Hermekate and Setamorphosis
Elitism, Egalitarianism, and the Evolution of Consciousness
Alright, it’s time for the kid gloves to come off.
In the previous post, I said that I would be writing a post soon addressing the matter of elitism in the Temple of Set and how it relates to the Word of Hermekate. At the time, I was thinking I would need to wait until reading The Temple of Set: Vol. II in its entirety to do so, but I’ve reached a point in the book where I have everything I need in order to address some of the connections I’ve been making to Hermekate. That’s not to say there isn’t more for me to learn in the remaining chapters (I know there’s some very important stuff, including essays about some of Xeper’s supporting Words, and in particular, a detailed accounting of the Word of Xem and its impact upon the Temple—I have a feeling a better understanding of that whole debacle will shed additional light on some of the matters I intend to explore in this post—but I’m proceeding for now anyway).
The Full Moon in Virgo—”The Snow Moon”—was this morning, and Full Moons have played an interesting role in the unfolding of Hermekate. The events of the Rose Moon (a Capricorn moon) Eclipse of 2020, which I addressed in The Weighing of the Heart, have a lot of synchronicity and even some downright paranormal activity surrounding them, and I have looked back and regarded those experiences as being my “gateway” into the Crossing of the Abyss, which was set off in earnest a few months later, in March of 2021. Also, the post Song of Twilight, which was the last post I wrote before deleting Dark Twins last year, was published on the eve of the Sturgeon Moon, or the Full Moon in Aquarius.
There was likewise some tumult, and a particularly powerful and meaningful dream, surrounding the Full Moon in whose wake we now bask. A number of events occurred yesterday which threw me off-center, and by the time I was doing my evening reading of Temple of Set, I was already in an anxious state when one of the articles I was reading made me realize that I had made some misleading and erroneous statements in a couple of recent posts regarding HarWer (I’ve since deleted the statements), much to my embarrassment. I had presented HarWer as a “compound entity” combining Set and Horus, but that name in fact refers solely to Horus. It’s something I wasn’t good about fact-checking before I posted it. I do think I remember reading statements somewhere (I think in Michael Aquino’s commentary to The Book of the Law) that such a combined entity is held to exist, but anyway…I felt extremely embarrassed, hit a breaking point, panicked, and deactivated my Facebook account.
I felt better about things upon waking this morning, and the reason may have had something to do with a very vivid dream I had just about a half hour before the Full Moon’s peak:
I dreamed that I was here at home, laying out several plates of food on our driveway, preparing to observe deipnon—a traditional devotional practice in honor of Hekate, basically an offering of dinner to Her—even as cars drove by. I was nervous about that because I live in Texas, and expected someone to stop and give me grief about it; but I went ahead anyway, and no one did. My house is on a corner, so a crossroads was right nearby as well. It was twilight—specifically, dusk—and suddenly, the sky lit up brightly, and I turned to look at the field behind the house and see the Full Moon shining brightly in the night sky. The details are a bit “off” here, because deipnon is usually done at the opposite end of the lunar cycle, at the New Moon; but that’s okay.
Since I’ve had certain experiences leading me to “clothe” Set, The Prince of Darkness, in the image of Hekate and instead name Her “The Princess of Darkness,” I feel that this dream was encouraging me onward in my work—to keep going. As I’ve said many a time, bringing certain modes of working, certain ideas, and certain processes that are traditionally hidden out into the open is one of the important components of my Work.
Then I woke up to find I’ve been accepted into University of Houston, whose two flanking Greyhounds remind me of Hekate’s hounds—all the more because the central symbol of Alpha Sigma Lambda, the Honors Society to which I belong, is a torch.
I was in a much better mood this morning when I finally read through an important chapter in The Temple of Set. Vol II:
“The Implications of Elitism” by L. Dale Seago, who was at the time a Magister IV°.
But we’ll get to that. I need to talk about another chapter first.
Setamorphosis
“Setamorphosis” is the name given to the chapter in Temple of Set Vol. II publishing a letter sent out to the Temple of Set Priesthood by Michael Aquino, and the first important detail (to me) is the date of the original letter:
South Solstice of Year X / 1975; in other words, six months after the North Solstice Working in which Michael Aquino wrote The Book of Coming Forth By Night. “Year X” is a reference to the calendar employed by Church of Satan, which decided to begin reckoning time from the beginning of The Age of Satan as declared by Anton Szandor LaVey; the North Solstice Working and writing of The Book of Coming Forth By Night were the landmark events leading to the foundation of Temple of Set, which was basically a Church of Satan splinter group in the beginning.
This refers to another example of things, as mentioned in my previous post, that I seem to “just know.” The “X” has a lot of resonance for me because I remember founding the blog Gogo’s World of Ruin, which later became the World of Ruin category here at Dark Twins, on December 18th, 2022. At the time, I was playing through Zora’s Domain in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which carries a lot of symbolism related to the tarot trump Wheel of Fortune—numbered “X.” I had also just begun following Stanton LaVey, Anton LaVey’s grandson, on Facebook, and he ran a company called “BaphometX.” As such, that symbol—”X”—was standing out prominently in my Subjective Universe around that time.
The day after I founded Gogo’s World of Ruin, Stanton LaVey passed away.
