The Temple of Set I

by Michael A Aquino

  The uncanny attraction of the Third Reich - Nazi Germany - lies in the fact that it

  endorsed and practiced both dynamism and life-worship without restraint and to a world-

  shaking degree of success. In The Revolution of Nihilism (1939), Herman Rauschning

  said:

  This irrational element in National Socialism is the actual source of its strength. It is

  the reliance on it that accounts for its “sleepwalker’s immunity” in the face of one practical

  problem after another. It explains why it was possible for National Socialism to attain

  power almost without the slightest tangible idea of what it was going to do. The movement

  was without even vague general ideas on the subject; all it had was boundless confidence:

  things would smooth themselves out one way or another ... Its strength lay in incessant

  activity and in embarking on anything so long as it kept things moving ... National

  Socialism is action pure and simple, dynamics in vacuo, revolution at a variable tempo,

  ready to be changed at any moment.

  Similarly the life-worship of the Third Reich was not what the “Mediterranean” mind

  understands by this term. The “life” is the life of the state, or more precisely the Volk

  (perhaps best translated as the “soul of the people”). The individual achieves self-

  realization as, through his efforts, he contributes to the strengthening of this “soul”.

  Just as the Third Reich’s dynamism got out of hand, leading it to embark on irrational

  and destructive foreign invasions, so its life-worship - which could have been a truly

  evolutionary synthesis of the most sublime concepts of Hegel and Nietzsche - became

  perverted into crude xenophobia, hatreds built upon superficial notions of “race”, and

  ultimately a maddened stampede towards a Wagnerian Götterdämmerung in defiance of

  a return to rationalism. Said Heinrich Himmler on April 21, 1945:

  We have made serious mistakes. If I could have a fresh start, I would do many things

  differently now. But it is too late. We wanted greatness and security for Germany, and we

  are leaving behind us a pile of ruins, a fallen world ...

  The Order of the Trapezoid (O.Tr.) extracts the positive, the constructive, the exalted,

  and the Romantic from the Germanic magical tradition - and just as carefully avoids and

  rejects those excesses, distortions, and cruelties which have made this tradition an object

  of the most extraordinary fear, condemnation, and suppression in the postwar period.

  The Germanic tradition is also part of the legacy of the Prince of Darkness, hence is

  appropriate to an Order within the Temple of Set, which embraces all manifestations of

  the Powers of Darkness in the world.

  Nevertheless the care required in any investigation into this tradition cannot be

  overemphasized. Magical and research ability are not enough; ethical sensitivity and

  social discretion are just as important. The prospects for new and wondrous perspectives

  on the Black Art are exhilarating, but success will come only if the Order conducts its

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  affairs with the same dedication and nobility that have made the Temple of Set a legend in

  its time.

  Lineage of the Order

  The O.Tr. was founded as an informal Order within the Church of Satan by the

  authority of Anton Szandor LaVey as High Priest. Its existence was first announced in the

  December V/1970 Cloven Hoof:

  The O.Tr. is the “board of directors” and security staff of the Church. Its functions are

  many, and its members are chosen by appointment, according to the special abilities and

  attributes of each. All Priests and Priestesses are automatically admitted into the Order,

  although the identities of most members of the Order are unknown even to each other.

  Members of the Governing or Grand Council of the Trapezoid are known only to the High

  Priest, who solicits their aid when required.

  There was a strong Germanic element in the rituals of the early Church of Satan,

  deriving from the musical imagery of Richard Wagner and from the visual imagery of

  Weimar-era Expressionism (Max Reinhardt, Hans Poelzig). The significance of the

  trapezoid itself came from its suggestion of perspective and the distortion of that

  perspective in such UFA films as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and The Golem. From ritual

  use of similar angles and planes in such ceremonies as “Die Elektrischen Vorspiele” [in

  The Satanic Rituals], Anton LaVey made observations culminating in his “Law of the

  Trapezoid”:

  All obtuse angles are magically harmful to those unaware of this property. The same

  angles are beneficial, stimulating, and energizing to those who are magically sensitive to

  them.

  In the December V/1970 Cloven Hoof article, five literary sources for this principle

  were identified: William Mortensen’s The Command to Look, Louis McCarty’s The Great

  Pyramid Jeezeh, Sheila Ostrander & Lynn Schroeder’s Psychic Discoveries Behind the

  Iron Curtain (Chapter 27), Frank Belknap Long’s The Hounds of Tindalos, and H.P.

  Lovecraft’s The Haunter of the Dark. The Council of the Trapezoid, alternatively

  identified as the Council of Nine, was in fact an informal, unofficial cabinet without fixed

  membership, terms, functions, or binding authority. In X/1975 it attained formal status as

  the corporate board of directors and supreme executive body of the Temple of Set.

  Apart from early Council meetings, which ceased ca. late 1970, no Order meetings or

  functions distinct from those of the Priesthood were held in the Church of Satan. In VI the

  Order was officially defined as comprising the III°-V° initiates within the Church, i.e. the

  collective Satanic Priesthood. In 1973 Anton LaVey again reconstituted the Order, this

  time to identify significant contributors to and representatives of the Satanic tradition,

  within or without the formal Church and Priesthood. Again there were no meetings,

  functions, or publications of this Order.

