and limit the self. The second thing one must love is knowledge. This isn’t the same thing as information; this a
transformative Understanding of those things within us and beyond us which determine who we are.
The symbols of Xeper are the scarab beetle and the dawning Sun. The beetle is symbolic of self-trust and hard
work. The beetle goes through very different stages from egg to larva to pupa to beetle. Each stage has its own work:
a particular way of gathering energy and materials, particular ways of transforming them. It senses its own
evolution and works toward it - even though the momentum of that evolution will change its shape radically, taking
it at the appropriate time into unknown worlds and new modes of being. The dawn is symbolic of the way the world
is perceived.
Unlike the followers of conventional religion who possess guidebooks that explain the world away, the seeker
after Xeper is looking for an intensification of being so that the world may be made intelligible in a uniquely
personal light. In this darkling universe there are no lights save for those you create through your hard work, your
spiritual rebellion, your seeking after the mysteries of your own choosing. When that light dawns, it will by its very
nature not only give you moments of clarity about the things in your life closest to you, it will likewise show you new
horizons - horizons for you and you alone to explore. This secret was known symbolically to the Egyptians; they
identified their god Xepera, the Self-Created One, with Hrumachis, the god of the horizon. This secret was also
known [at a divine level] by Aleister Crowley, who predicted that the Æon of Hrumachis would surpass his own.
Set, the Egyptian god of Darkness, is the divine origin of the Word. Set’s name ultimately means the “Separator”
or “Isolator”. His chief enemies are the gods of stasis and mindlessness. The first of these is Osiris, Death himself.
Set’s slaying of Osiris has a twofold significance for the seeker of Xeper. Firstly this represents the slaying of old
thought-patterns: the dethroning of those internal gods whom we have received from society. On a second level this
was the act by which Set, alone of all the gods of ancient Egypt, became deathless. The Left-Hand Path is a quest to
Become an immortal, potent, and powerful Essence.
Set’s other enemy is the demon of mindless chaos, Apep. Set is said to slay this creature every night just before
dawn. This symbolizes overcoming self-doubt and delusion, of acting at the times of greatest despair, or not being
lulled to sleep by the powerful self-hypnotizing engines of mankind.
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Set achieves [on a divine level] this isolation from the universe so that he may say, “Xeper” (“I Have Come Into
Being”). Each of these breaks - the break from the dead past [by slaying Osiris] and the break from the confused
present [by slaying Apep] - is done for the sake of a self-determined future. One of Set’s cult titles, Set-Heh, means
“God of Unending Futurity”.
Set did not receive the aid of other gods in his two quests, nor does Set give aid to those who seek to emulate
these quests on a human level. Those who struggle [like Set] with the principle of Xeper are of his Essence. Their
actions are essentially the same. Those who want to share their quests and pool their knowledge seek after Set’s
chief tool of his Æon, the Temple of Set. It is the most concentrated environment for the study of Xeper, both as
noun and verb. As such those who are affected by the power of their own Xeper will seek to enhance and protect the
Temple.
Xeper cannot be studied as an abstract intellectual idea. It must be experienced. One can read about justice, or
one can hope for it; but to truly know justice you must bring it into being. One can read about Xeper, as your
interest in secret things has brought you to do. You can hope for it. Or you can seek the solitary self-transformation
that will cause you to experience it.
The Temple of Set represents a concentration of the Æon. Like Set himself it does not answer prayers, and by its
very Being provides challenges for those who would seek after the Word of Xeper. It is the embodiment of the
Emerald Dawn envisioned by a German LHP order, the Fraternitas Saturni.
We are not necessarily a “Satanic” order, save that we Understand that for initiation on the Left-Hand Path to
be effective for those who have just begun Work on that path, the antinomian aspect of the work does need to be
fulfilled by some means. The imagery of the Black Arts provides that need for many, but it likewise can be limiting
as it is mastered. Our predecessor was caught by this trap, and we hope by exploring the manifestations of the
principle of Xeper in many cultures and times and in our own creations to have much further horizons. Diabolical
imagery is useful only in a culturally-bound antinomian sense; beyond this it represents a new stasis to be
discarded.
Xeper: An Egyptian verb, like an English verb, can have several forms depending on its number, tense, voice,
and mood. You can have a verb such as “run” which can be conjugated (I run; you run; he, she or it runs; we run; I
am running; I ran; etc.). There are about 140 forms for an English verb [I remember this because my junior high
school Latin teacher often made us write the full conjugation of English verbs when he was mad at us]. We happen
to know the tense and person of the verb Xeper from the sentence Xepera Xeper Xeperu. It is first person stative.