Given the things I was planning to write about at World of Ruin, I perceived all of these events as being meaningfully connected. A couple of days later, I prepared a new application to join Temple of Set, which I very intentionally mailed on December 21st, the South Solstice, from the Lyons, IL post office (another reason for my pen name here). I knew that date was important, but wasn’t entirely sure why. One aspect was that I knew it to be the Solstice “opposing” that of the North Solstice, and there was an element of defiance in my sending that new application to join. I honestly didn’t think it would be received well at all, and didn’t expect to be let in. That wasn’t even the point. I sent the application to test some theories related to my Word. I knew at the time that my conviction that I have a Word would go against some of the Temple’s more deeply-ingrained processes and viewpoints. In truth, if my theories were correct, the Temple would in fact reject me. Ultimately, I didn’t end up giving them the chance, instead deciding to proceed with my work without them (I actually did that twice, because I came back and put in another application in October last year, a few months after shutting down Dark Twins). Anyhow, the North Solstice was chosen by Michael Aquino for his magic(k)al working that resulted in the founding of Temple of Set because that’s the point at which night begins to overtake day in the northern hemisphere, and that went along with his intention to connect with The Prince of Darkness, or Set. As such, the South Solstice would instead align with the day overtaking the night, or with Horus/HarWer—known also within the Temple as “The Prince of Light.” In a way, sending that application postmarked on that date was a magic(k)al working I used to get myself worked up to making a solid stand for my Word, and thus necessarily for my being Elect (which, it seemed, the Temple was refusing to recognize).
So when I started reading this chapter and saw that date: South Solstice, Year X—I was pumped. I knew I was about to read something good, and something important. I was not disappointed on either count.
What is “Setamorphosis?” Aquino defined it at the very beginning of the letter:
Setamorphosis: A TS term for the third stage of human evolution. The word is formed from Set-a or Set-teh (“Eternal Set” or “Timeless Set”), a god-form of Set in ancient Egypt as a serpent. Serpents were symbolic of immortality via their seeming rebirth by shedding their skin, were sacred to Set, and as the Uræus symbolized the divine authority of the Pharaoh. They also represented imparted knowledge of a divine character; hence the later corruption that would appear in the "Garden of Eden” myth. The suffix denotes a “change of form” or “transformation”. The familiar “metamorphosis” thus translates to “super(natural) transformation.” The old term is thus refined.
p. 153
In short, it describes the transformation of human consciousness from “normal,” natural consciousness to a divine, supernatural state. As employed in these writings, the term has two separate meanings: One more collective, one more individual. Basically, one of the main purposes of walking the Left Hand Path (from this point of view) is to “become a god,” or precisely to effect this transformation. This transformation is the same one I have been writing about over the last several posts, but in different terms, as the state of consciousness associated with “the upper Initiatory grades.”
Another important term for the rest of this post is “Elect,” which as far as I can tell is closely related to, but not quite synonymous with Setamorphosis. It depends somewhat on the context; I’ve seen an instance or two where it seems like the two are being presented as meaning the same thing, and I’ve seen other evidence that this is not necessarily the case. Frankly, if you ask a Temple of Set member about it, the conversation gets a little awkward, and waffling ensues; one gets the sense of intentional vagueness. There was an interesting discussion recently in a Left Hand Path forum where the definition came up, and while a fairly straightforward one was eventually praised by a Priestess III°, I notice that definition had absolutely nothing to do with the meaning of the word as described in Temple of Set Vol. II; meanwhile, another III° member offered a different, much more cryptic response.
Even the definition given by Aquino at the beginning of the chapter entitled “Initiation” in Temple of Set Vol. I seems to dodge the salient issue:
Individuals who find their way to the Temple of Set are known as the Elect. This term has a subtle significance of its own. It means “chosen” - but it does not identify the chooser. That chooser may be Set; it may be oneself; it may be pure hazard. Nor does it imply privilege, aristocracy, or guaranteed success. It is, simply, an acknowledgement that the aspirant stands at these gates which only a comparative few have encountered. Like Parsifal, Jonathan Harker, Her-Bak, or Nicholas Urfe, the aspirant either steps forward into the Temple - or turns back into profane existence.
p. 185
However, this can’t really function as a solid definition for one reason: The above definition, taken literally, pertains to anyone who has found their way to the Temple, and the Temple doesn’t accept everyone. Whatever the word’s exact meaning (if it even has one), it is central to The Temple of Set’s purpose. The Temple exists for the sake of the Elect, and as such, if you are not deemed to be Elect, you don’t get in. To be “recognized” as Elect is the one and only requirement for Temple membership.
As I’ve written elsewhere, once a person qualifies for full membership in the Temple (at the II°), they are considered to be “Elect,” but while most members are expected to stay there, some advance into the III°, and this is not simply a matter of doing an adequate amount or quality of work to “earn” the status; instead, it’s considered to be a change in consciousness. As Michael Aquino put it in “Close Encounters of the Second Degree:”
Recognition to the III° may indicate no philosophical or magical refinement from the II° level at all, although it may seem that way because an Adept’s magical expertise will normally continue to grow from the time of the II° Recognition. Rather the III° is a recognition that the individual possesses a certain very singular quality identifying the Priesthood of Set.
