his wife Isha. Indeed the lion’s - I should say lioness’ - share of the credit goes to
her, because much of René’s work is highly technical. Isha was able to synthesize its elemen
tal
themes into her highly-readable “novel” Her-Bak, being the story of a young Egyptian’s journey
from ordinary peasant to initiated priest. 34 For many Setians, once they were exposed to the
basic structure of René’s thought through Her-Bak, his more complex works were soon
unlocked.
And suddenly ancient Egypt came wonderfully, vibrantly to life before us. Now, knowing
what to look for and what to do with it once we found it, the Temple of Set discovered no end of
wonders over the years, as of course we continue to do today.
René’s initial realization came from his study of hieroglyphs: that in addition to their
convenience for mere alphabetics, they embodied symbolic principles apprehensible to both the
rational and the suprarational intelligence. [His methodology is thus often termed
“Symbolism”.] Gradually he extended his awareness of this key to Egyptian culture into its
architecture (as in his magnum opus examination of the Luxor temple complex, Le Temple de
L’Homme) and pre-Pythagoreanism.
Of the various works examining René’s ideas in the Temple’s Reading List, I think I would
recommend John Anthony West’s Serpent in the Sky as the most “immediately-intelligible”
introduction. 35 It is at least better-suited to the impatient modern reader than the Her-Bak we
earliest Setians strolled patiently, if pleasantly through!
Another very capable presentation is Egyptian Mysteries by Lucie Lamy, René’s longtime
student and the talented illustrator for both his works and Isha’s. 36
Beyond these two introductory works [and of course Her-Bak if you have a peaceful
disposition and plenty of contemplation-time], I need say nothing. Once the door opens for you,
you will see, well, “wonderful things”! You will suddenly understand the temples as media for
living, active interaction with the neteru. 37
And of course you will meet those neteru. Not the two-dimensional, comic-book simpletons
cherished by profane Egyptologists, enmeshed in tawdry tales of sex, violence, and meaningless
ritual. But the beautiful, wonderful weavers of the most delicate webs of the Objective Universe
itself. In their presence, severally and collectively, the awakened Initiate will confront an eternity
of discovery and synthetic creativity.
And yet the most difficult neter to meet is Set. Because to apprehend all of the others one
need only look outward, through the lenses you have learned to fashion for your enlightened
vision.
But where are you going to place your lever, direct your lens, focus your attention, to see into
the nucleus, the central fire, of the thing that is your own conscious self?
34 Schwaller de Lubicz, Isha, Her-Bak. New York: Inner Traditions, 1954 (two volumes).
35 West, Anthony, Serpent in the Sky: The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt. New York: Julian Press, Inc., 1987.
36 Lamy, Lucie, Egyptian Mysteries. New York: Crossroad, 1981.
37 But not necessarily the three Giza pyramids,whose construction is not only human-impossible but whose passages
and chambers are not human-proportioned or -functional. As devices of extreme isolation and sensory deprivation,
they are in effect “Faraday cages” to disrupt the electromagnetic spectrum and keep the neteru out, not welcome
them in. Self-conscious entities venturing therein for any amount of time would be subject to severe deterioration
of coherence, triggering, if anything, subsoul manifestations not unlike Forbidden Planet’s id-monster. I see them
thus as singularly and conspicuously non-Egyptian [various later Egyptian imitations notwithstanding], though of
still-elusive origin and purpose.
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For that is the mirror through which Set will gradually become more and more distinct, to
those with the intelligence, discipline, determination, and initiation to see him. And when and if
you achieve this, you will simultaneously - and necessarily - experience a wonder equally as
sublime: you will behold your own true, complete, ultimate divinity.
In the original Stargate motion picture, the Great Pyramid of Giza was revealed to be nothing
more than a crude, ritualistic imitation by fearful protodynastic Egyptians of the gigantic,
pyramidal starships in which creatures beyond their comprehension had come to Earth; the
stone coffer in the “King’s Chamber” was a similar rough image of the wondrous machine in the
starships with the power to literally bring dead bodies back to life.
