Dear Friends,
When I became a Magister Templi of the Temple of Set, I decided to write a book about the magical practices of Late Antiquity, especially 200-400 C.E. when the name of Set-Typhon was powerful force in the Roman empire, and the Egyptian traction of the spell book was being transplanted to Europe, where it became the grimoire. I did a survey of the magical papyri of Thebes, and I wrote a book both on the cultural and philosophical background for the material, as well as suggestion for the modern (or postmodern) magician. The book, The Seven Faces of Darkness: Practical Typhonian Magic is available form Runa-Raven Press, and is also distributed by Weiser and Abyss.
The book's ISBN is 1-885972-07-5. Runa Raven Press is at Runa-Raven/ POB 557/ Smithville, Texas 78957. They'll send you a catalog of their titles for a $1.00
Here is chapter one of the book, which explains both its philosophy and that of the Order I head in the Temple of Set, the Order of Setne Khamuast.
I've wandered between two camps all my life. One is the camp of practicing occultists, people who seek to use magic as a way of exploring and manipulating the world, but who shun logic, research, and precision. The other camp is the camp of the scholar who values precision and research, but fears to actually put into practice the methods they discover. My meeting with Edred Thorsson/Stephen Flowers convinced me that a practical synthesis of the two camps could be achieved, as well as providing a practical methodology for such a synthesis. With the best scholarly sources I could find, I began a study of the god Set-Typhon, one of the most frequently appearing figures in the magical papyri of Thebes and whose name is found in curse tablets around the Mediterranean.
Set-Typhon drew my attention for several reasons. The Egyptian god Set, who represented a fierce separateness -- an individual drive for power and knowledge, was largely a suppressed "forbidden" deity of the Egyptians. He had been a patron of the pharaohs of the XIX and XXth dynasties. I was curious why this god had (then as now) a remanifestation, and why he was coupled with a Greek monster. Why did literate, well-educated men of late antiquity came to this particular synthesis? It seemed at best unlikely. As I began to answer these questions, I discovered deeper cultural and historical realities ranging from hitherto unexplored aspects of the survival of Egyptian practices, to the discovery of attitudes toward magic and philosophy that impacted my own becoming. I would like to share the beginnings of my understanding of Set-Typhon in the Hermetic tradition, so that others may make use of tools I've found and of the method of discovery.
The majority of operant texts available to us come from the third to fifth centuries of the Common Era. Most were found in Thebes, a collection whose history, whose magical and cultural significance has generally been overlooked. This key collection, which escaped the Roman persecution of magical texts, can be tied in with similar spells on curse tablets found around the Mediterranean. The practices of the Theban library are the key to a widespread magical/philosophical view of the universe which shaped the thought of Late Antiquity, and which in a Hidden manner have shaped and are reshaping magical practices of the Twentieth Century.
What I wish to do in this book is examine the papyri and tablets, the Egyptian contribution to the papyri, the Greek contribution. Then on a more operative level, I wish to show the postmodern magician how he or she may use this technology, its presence in the world, and sources to deepen his or her understanding. The most perceptive of my readers will see this entire Work as a demonstration of method, which they may use to rewin whatever mysteries the world holds for them, whether it be Mayan sorcery, the Oghams, or the intricacies of the Tao.
The process I used in reconstructing the darker operant side of Hermeticism was a threefold process which I initially read of in a paper by Edred Thorsson with special emphasis on the semiotic model of magic. I feel that the process has been valuable in both personal transformation as well as giving me clear results through the activation of existing scholarly material. I think the process the Mr. Thorsson has developed has the potential of changing the way we do both magic and scholarship in our world, and is of special significance at this time of ideational shift. The process is one of objective analysis, followed by subjective synthesis, and finally enactment. Let's examine the phases.
Objective analysis. If I wish to re-create the practices of others, the first place to start is the hard facts. I am fortunate at the wealth of operant material available to me, the papyri and tablets. Likewise a surprising number of primary texts dealing with the illustrative magic of Hermeticism has likewise survived such as the Enneads of Plotinus or the Hermetica. These primary texts combined with the archaeological and historical records available give us an accurate picture of what these magicians did -- not only in the material sense, but in terms of there social and linguistic milieus.