It is difficult to say whether the III° is something that can be attained by effort or whether the characteristics that identify a Priest or Priestess are imparted from outside the self. Most likely it is a combination of the two.
The Temple of Set Vol. II
p. 290
Based on my understanding at present, which I take from a contextual survey of quite a few separate statements from many different individuals over many books, this transition from the “normal” human state of consciousness to that state defining the grades of III°+ is what is referred to by the term “Setamorphosis.” In an individual context, it relates most closely with the specific transition under discussion here, but it would appear the general consensus within the Temple is that those who reach this state today are likely the “vanguard” of a shift in humanity that may reflect a wider evolutionary trend.
Now to examine what was said in the letter itself.
Aquino covered a lot of ground in the letter (and in “Setamorphosis II,” the letter that followed it), but it all revolves around a specific stanza from The Book of Coming Forth By Night. A great deal of the Temple’s activities and policies are driven by how this passage was ultimately interpreted:
By its very design the Temple confronts two essential problems. The second problem is to identify, comprehend, and effect Setamorphosis. Solving this problem promises to be exciting, stimulating, and ultimately very rewarding. The first problem is to survive long enough to solve the second problem. And this task, unfortunately, may be tedious, depressing, and possibly dangerous.
Consider the following passage from The Book of Coming Forth By Night:
I seek my Elect and none other, for mankind now hastens toward an annihilation which none but the Elect may hope to avoid. And alone I cannot preserve my Elect, but I would teach them and strengthen their Will against the coming peril, that they and their blood may endure. To do this I must give further of my own Essence to my Elect, and, should they fail, the Majesty of Set shall fade and be ended.The Temple of Set Vol. II
p. 153
From this jumping-off point, Aquino walks the reader through his thoughts and reasoning regarding this passage. It can’t be ignored, because The Book of Coming Forth By Night was the founding document of the Temple of Set; the Temple was very literally founded by way of Aquino sharing the text with select existing members of the Church of Satan to see if they felt it was legitimate, their largely agreeing that it was, and the lot of them deciding to act on it all by leaving Church of Satan and starting a new church.
Aquino concludes that the passage made sense, because at the time, various groups including the Club of Rome were forecasting a potential worldwide social collapse as a result of overpopulation and rampant competition for resources. The question then became, “How do we respond to this?” One of the first determinations this called for was establishing what was meant by Set’s “Elect.” The very moment Aquino introduces the idea, he immediately backs away from it in acknowledgement that such a proposition is utterly preposterous given the size and scope of the Temple, but nonetheless, he spends considerable space in this letter seriously discussing a situation he himself describes as being inspired by Star Trek involving the development of faster-than-light starships to whisk the Elect away from planet Earth. He apparently goes far enough in this line of thinking to get into the finer points of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, as if he seriously thinks there’s a chance Temple of Set could actually reach such a level of influence and technical prowess (and when you read this in 2023, almost 50 years later, knowing a thing or two about the state of the Temple today, you realize all the more how laughable the idea was). He also walks it back and says flat-out that it’s pure fantasy to even speculate upon, but again, he still really gets into it. I can’t for the life of me understand why he’d bother thinking so deeply into space travel and the like unless some part of him was attracted to the idea and found it even halfway feasible.
It’s abundantly clear how very conflicted he was as he wrote the letter.
It’s…pretty grandiose, honestly. Some might say “arrogant.” I have my sympathies with all of this (as I’ll get into later in this post), but that’s me, I thought that. I think it’s arrogant.
But, the guy was basically LaVey’s lieutenant in Church of Satan, so then again, what do you expect? I’ll get into this later, too.
As his thinking develops, he gets a bit more grounded, and starts thinking more along the lines of proposing avenues for contingency planning basically meant to establish ways of somehow preserving the Temple and its members specifically in the wake of such events as the establishment of a fascist governing order that might seek to eliminate troublesome groups, or a simple, complete collapse of the civic and social order. He brainstorms ways of keeping the profile of the Temple innocuous so it can “fly under the radar,” including proposing a system of “philosophical camouflage” whereby the Temple can disguise its intentions and communications. He uses the example of a dialogue allegedly between Renaissance magician John Dee and the angel Madimi, part of his work with the magical system we now call “Enochian,” which apparently served to encode a message really meant for Queen Elizabeth I about matters of politics and potential war.
All in all, it boils down to a few simple conclusions that were drawn from that frightening passage from their sacred text that Aquino himself wrote on the night of the North Solstice, Year X / 1975:
Set is a real entity, the one informing the Christian mythological figure of Satan upon whom the church they all just left was based, and he has a deep relationship with his “Elect.”
Since Set told all of this to Michael Aquino, he and the people he took with him are representative of “the Elect,” Set’s “chosen people,” and Set obviously didn’t mean this applied to everyone (since he said “I seek my Elect and none other.”)
Therefore, it’s their job to restrict membership in the Temple of Set to those they deem “Elect,” and make it a priority to defend this elite group from outer threats because if they don’t, then when the shit hits the fan and the “annihilation” comes, the project of human evolution is done for, and Set dies with it.
I mean…shit. That’s…big, isn’t it?