  From 1975 to 1979 the Order was again used as an alternate designation for all degrees

  within the Priesthood of Set, and at the Set-I Conclave in 1979 the Council of Nine

  replaced the Satanic trident in its emblem with the Tcham sceptre of Set. At the Set-III

  Conclave in 1981 the Order was once again reconstituted, this time as an honorary

  designation for all present and past members of the Council of Nine, and its emblem was

  condensed to a pentagram within a trapezoid.

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  In the Walhalla or “Hall of the Dead” at Castle Wewelsburg, Westphalia - the

  subterranean sanctum sanctorum of the German castle which Heinrich Himmler had

  reconstructed for his own Workings in the Black Art - Michael A. Aquino VI°, High Priest

  of Set, conducted a Working on October 19, 1982. One of the results of this Working was

  the reconstitution of the O.Tr. as a truly functioning Order under the authority of the

  Temple of Set.

  The O.Tr. is an Order of knighthood characterized by strict personal honor and

  faithfulness to the quest for the Grail. The Order is a knighthood in that its members are

  pledged to the traditional chivalric virtues as appropriate to each situation encountered.

  By honor is meant a sense of justice, ethics, and responsibility prior to personal comfort,

  convenience, or advantage. This honor is known by
one’s faithfulness to the Quest for

  the Grail, which is the self, soul, or psyche made perfect through conscious refinement

  and exercise of the will. Attainment of the Grail results in transformation of the individual

  into a state of dynamic existence energized by the psyche, not by the physical body

  derived from the objective universe. Hence the O.Tr. is the gate to psychecentric

  immortality beyond physical death.

  The insignia of the O.Tr. is an inverse pentagram whose four upper points define the

  limits and angles of a phi-trapezoid. From the nethermost point of the pentagram radiates

  the Black Flame of Set, whose nine tongues signify the Council of Nine and complete the

  angular relationships of the pentagram and trapezoid. Rising from the Black Flame is a

  Tcham sceptre, symbol of Pharaonic authority in ancient Egypt, bearing the head and

  forked tail of Set. The sceptre faces to the left, symbolic of the Left-Hand Path of Black

  Magic. The space between the Black Flame and the Tcham sceptre forms the letter “W”,

  signifying Walhalla. This is both the name of the chamber in the Wewelsburg, Westphalia

  wherein the Order was consecrated; and the famous hall of eternal life to which ancient

  Teutonic heroes were brought by the Walkyries and admitted by Wotan. Thus the letter

  “W” has a fivefold meaning (including the Motto of the Order) in addition to its primary

  reference. In the topmost three gaps between the pentagram and the trapezoid are the

  numbers 666, symbolic of the Prince of Darkness and of the First and Second Beasts

  revealed of him. The three sixes add to XVIII ÆS, the first Working Year following the

  creation of the Church of Satan, and the year in which the O.Tr. was returned to life. In

  the entire emblem there are no curved lines, signifying the Black Magical power of

  angular relationships and the Law of the Trapezoid. It is further mathematically keyed to

  the phi-ratio.

  Admission

  Admission to the O.Tr. is by invitation only. To be considered, one must first achieve

  the degree of Adept II° in the Temple of Set, and evidence a sufficiently comprehensive

  involvement in the Temple as a whole to preclude over-concentration in the magical

  philosophy of the Order.

  As a general policy Oaths of the Order will be administered in a lodge setting, either at

  Conclaves of the Temple of Set or at lodges of the Order presided over by the lodge-master

  or a Master of the O.Tr. Masters of the O.Tr. may authorize special alternative

  arrangements as necessary.

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  Runes is the newsletter of the O.Tr. It is named in honor of the Runen newsletter of

  the Germanen Orden, an esoteric society in pre- and post-World War I Germany. The

  Fenris Wolf on its masthead comes from ancient north European mythology. Fenris was

  one of the dæmonic offspring of Loki, and the brother of Hel and of the Midgard Serpent.

  Growing up in Asgard among the gods, he eventually became so huge and fierce that the

  gods decided to bind him. The only cord which could hold Fenris was made of the

  elements of the Earth by the dwarves. It was said that at Ragnarök, the end of times,

  Fenris would break free. According to the Völuspa (ca. 9th century CE), a text from

  Norway and Iceland:

  The chains that hold the Fenris Wolf are rent asunder, and the Wolf courses about.

  Brothers shall fight and slay one another; sisters’ sons shall break the bonds of kinship. It

  shall fare hard with the world: great whoredom, an axe-age, a sword-age, shields shall be

  cloven, a wind-age, a wolf-age, ere the world sinks in ruin. No man shall spare the other.