The later material is necessary to discover how these individuals perceived the order of their worlds. Magic, the art of changing the subjective universe in order to produce a proportionate change in the objective universe depending on the passion and precision of the operator, begins with a received world view (through by necessity this world view individuates with the practice of magic). For an understanding of the world view as many factors as can be handled by the reconstructionist should be handled. If you want to make the same journey as the original operators, you must start as close to the same place as they started as you can, and you must arrive at the same destination. In determining the destination, which must by necessity be individual given the nature of magic, we do have the popular accounts of the lives of practicing Hermeticists. Indeed such accounts may have already shaped our minds about the nature of magicians, the popular Greek novels of late antiquity had a strong effect on Goethe's Faust and the emergence of the magic story in modern times.
This emphasis on objective data gathering is also an emphasis on self-reliance. The current magical practice of relying on the channelings or revelations of others bespeak a spiritual laziness. Rather than seeking out the beginning and ending points, many prefer to take the half-cooked models of another individual's mind -- an individual who may or may not have achieved that transformation of magic.
It might be argued that the magician who does not engage in objective analysis and merely creates his or her own system is more self-reliant than the researcher. However, the totally self-created system will rarely challenge one's blind spots, rarely present you with mysteries to be solved, rarely present you with confirmation that you're on the right track. The difficult process of seeking the objective data allows you in a very real way to remanifest the way of learning that various successful schools have possessed. This may not provide the entertainment of spending a weekend listening to someone channel a kazillion-year-old Lemurian, but it will provide you with one of the closest things available to time travel. The last chapter of this book provides the dedicated seeker some resources if they wish to make the journey I have.
Subjective synthesis. The Hermetic tradition is above all a tradition of individualism, the Setian current within it particularly so. Once adequate research has been begun, questions arise that can only be answered by relating the process to the understanding of the individual. A model, as appropriate to Hermes god of communication as it is to current linguistic thinking, emerges. Having considered the traditions it factually developed through time (diachronically), how does the individual make use of it in the here and now (synchronically)?
Having learned the language, what do you choose to say?
An example would be the common practice of dream-sending, an important tool in the Setian toolkit. The questions as to the meanings and ethics are many. Each individual must come up with her or his own answers as I did. The process of discovery has a twofold thirst. Firstly, it lets you observe, test, and articulate what is hidden in your personality. Secondly, applying your personality to the external tradition then allows you to take the facet of the tradition into your sphere of being. You have claimed it for your subjective universe. Once again, you are repeating the process of the writers of the papyri, and like them using this process to lead to an individual enlightenment.
The actions of my subjective synthesis will not appear directly in this book. But since I realize that I have transformed myself through the use of these techniques, I am aware that the transformation will effect what I emphasize and point out. In this way I am become an authentic teacher/student of this tradition. If you wish a similar position, you must apply these steps. Then you will know what is true, not because you read it in my book, but because your soul has discovered it for itself.
Enactment. The magical practices of the papyri are geared for practicality -- whether to gain gold and women or the answers to the toughest of the soul's questions. The test for understanding a practical system comes from doing. One doesn't read computer manuals for their prose, nor study surgery for amusement. The test of understanding is in getting the results.
Only when the circuit becomes self-sustaining have you obtained the goals of the system. When you have changed the subjective universe, produced the change in the objective, and then integrated the new fact into the subjective have you obtained to magic. Then you have taken the dry bones of the past and made it into a living system that enables you to communicate with the hidden secret side of the universe. When you achieve results, you have Opened the Mouths of the Gods.
A distillation of the above threefold system could be contained int eh Egyptian sentence Ir shti shta-tu! which could be translated variously as "Inquire of the books of magic!" or "Seek the Mysteries!" or "Travel through difficult territory!" The Egyptian word shta-ti may have been etymologically connected with certain forms of the name of Set. By the time of the magical papyri the words meaning "belonging to Set" or "of the secret place" had coalesced in the common tongue. The Egyptians associated certain night sky features with Set, particularly the constellation Ursa Major and the planet Mercury. They called Mercury Sbq which simply means "the Unknown."
In The Book of Coming Forth by Day, the afterlife book of the Osiris cult, there is an interesting confession of the good followers of Osiris:
I have come hither to see thy beauty, my hands raised in praise of thy true name ... If I enter the secret seat, I speak with Set... but if One veils his face when his glance falls upon secret things, he may enter the house of Osiris and see the secret things that are therein.
This book is not for the pious who would veil their gaze, and trust to have secret things revealed to them in a later life. It is for those who would seek after the hidden things now. It is not for those who would come forth by daylight to see what is revealed by the light of another, but for those who would come forth by night and see by their own light.
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