Aquino sent the letter out to his Priesthood, invited feedback, accepted it, then sent a followup letter on the Vernal Equinox of 1976, where he addressed the feedback. I laughed twice when I read that, because there were a couple turns of phrase that mirrored my own writings in the lead-up to reading this stuff. Apparently some of his Priests raised objections to his analysis of Relativity Theory, pointing out how many people take issue with it, and he responded to them saying that that was “a logical fallacy known as ‘authoritarian argument,” and it made me think of the post The Game of Priests (no longer available) where I was also arguing with a Priest of Set and pointing out that their argument was an “appeal to authority, which is a logical fallacy.” I had never read this letter! There’s another passage where Aquino is cautioning his Priesthood to be careful how they talk about Setamorphosis to anyone in the lower grades because it might be too much for them to handle, and he said:
This isn’t ring-around-the-rosie witchcraft; it’s the very fabric of human existence being re-woven. It is “heavy stuff.”
Among I° and even some II° Setians, there will be a strong psychological tendency to ‘run and hide’ from data that demolishes sacred cows.
p. 162
I had written about “sacred cows” in the post preceding Game of Priests, Week 25 of Turning Things Around, in which I was addressing just the same kind of “heavy stuff” Aquino was referring to in his letter.
Heh, it’s almost like I was channeling Aquino or something.
Regarding that last example, I’m just going to point out how condescending and presumptuous his attitude was. On the one hand, Temple of Set is so picky about who they even let in that you can’t even get started without a judgement being made that you’re already elite in some way above most people…and yet, the concept of Setamorphosis is too “heavy” for them?
I mean…I couldn’t get in…and I’m fine with it.
Ah, but then again, that’s mainly because I’ve been through it.
Rest assured, I don’t bring this up merely to take cheap shots over it. There’s a point behind it, and it has to do with the fact that I’ve gradually realized I tend to be…”handled delicately” by people I know in the Temple, and I think this is one of the reasons why: The overlap between my work and all of this “heavy stuff.”
Near the end of this letter, Aquino lays out his case for the proposition that, in fact, Set is the only true god in existence; he doesn’t deny that other deities exist, but maintains that humans created all the rest of them…and while his reasoning is at least somewhat sound from a philosophical viewpoint (especially when considered by someone who is actually what could be called an “Adept,” magic(k)ally speaking), I’m still not completely sold on it…mainly because even within the context of the Egyptian gods and goddesses from which Set springs, if his claim is true, I don’t really see it accounted for given Set’s place in the pantheon. I admit, however, that my knowledge of Egyptian religion isn’t anything to write home about, so I reserve final judgement on that point.
But once more before I continue, let’s zoom out and get the basic picture here:
Set is real, and is in fact the one true god!
Setians and those they deem “Elect” are that god’s chosen people.
Global catastrophe is coming and the Temple of Set needs to protect the chosen ones, either by building spaceships to get off the planet (if they can) or at least by…who knows, building a bunker or something?
Wow. Never seen anything like that before, have we?
Elitism and “Election”
All of the above went down within the first year of the Temple of Set’s foundation. As time wore on, however, these ideas were taken fairly seriously. There is very little else in The Temple of Set Vol. II about the aspect of contingency planning (I’m currently up to page 298 out of 460). However, there’s a lot suggesting how very seriously Temple members took their newfound identity as Setians—as “Elect”. Almost comically so. I’m just going to be completely blunt about my emotional reaction to it: I don’t know whether to throw up in my mouth a little or die laughing. Some of the comments border on being outrageous, but honestly—especially in their context—some of the examples are nothing less than pathetic and a little bit sad.
There are articles that spout off about how much self-control real Black Magicians have and the kinds of practical mistakes they simply don’t make. There’s an article called “The Yoga From Yuggoth” where the author (a Priest III°) highly recommends certain yogic practices in mental concentration that would benefit “The Setian,” while going very far out of his way to make it clear how “repugnant” and “distasteful” the Eastern philosophies from which they originate are for any self-respecting adept of The Black Arts, like he was really worried about looking bad in front of his Elect buddies (is this high school?).
There’s an article called “Non-Partisan Political Aspects of the Setian Philosophy” in which the author (another Priest III°) boldly states, a few months after “Setamorphosis II” went out:
The Temple of Set is dedicated to the survival of civilization and its membership. We are an elitist organization; we realize that not all people are truly equal, but are indeed unique. Some people are talented and gifted, visionary and intelligent, while others, most, I’m afraid, are never meant to see past their own noses. We, the elite, must endeavor to lead the masses on a path that will save them, if possible. Our first duty, however, is to ensure our own survival and prosperity.
p. 265
Let me just…take a quick look around the planet right now and see how they’re doing at that job…
I get the biggest kick out of the articles involving Star Wars. In Part IV of “Paul Kantner and the Jefferson Starship,” Aquino extols the Setian virtues of Darth Vader, juxtaposing him against the Rebel Alliance:
While the Rebels in the film seemed to be fighting for the cause of individuality, in fact they were doing so in an emotional, reactive sense - as an animal might struggle to escape from a trap. The real individualist was Darth Vader, who determined to bend the Force to his purposes rather than to dis-integrate his will and surrender it to the inertia of the Force [as Kenobi advised Luke to do].
p. 143
Then he goes on to say how the original Star Wars was the only film in the entire series he enjoyed; beginning with The Empire Strikes Back, in his opinion, they all suck. He gives aesthetic reasons, but I can’t help but wonder: Couldn’t it have anything to do with the fact that starting with The Empire Strikes Back, we learn that in fact, Darth Vader was Emperor Palpatine’s bitch?