Now while you’re trying to remember your high school grammar as to what tense “stative” is - you won’t. We don’t
have the tense in English. It refers to a past event that modifies a current state. We do have first person, of course;
this means that “I” did it.
The proper translation of the verb Xeper is “I have Come Into Being”. There are some implications of this which
we in the Temple are only now beginning to consider. For instance the verb refers to a moment that has happened
that explains why we are here. When you write or speak or think the word “Xeper”, you are talking about something
that has taken place. You are not talking about something taking place at the moment of the speech-act.
Xeper is not a continuous process. It is a series of events whose presence we sense either through either reason
or divine apprehension. We are aware that something has occurred to give the particular Being we have at any
moment. We are aware that whatever the great shaping potential of that something we don’t have that potential at
this moment. In short we are aware that we have had a moment wherein we acted as gods. We did something divine
- we had some peak experience - we made some life-altering choice - and it has produced the creatures we are now.
This produces two great realizations. First, we are aware that we have a capacity beyond wherever and whenever
we are right now to both limit and create ourselves. All moments of Xeper both limit and create ourselves. Or to use
both of those ideas at the same time, all moments of Xeper isolate ourselves from the cosmos. Second, we want to do
this again. Humankind wants the divine. In erroneous religions this desire is a return to the divine in one way or
another [either by union or by being in the divine presence in some place with far too much harp music]. Well, that
doesn’t work. You can’t go back to the state where Xeper last occurred. You can’t go back to a previous divine state
any more than you can fold an oak back into an acorn. Yo
u can only go forward to another divine state. If you want
to both achieve and experience your godhood, you’ve got to go forward.
In our Earthly incarnation we never fully experience the divine moment. Only through magical introspection do
we discover that we have passed through one and thus can say [with both happiness and terror] “I have Come Into
Being”. In the Bremmer-Rhind Papyrus this idea is reflected in the fact that Xepera’s first two children are Shu
(Reason) and Tefnut (Peak Emotions). Through these two human experiences we can detect the divine, and having
detected it learn to work with it to have more divine experiences.
The first question is: How do I have more divine experiences? Xeper happens to every sapient being. Most
humans [and most of us most of the time] stumble across those experiences which would set up the conditions
enabling them to later say “Xeper” if they had brains large enough to hold the concept. The experience might be
going into a drugstore to buy a malted milk and meeting the person who will become your spouse for the next fifty
years. That was divine moment: It both limited and created your life. A Christian would say it was the hand of God, a
Hindu would invoke karma. But we know who did it: that man or woman we face in the mirror every day.
The scary thing for all humans - and in fact the reason they/we invented religion in the first place - is that most
divine experiences occur blindly. So most humans either on bended knee ask some fairytale gods not to give them
bad experiences, or if they’re a little braver try to influence them with magic, or try to deny them by asserting the
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meaningless nature of the cosmos. But the Setian, knowing that only through such experiences can he or she find
the metamorphosis which our philosophy finds both achievable and desirable, seeks out the divine experience. I
can’t tell you where to find yours. If you did what I did, you would find mainly that it didn’t work. This is due to the
individualistic nature of Xeper [remember? First person verb.].
This tells you many things about Xeper the verb. It is not continuous. All events do not feed it equally. It is not
fully under conscious control. Rather consciousness and emotion arise from it, but can and must be used to seek
more of it. This means that Xeper is not simple self-development or self-improvement, but that these things chosen
rationally can create conditions wherein Xeper can occur.
All sapient beings experience Xeper, but those who can name it and Understand its purpose have a much better
chance of achieving it. The paths to it are absolutely personal, but some of its properties (such as being fed/triggered
by peak experiences) lead to certain group functions as facilitators. It limits you; divine decisions always involve a
road not taken. It creates you; divine decisions always lead to much more than can be rationally deduced. When you
can say “Xeper”, you are in some way a different person.
The noun “Xeper” - that thing we speak of as “our Xeper” - is likewise an Egyptian noun. It is usually translated
into English as “manifestation” or “the thing that happened”. The plural of the noun is Xeperu. When we talk about
“our Xeper”, we are talking about a very large thing indeed - and we usually [in our normal, sluglike mode] give very
little thought to it. Yet if we simply become aware of Xeper, our personal magical and philosophical horizons greatly
expand.
Many magicians in the Temple of Set take justifiable pride in the magical items they create. It’s easy to see one’s
magic in a necklace one makes. However as magicians what we do is to make a very large magical object, existing on
many levels of reality. Our entire life considered at any moment is a Xeper, a manifestation.