In that film, as well as the elegant television series it subsequently inspired, the alien “gods”
were not quite the neteru they pretended to be - simply an advanced species using “divine”
imagery as a means of psychological domination of others as well as for their own exotic
pleasures. Nevertheless these Goa’uld almost uncannily demonstrated the relationship which
ordinary humanity has with its perceived “God/gods” - and why it is quite fulfilled by such a
relationship, false and oppressive as it may be.
In world after world, civilization after civilization, it is ever the same; and when a Goa’uld is
exposed or killed, the result is always chaos and uncertainty, with the “liberated” peoples
slipping down into aimless, tedious tribalism. The wanton terrors of the Goa’uld are gone - but
so are the great, gleaming Pyramidal starships, the technology to instantly heal all injuries and
even restore bodily life itself, and the ecstatic experience of interacting with the “gods” face-to-
face. It is now, again, the Fourth Age of Middle-earth.
Stargate leaves its audience with an even more tantalizing mystery. If the Goa’uld borrow
their personæ from real neteru whom they have used advanced technology to imitate, how did
they originally come to know them?
Which leads to my central question about the ancient Egyptians: Why didn’t their culture
“develop”? I believe that the evidence shows that their arts, sciences, mathematics, technology,
techniques of warfare are all there complete from the beginning. What I want to argue here today
is that the Egyptians of the pre-Old Kingdom era somehow “inherited” all these arts and sciences.
Then after a short “getting acquainted” period, we see the full flowering of what we call ancient
Egypt ...
- Lecture, Daniel Jackson, Ph.D.
Scottish Rite Temple
4357 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, California,
December 1992
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4: 22nd and Kansas
On the morning of June 22, 1975 I felt less like a magician and more like the victim of a
mugging. I had undertaken what I had anticipated as a Greater Black Magical working to place
the recent critical events in the Church of Satan in some sort of constructive-repair context.
Instead the entire structure had been discarded and its patron, Satan, remorphed into an ancient
Egyptian god. The previous six years of my initiatory life, from the time when I had joined the
Church, had in the space of a few hours become obsolete.
Named a Magus and charged to [re]build a Temple of Set, I considered that I knew nothing
about being a Magus, little about ancient Egypt generally, and less about Set in particular. Not to
mention that beyond the walls of my study, my initiatory colleagues from the Church of Satan
quite understandably still considered themselves Satanists and believed in the me
taphysical
basis for, if no longer in the organizational ruins of the Church.
Well, I had to start somewhere. I telephoned Lilith Sinclair at her home in Summerland, a
wooded suburb of Santa Barbara, and asked if I could visit to show her the record of last night’s
GBM working. She read through it silently, then somewhat to my surprise simply nodded her
assent. The Book of Coming Forth by Night had instantly struck her as authentic, beyond
necessity for explanation, substantiation, or argument. This was a phenomenon which, to my
fascination, was to accompany the document henceforth - not for every reader, but for those
who, as it turned out, were consciously or unconsciously looking for the kind of initiatory “lens”
that the Temple of Set turned out to be.
The following day I made thirty photocopies of the text and sent them to the Priesthood and
Regional Agents of the Church. One of the first replies came from Warlock William Murray of
Winnemucca, Nevada:
What can I say about the Book of Coming Forth by Night? It is awesome. A Revelation. The
true Mandate of the Dark. Holy Hastur, did it clear up a lot for me! Believe it or not, I knew these
things - but, as has happened in the past, could not give voice to them, even in my own mind. 38
And that too proved to be a characteristic of the Book of Coming Forth by Night over the
years: that upon reading its statements, potential Setians did not consider them “new”, but
rather as truths which they had personally sensed, yet never quite given their own voice to
previously.
But generally the sentiment of recipients of the initial thirty copies was, as I had expected,
more one of “wait and see”. The recent shocks and surprises concerning the Church of Satan had
38 Letter, William Murray to M.A. Aquino, June 25, X/1975.
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been unsettling enough; a purported revelation from a god would have to wait its emotional/
rational/critical turn.
I turned my attention to the structural and operational design of the new Temple of Set. In
this I realized I was very much on my own. Not only was I the most senior official of the Church -
the only one of the IV°+ to have disavowed it - but none of the other Satanists who had also