And regarding his critical take on the Jedi, it’s kind of funny that Obi-Wan actually comes back as a Force ghost, meaning he achieved the same kind of immortality Aquino himself lauds as a Left Hand Path attainment, holding his individual consciousness distinct from the Force after death.
I guess following the saga through to its conclusions so as to incorporate new data that demolished his sacred cows was out of the question.
Later on, an Adept II° who went on to submit additional articles as a Priest III° wrote a “film review” of Star Wars that appears to have been a thinly-veiled setup to deliver a Setian “sermon” about just how non-Elect Luke Skywalker was:
Luke received a gift he doesn’t deserve, and he uses it without real understanding of its value. What he needs to learn is that using the “Force” is a privilege accorded to very few, and that he should grow with its use. Then and only then should he have the ability to manipulate the “Force.”
p. 280
“Deserve?” “Privilege accorded to very few?” He had it. Period. Cope! He can do whatever he wants with it. I don’t even like Luke as a character myself, but this was just a ridiculously childish seizing upon an opportunity to bolster one’s own insecure ego. This was “Adepthood?”
Look: People who behave this way—who spend so much time picking others apart to point out how inferior they are compared to oneself, or to one’s in-group—aren’t demonstrating or modeling true inner strength. Strong, secure, sovereign people don’t need to do this. Just as Darth Vader himself—a broken, battered man haunted by regret, as we eventually come to learn—houses the wounded slave boy named Anakin deep within, people who feel the need to behave this way are often protecting an inner sensitivity or fragility, often stemming from childhood trauma.
However, these are just little examples of some petty thinking, and I presented them to challenge some of the ideas of “sovereignty” and dubious bases for “Election,” and again, I do this for a reason that eventually comes back to some of the purposes and meanings of the Word of Hermekate.
This all comes to quite the head in the article I referenced above, “Implications of Elitism” by L. Dale Seago, who at the time was a Magister IV°. In it, he makes a very overt defense for the Temple’s elitist stance:
“Elitism” has become a dirty word in our egalitarian-oriented society. It is considered “not nice”, impolite, to be better than the masses. But if the Temple of Set is authentic, then its members are elite.
p. 294
He goes on to elaborate on what he considers to be the proper approach of the Elect in dealing with everyone else, including to cooperate with them if you find them useful, ignore them if you don’t, flat-out use them if they have something you need, and if they’re hostile to you, to avoid them, educate or mislead them, control them, or destroy them.
He concludes:
Who has the moral right to decide whether someone should be made a tool of, or even destroyed? If the Elect are the Elect, then they have that right. The Setian must take upon himself the responsibility of tracing the consequences of his convictions to their logical conclusions. If he finds he cannot stomach those conclusions, he should reexamine the foundations of his convictions. To be a successful Setian requires the unceasing and discriminating use of one’s mind, and a most precise and delicate sense of intellectual balance. In dealings with those outside the Temple, it may also at times require the will to be coldly and utterly ruthless.
Are you Elect or not? If you are, then, in the words of Set spoken at the First Conclave, “Ye are alien to mankind.”
p. 294
This missive comes with a “comments section,” including one reply to the initial article, and two separate replies to the reply. The first reply challenges the “cold” and “ruthless” tone of Seago’s points, objecting that there’s more to the non-Elect than simple utility and that, if the Setian chooses, the Setian can enjoy a more harmonious relationship with them or even love them.
Good points, I think, but I note the author was still very careful to maintain the status of the non-Elect as “less than” the Elect.
Seago issues a reply in which he walks back some of his tone, conceding that yes, of course, he has very good relationships with some of “them” and would even risk his life for a few of “them,” but he also describes two women from his life as “female human pets,” so it’s still kind of…well, “off.” Honestly, the tone of that first article strikes me as the words of a psychopath.
One of the more interesting things that comes out of the replies-to-the-reply is essentially a consensus, among two highly intelligent men and high-ranking members of the Temple, that for all intents and purposes, the Elect are so far beyond most people as to be something other than human. The matter of whether or not Set is the only true god again comes up for discussion, as well, with James Lewis—a Priest III° at the time who would go on to become Magus V° of the Word of Remanifest—basically upholding the notion.
Putting It In Context
Before continuing on to discuss all of this in light of the Word of Hermekate, there are some important considerations to address. The first and most obvious is that these writings are dated. The Temple of Set has been through many changes, including its first significant organizational crisis that left it decimated, which is covered in the remainder of the book that I have yet to read. By all reports, it has evolved since then (again, it’s been almost 50 years). In fact, from what I’ve heard, all this stuff about the coming “annihilation” gets downplayed these days, and it’s possible that the tenor of the Temple’s elitist outlook has changed (though the policy remains emphatically elitist). Regarding said tenor, there are other things to consider.