If you can think of all the things that you’ve wrought - changes in your mind/body complex, your recognition,
your reputation: all of those things that represent what you have brought to this Earth - as a giant talisman, then
you’ve got a handle on Xeper the noun. Many of you may have written a Rune to pull something - gold or love - out
of the unmanifest. That Rune is a tiny, tiny version of the great talisman that is your Xeper. The creation of Xeper is
the working whereby we attract what we’re going to get in this life, and the divine memory we will have of this life.
Xeper the noun is the extension of existence to a further level of being. These extensions can be a
thought which you’ve raised to a developed, conscious level from an intuition - which would represent two levels of
being in your subjective universe. These extensions can be what others think of you. The extensions are particularity
evident in actions that represent a first or personal best effort at something.
Hence if you really want to Xeper, conquer fear by doing something you didn’t think you could. Or find a
mystery and bring it to the surface of your understanding - or better yet the understanding of others. Or create
something new [the last would be an example of the verb for “create”, s’Xeper].
Since Xeper exists as a noun, you can interact with the Xeper of others: You are affected [usually blindly] by the
work of past magicians, or if you have learned the art of shaping and seeking your own Xeper first, you can
consciously work with others’ products. An excellent example of this would the Wewelsburg Working.
I’ll leave you with one other word for your word-hoard - the dual noun Xeperi. Egyptian nouns can be singular
(one cat), dual (two cats) or plural (too many cats). The noun Xeperi can best be translated by “synchronicity”,
although the standard translation is “miracle”. The Egyptians knew the sign of something Coming Into Being was
the meaningful coincidence. We know too - either by Shu (“What were the odds of that happening?”) or by Tefnut
(“It sent shivers down my spine.”). The noun Xeperi shows that manifestations are not continuous but discrete -
actions at a distance - or more simply magic. Xeper has occurred when two discrete systems resonate with one
another.
Another form of Xeperi is that moment of communication of wordless magical information with one another.
The most familiar form of this is through our interactions with the Æon. The more adept you are at seeking and
shaping your own Xeper, the more you can positively interact with the Xeper of the Æon and help fulfill its purpose
of exporting Xeper into the objective universe.
Think about these things. Think about them ’til that shiver runs down your back. Then put this aside for awhile,
and come back to it. Then after the most personal and individual of experimentation, you too can know and heed the
Law: Xepera Xeper Xeperu = “I have Come Into Being, and by the process of my Coming Into Being the process of
Coming Into Being is established.”
I will speak on the Word’s history, and I will ask you all to think on this evolution in the objective universe, and
then upon the evolution of your own subjective universe: how you, the reader, have experienced Xeper. With each
evolution of the Word, note how it doesn’t lose meaning, but gains through each historical test - just as Xeper in
yourself gains as you gain new being.
The formula Xepera Xeper Xeperu has been traced by French Egyptologists back to the First Intermediate
Period. There it was a formula of power for finding meaning when the divine kingship, the most important source of
order, had collapsed. This was probably the birth of the Left-Hand Path - the
idea that meaning can only come from
the individual. Xeper was the last fortress - the mind and body of the individual. Xeper was the word of anyone who
would not let the divine principle of isolation and evolution fail.
The second appearance was in Rameses III’s time. The formula was used to empower travelers through the
desert. Xeper was a touchstone for those who extend existence by passing boundaries. Xeper was the word of the
extender of Egypt - of the known order.
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The third appearance was at the beginning of the Hermetic tradition. Xeper became the word of the individual
magician seeking two types of power: power to see through the illusions of this world, and power for a coherent
afterlife. These practitioners began a magical practice that went beyond the state goals of Egypt, Greece, or Rome.
The fourth appearance - connected with the study of Budge’s Egyptian Language by a Priest of Mendes - was
very different. The Left-Hand Path was up and running. The Word worked on a matrix of its own making. Michael
Aquino had to find the Word (cast in Roman and Greek letters) in a translation from its last appearance. He didn’t
write the Rhind Papyrus, any more than its author came up with the spell of continuous re-creation. But his
Utterance of that Word - in a matrix conditioned by its last appearance - produced a new access to energy and power
beyond any previous Utterances.
Aquino’s Utterance in 1975 CE was the Utterance of the Word of the Æon, defining the process that each sapient
being must experience in order to undergo evolution of the self. Xeper is the concept upon which the cycles of
manifestation are actualized [in both the noumenological and phenomenological worlds]. The actual activity of
cyclical dynamism is generated by the formula of Xepera Xeper Xeperu, and my Remanifestation of the Word with
my own Utterance of Xeper on the Spring Equinox of 1996 CE will raise and attune the imagination of the world to a
new and permanent understanding of the principle.
My Utterance of the Word is in the tradition of Michael Aquino’s. I am Uttering the Word into a matrix of its
own conditioning. The results should be stronger and further-reaching than Michael Aquino’s Utterance - just as the
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