  Fenris as Runes’ masthead thus symbolizes the Powers of Darkness temporarily

  constrained by the objective universe. It is also a reminder that the price of loosing the

  Wolf - to energize evolutionary consciousness in humanity - is to risk chaos in the natural

  order by lesser humanity’s misuse of its power over nature. This is the Æon of Set, when

  the human psyche can soar free of its animalistic fetters; but it is also a wolf-age in which

  much of the planet suffers through human carelessness and callousness - the result of

  corruption of the powers of high intelligence. The O.Tr. seeks to allow Fenris to run free in

  his magnificence - as the Prince of Darkness created him - but further to show that his

  freedom through initiation of the Will will exalt, not debase mankind. The artistic

  rendition of Fenris is reproduced from the cover of the August 1941 issue of Germanien,

  official journal of the Ahnenerbe, the elite section of the SS concerned with the theory and

  practice of the Black Arts.

  Let none who fears

  The spear of Wotan

  Adventure across this fire!

  - Richard Wagner, Die Walküre

  If the scope of the Temple of Set weren’t already broad enough, I think it can be seen here

  that that of the O.Tr. added several more extensions and dimensions to it. [And this was just the

  first of many new and highly-sophisticated/highly-visionary Orders.] Whereas the cultural and

  iconographic orientation of the Temple had previously taken its inspiration from ancient Egypt,

  the O.Tr. had now opened the door to the equally vast, and in many ways even less-studied and

  more-obscure metaphysics of ancient northern Europe. Particularly ominous in this was that

  Nazi Germany, and especially its feared SS, had also taken especial interest in this same area of

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  archæological, philosophical, and magical research, and it was obvious that the O.Tr. would be

  reopening some of the same doors that had been slammed shut by the rest of the world on

  Walpurgisnacht 1945.

  Well, until this problem could be carefully and constructively addressed, the Order had

  plenty of other avenues of interest to explore and enjoy, among these scientific magic (including

  mad scientists and their mad laboratories), architectural magic (haunted houses and

  Lovecraftian geometry), and artistic magic (particularly in such fields as Expressionism, noir,

  and Art Deco). This was going to be fun, not just for the Order, but for the whole Temple!

  Runes spent its initial years as a Temple-wide newsletter, mailed out on alternating months from

  the Scroll, and a sampling of some of my articles for it during that time appears here as

  Appendices #58-65.

  As interesting and entertaining as such an Indiana Jones romp through the Twilight Zone

  might be, it was also conspicuously clear that this new Order of the Trapezoid’s Germanic-lore

  roots were very shallow, extending back little farther than the Romanticism of Wagner and the

  Art Nouveau/Deco/Expressionism of the early 20th century. I tracked down and combed

  through a good deal of Ahnenerbe-SS documents in the Library of Congress and the U.S.

  National Archives microfilm files, but exclusive reliance on Nazi research into Germanic

  antiquity was precarious. The SS obviously had an ideological agenda to maximize and glamorize

  the “Aryan” myth, and Ahnenerbe historians and archæologists who wished career advancement

  knew what they were expected to find. [This of course is the same in any other community

  wishing to polish its pedigree, but Heinrich Himmler was pushing against 2,000 years of Judæo-

  Christian worldwide indoctrination, and a mere 12 years (the last half of which was complicated

  by Wor
ld War II) was not enough to break through even the less-factually-based bastions of

  “established” academia.]

  More than once in the odyssey of the Temple of Set [and indeed the Church of Satan before

  it], an individual, event, or circumstance has appeared at precisely the moment it was needed.

  “Once,” said Auric Goldfinger to James Bond, “is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third

  time it’s enemy action.” In our case it might not be “enemy” action, but as such catalytic

  phenomena have continued to proliferate to our furtherance and improvement, one might well

  appreciate in them the hand of the Prince of Darkness.

  On January 13, 1984 the Temple of Set received the following letter:

  Order of the Shining Trapezoid

  Austin, Texas

  Hail Keepers of the Temple!

  Recently a relatively small but dedicated circle of people here have begun a semiformal

  Satanic working group. Our basis has generally been the system of the Church of Satan, of which I

  have been a member. However the particular constellation of elements which seem to be present

  in the workings of the Temple of Set are very interesting to me - especially since I have extensive

  knowledge of and experience in various schools of German occultism [and I have also been a

  member of the Armanen Order in Germany].

  Information that you could send us would be appreciated. I am sure that we have information

  in which you would probably be interested, but at this point we are mainly intrigued by the system

  of the Temple of Set with an eye toward perhaps joining and aiding in its development. We are

  looking forward to hearing from you, and anticipate the day when we can begin to work together

  in earnest.

  Heil Satan-Wotan!

  Polaris

  Our information was duly sent, and on February 2 Polaris (Stephen Edred Flowers) replied:

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  Dear Priestess Ford, Executive Director,

  First let me thank you for your prompt reply of January 20th to my letter, and for the

  impressive material you sent. I and my closest associate here were both very excited by the nature

  of the work of the Temple of Set and Order of the Trapezoid.

  In view of the quality of the work, we have decided to disband the Order of the Shining

  Trapezoid and to plight our troth with the complex represented by the Temple. I am very much