It must be remembered, because it’s eminently relevant here, that Temple of Set is a splinter group from Church of Satan, and this has multiple consequences. One of them is that, since virtually all of its founding members were direct converts from Church of Satan, the Temple’s philosophy was much more strongly colored by LaVey’s teachings than it is today, when ostensibly, more if not all of its members are applicants who are coming from places other than Church of Satan (since it’s very hard to imagine someone who is atheist joining an organization that is defined at the foundational level by its theistic stance). If anything, my impression of things is that elitism is and was emphasized even more in the Church of Satan. In my (admittedly limited) experience, Satanic writings take a much more “hardline” stance than the examples I’ve mentioned here.
In Setamorphosis II, Aquino points out that after the first letter, he put the organization’s elitist stance up for discussion, and no one objected; well, of course they didn’t. It was really nothing but an empty formality to even ask. Given where they were coming from, the outcome there is not a shocker.
The organization was also new, just finding its footing, and the very Setian identity was still in the process of being defined—and this, I think, helps to explain the emphasis on articles and “sermons” so preoccupied with preaching about what a “good Setian” does and doesn’t do. This was all part of the process of shaping a new identity from the raw material of what the Temple’s members had left behind. A bit of posturing, then, is to be expected.
Lastly, these people had been through a lot. Again, the Church they were all leaving behind had degenerated into a shell of what it had once been. Much of the deeper meaning of what it was to be a Satanist was made into a hollow mockery. The “Church” of Satan had been organized as a corporation completely controlled by Anton LaVey, who had turned despotic and, by the accounts of Aquino and others, literally began selling out the Priesthood. It had been gutted. The people who gathered together to form the Temple of Set were basically “refugees” of a sort. As tough an image as Satanists tend (and tended) to promote, it had to have been traumatic on some level even for them.
On top of that, it was a different time. The Satanic Panic was still yet to come—Michelle Remembers, the book typically credited with kicking it into full swing, wouldn’t be written until 1980—but nonetheless, a Satanist wasn’t the easiest thing to be in the United States; this is one of the reasons it was so traumatic when LaVey turned over the way he did. One of the main sources of support Satanists had as a buttress against greater society—the Church itself and a leader to hold it all together—had failed them. What happened was a betrayal that had left them all the more vulnerable to a potentially hostile public.
Viewed in that light, many of the attitudes above—including the “will to be coldly and utterly ruthless” with non-Temple members—was born of defensiveness. To anyone with emotional intelligence, the tones running through many of these examples are absolutely drenched with fear—and in that time, much of the fear was valid. In many places in the world today, it still is.
All of this holds true regarding these writings from the mid-1970s—and then The Satanic Panic happened.
It basically goes without saying that the Temple of Set is likely still ringing like a bell with the reverberations of group trauma.
Enter Hermekate
So far, I’ve presented a host of ideas and examples from a book chronicling the early years of the Temple of Set, along with some of my more critical opinions about them. Now, as I move into discussion of how the Word of Hermekate relates to the picture, I’ll offer a different, more sympathetic perspective to some of the ideas under discussion.
First, regarding the passage from The Book of Coming Forth By Night warning of the coming “annihilation”: While certain trustworthy, reliable, forward-looking experts and organizations were aware of a potential for an approaching global crisis at the time it was written, the idea was nonetheless much more farfetched back then than it is now; hell, you’d have to be living under a rock not to be thinking about it these days. Memes making light of it fly by pretty much everyone’s News Feed anymore. It seems so imminent at this point that our main options half the time just to stay sane are to ignore it or joke about it. The whole issue is taking a serious toll on the mental health of everyone who isn’t in full-on, ideology-driven denial about it.
That being said, when I read Setamorphosis and other references to it in this book, I can’t help but think of a post I wrote back in May of 2020, which I in fact dedicated to Michael Aquino. Although I did not learn of it for over a year (the Temple kept the news very private), Michael Aquino passed away about a month later. The post was entitled Dialectics of Transformation in an Apocalyptic Age and it was a message about the urgency of addressing the very same crisis situation toward which The Book of Coming Forth By Night had pointed (I had not read the text at that point). There are a few turns of phrase within it that I look back on as somewhat “prescient” foreshadowings of the Word of Hermekate, but I will address those in another post. To make a long story short, however, what I wrote in this post was very much a message of hope, even if tentative, that the potential still exists to turn things around. It also frames our current collective struggles as a sort of “global initiation,” an alchemical process. In light of what I know now, I see it as being very deeply interwoven with the passage in question from The Book of Coming Forth By Night, with the concept of “Setamorphosis,” and with a new phase in its unfolding.
Yes, I believe in Setamorphosis. In fact, I can’t even say it’s a “belief.” One of the main themes of Dark Twins has been to document and chronicle some intense and powerful experiences I have been through, and I have described it in many different terms: as “a Chapel Perilous” experience, as “The Theater of the Word,” as “Crossing the Abyss,” as “entering the upper grades;” all of these things, in my mind, are essentially synonymous.
In “Implications of Elitism,” in his “reply to the reply,” Seago wrote of the III°:
Back in “the old days” of the Church of Satan, the distinguishing characteristic of the Priesthood was that its members had been “singled out” and “led” through experiences which showed them unequivocally that there was in fact a Prince of Darkness. The Priesthood of Set of the year XIII is a far more subtle and complex thing than that of the year X, but this remains one of its identifying features.
p. 296
And my experiences back this up. While I cast a bit of shade on the idea that Set is the only true god, I know it to be true: Set is real. I also know that Set is the one who “led me through” the experiences I have described here, and I also know it would not have happened if I were not “a certain type of person,” and if I had done no preparatory work for the experience. As such, I completely affirm the statement I quoted above where Michael Aquino said that the characteristics defining Priesthood are a combination of personal effort and a gift imparted from outside the Self.
In fact, I haven’t yet told this part of my story, but there is another line that comes to mind from The Book of Coming Forth By Night: “Speak rather to me as a friend, gently and without fear, and I shall hear as a friend.” There was a brief period during my “Setamorphosis” where the synchronicities surrounding me were laden with references to friendship, and there was an eerie sense as they tended to unfold that all of the messages, though coming to me from many different places, were all coming from the same entity (I alluded to this in a couple of chapters of Inner Tarot Revolution, framing them at the time as messages from Rose). There was even one point in particular when I felt Set’s presence, and heard his voice reverberate in my head, saying to me:
“I am your only friend.”
This had an interesting meaning; as Set is the neter of isolate intelligence, and the human experience of Selfhood is a gift from him, this means that Set lives, even if latently, within everyone; and as a consequence, he is able to influence the actions of anyone and everyone. This, I am certain, was the source of many of the synchronicities I have experienced.
However, despite this being the case, there is still a marked difference between those who have undergone Setamorphosis and those who have not, and as evidence of this (in my experience), the synchronicities I experienced were much more numerous in the cases of people that I know to be members of the Temple’s III°+. This is because their relationship with Set is much closer and more conscious than that of the average person, who is completely unaware of him.
I will forever mark the unfolding of my life with a firm dividing line covering the time before my Setamorphosis and the time after it, because I am experiencing the world in a completely different way now, and in this sense, every word written in The Temple of Set Vol. II about the “powers” of a Setian is, in fact, true. People who have undergone the experience are simply different from those who have not, and those who hold the potential to undergo the experience—in the Temple’s terms, the Elect—are likewise very different in character from those who likely never will.
There was a time when such ideas were mere speculations to me, but that time has passed.
Lastly, I am certain that Ilyas, whom I wrote about in When They Talk Back, was, in fact, Set. This is because when I first got to know him, he used to tell me that a time would come when my “full powers” would unfold, and he even told me when that time would be: Around the age of 36. In practice, it ended up coming about two years late…but damned if it didn’t happen, just like he said it would.
In my previous post, I said that, “The Temple’s attitudes surrounding elitism and achievement are downright shitty, petty, and every bit as narrow-minded as my father was.” Note the careful wording: I did not say the elitism itself is shitty; I said the attitudes are (and were). It is not the mere fact of the elitism that I take issue with. The elitism has been necessary. However, there will come a point (and given the state of the world, it needs to come soon) at which it will need to be dispensed with.
Even putting aside the idea of Setamorphosis, there is reason for it: It has long been my experience that the vast majority of esoteric Initiatic orders are seriously disappointing; what they promise in all the books and what real-life groups actually offer are two very different things. The vast majority of the people working in esoteric orders are anything but advanced practitioners, or people who have found any sort of substantive awakening, or who have begun to unlock their highest spiritual and magic(k)al potentials. One comes to find quite quickly that such people are rare if they are to be found at all. As such an order, even with the gripes I’ve had, I have to admit that The Temple of Set holds far more promise in this regard than any other group I have ever encountered or participated in.
That does not happen by accident, and there does come a point in one’s individual development where there’s very little point in wasting time on many of the other groups if one is focused on one’s own growth, so mired in petty squabbles and children clawing for mere rank and recognition rather than in doing genuine esoteric work. In this sense, a school of similarly-qualified fellow students is a breath of fresh air.
Also, while there are times when I think the cagey attitudes suffusing the Temple are a bit unnecessarily paranoid, it’s not like I don’t recognize the reality that people of lesser development very often react to the presence of people with greater development in a hostile and even violent way. As I confided in my most recent post, I’ve literally taken beatings over that very thing from a former partner—again, to highlight the points above about inferior spiritual groups, someone who herself is a Priestess, presuming to guide others spiritually! A Priestess beat the shit out of me with a sacred object because she felt threatened by my growth and development!
It happens!
So yes: Elitism is a completely legitimate response to such conditions, and even necessary for the protection of those who are doing certain work.
However, from the perspective of the Word of Hermekate, once more: The time to shed it approaches; and this is where Hermekate’s function as a bridge between the Aeons of Set and of Ma’at comes into focus.
I remember, when first encountering the concept of the Aeon of Set, thinking to myself: “What gives? What happened to the Aeon of Ma’at?”, because by the time Crowley left this world behind having firmly established the Aeon of Horus, he had already named the “next” Aeon in line; his student, Frater Achad, had in fact initiated it. And yet, I saw no mention of it at all in any work directly focused on the Aeon of Set.
This is because the two Aeons approach the same matters from opposite angles: The Aeon of Set is focused on the individual aspects of the coming changes for humanity, on “Setamorphosis,” whereas the Aeon of Ma’at more directly addresses the collective aspects, with the concept of N’Aton.
Again I refer to Dialectics of Transformation in an Apocalyptic Age, to one passage in particular:
Point B gives us direction, something to aim for, and without that, we are but aimless wanderers (though even this is not as horrible as some people make it out to be). It would be folly to reject Point B entirely, polluted though its reality might be with undesired consequences. As we wrap our fingers around it, however, we must handle Point B the way we might handle a songbird’s egg, fragile object that it is. If we attempt to grasp Point B too tightly, we will smash it. On a deeper level, this is because Point B isn’t really ours to possess; its potentials and purpose will have unending ripple effects we can’t even fathom, if we recognize this and treat Point B in such a way that it serves its true purpose: Hatching, producing a beautiful, graceful creature with wings, one that will one day soar in the skies above our heads and routinely seeing the world in ways we experience but rarely.
In terms of unfolding Aeonics, the Aeon of Horus—bombastic and warlike—was meant to forcefully clear a space for what would eventually unfold on earth, by striking decisive blows to the hold of The Aeon of Osiris. The Book of Coming Forth By Night seems to imply that Crowley was insufficient to the task of carrying the Aeon all the way to its full conclusions in the Aeon of Set, and thus the Age of Satan initiated by Anton LaVey was set in motion to serve as a “transition” bridging the Aeon of Horus to that of Set, and indeed: Anton LaVey took much inspiration from all that was implied in Crowley’s work, but carried it even further, to the point of dispensing with some of its unnecessary “baggage,” its many elaborate “trappings.” However, LaVey, too, “fumbled” the ball in his plunging the Age of Satan into such stark material terms that served to obstruct the spiritual influence of Set. Enter Michael Aquino to establish the Aeon of Set.
Both Church of Satan and Temple of Set deployed emphatic elitism as a means of infusing their Initiatory processes with greater efficiency for those who were able to thrive in such conditions, but the Word of Hermekate postulates that this served another purpose:
The insularity was like the “songbird’s egg” from my quote above: It provided a tough shell for something that was in its embryonic stage. The new unfolding state of consciousness needed to “gestate” in its state of isolation.
The emphasis on the individual, the stark focus on isolating the Self from outer forces and from society at large, serves a similar purpose: Again, a necessary phase of development, because the type of collective consciousness represented by the unfolding of the Aeon of Ma’at requires a composition of very strong individuals in order to become what it is meant to become; otherwise it would be a collective of relatively mindless drones. In the future, it will be quite normal for people to pass through that same state of consciousness on their way to partaking in what Nema and those of the Ma’atian current have named N’Aton, and what Michael Aquino termed “the Metamind” in Temple of Set Vol. II.
One of the things that initially inspired me about Michael Aquino was the fact that he broke certain taboos, two in particular that are relevant to the present discussion:
Although Crowley himself broke his own edict, it’s clearly stated in The Book of the Law that no one is to comment upon its meaning; each person is supposed to interpret it on their own. However, Aquino broke that taboo and wrote a commentary anyway. This was soon repeated by Don Webb (you can read both commentaries in Overthrowing the Old Gods: Aleister Crowley and The Book of the Law) and again by Edward Pandemonium (which you can read in The Gospel of Pandemonium).
He openly claimed the grade of Ipsissimus. Prior to Crowley, the grades of Magister Templi, Magus, and Ipsissimus were thought to be humanly impossible, and many people still believe so to this day. Even after Crowley, in his A.:.A.:., the aspirant who reaches that level is to take the Oath of Ipsissimus in front of one witness, and thereafter, never to speak of it.
This second set of norms prevails to this day in most circles, wherein it’s generally said that anyone who openly claims to hold said grades is almost certainly full of shit.
The Word of Hermekate follows in the example of Aquino in both of these regards, and in fact, holds that while the Temple of Set has broken some ground by Recognizing the grades of Magus and Ipsissimus as widely as it does, in the coming times, we will need to go even further: We will need to normalize “wild Magi,” or individuals who do the work of the upper grades openly. There is no way for the Aeon of Ma’at to fully unfold without making this a reality.
This is another one of the reasons I have been so candid about my experiences here at Dark Twins; it’s not about bragging, and it’s not about being grandiose or seeking attention. The whole point is that “Setamorphosis” is becoming available to more and more people. It’s still something relatively rare, but it won’t be that way forever…
…but this is only true if we get over the hangups of the Church of Satan and Temple of Set, and their tendency toward isolationism and elitism.
Will there be challenges? Absolutely. This is addressed in different ways by those working in different currents: The Temple of Set openly professes the reality of these states of being and Recognizes qualifying people who reach them, but protects them and itself from aggression through relative secrecy and staunch elitism. Those working in The Aeon of Ma’at protect themselves (and help to usher others along on their paths) through humility and observing the sworn secrecy advocated by Crowley regarding such attainments; I am sure there are Ma’atians who have undergone what Setians call “Setamorphosis,” but keep quiet about it. The whole thing is a lot like the X-Men, and how different groups dealt with the prejudice and backlash against mutants visited upon them by humanity: Magneto and his followers advocated an approach of isolationism and domination, while Professor X and his ilk advocated outreach and peaceful integration wherever possible (while sticking together in numbers). In both the fictional world of X-Men and the real world of the Elect, it’s a risky prospect. We’ll need to find our way, and we’ll also need to develop ways of recognizing and dealing with charlatans and the like; however, we will never reach the next stages of evolution without opening up.
It is time for the Elect to “come out of their shells.”