The Temple of Set I

by Michael A Aquino

  simple identification of the Devil with any and all forms of pleasurable indulgence. Together with

  a lampooning and debunking of conventional religious dogma, this identification constitutes the

  principal theme of that volume’s “Book of Satan (authored by Ragnar Redbeard)” and “Book of

  Lucifer (authored by LaVey)”.

  But then the Satanic Bible becomes oddly vague. Satan himself is never really defined, save

  as an allegory, semantic term, and/or symbol of the subjective, creative self. On page #62 it is

  said that “most Satanists [think that Satan] merely represents a force of nature - the powers of

  darkness”. It is then implied that these “powers of darkness” are simply natural forces which

  neither religion nor science has yet identified or attempted to employ. The Satanic Bible

  advocates using them for Indulgence - and that is where the discussion of Satan stops. The

  reader is then thrown somewhat off the track, because the phraseology of the rituals that follow

  recasts the Devil into one or more of his traditional, anthropomorphic molds.

  The paradox of conventional Satanism was that the Devil was understood to be a force of

  nature, thus being derived from and ultimately dependent upon “God” in some way. He may

  make a lot of noise, but in the final analysis he is part of the same all-inclusive machinery of the

  Universe/God; even his “rebellion” is part of God’s Universal scheme. Satanists, accordingly,

  might be able to play a good game - but ultimately the deck is stacked against them. They cannot

  win.

  The Church of Satan avoided this paradox by the simple technique of procrastinating

  confronting it. An atmosphere of psychodramatic atheism prevailed. Satan was ceremonially

  invoked with great fervor, but in non-ceremonial surroundings even the most diehard Satanists

  hesitated to take a position concerning his reality. If references to his existence were made, they

  were vague, cautious, and hypothetical.

  This attitude prevailed throughout all levels and branches of the Church. Even Anton

  LaVey, when speaking of the Devil, was wont to employ such euphemisms as “the Man

  Downstairs”, or to speak more cryptically of “forces”, “vibrations”, “angles”, and “atmospheres”.

  In addition to the “stacked deck” paradox, there was a second motive for this reluctance to

  grapple with the issue of the Devil’s existence: the unspoken acknowledgment that atheism is

  ultimately untenable. Throughout the OU there exists rigid adherence to principles of physical

  and natural behavior; we may call this “order” or “consistency”. It is because of this consistency

  that we can predict events in the physical, chemical, biological, and mathematical sciences.

  Scientists term such predictive patterns “laws”.

  [There is a school of philosophy called subjective or voluntaristic idealism, in which

  an effort is made to define nature as merely a creation of the mind, an objectification of the will

  (Fichte, Schopenhauer), but the subjective idealists have not been able to prove that the OU is

  in fact a mental construct - for precisely the same reasons that they can challenge the

  assumption that it does not enjoy objective existence apart from perception. Like their

  predecessor Descartes, they are ultimately forced to the assumption that one must accept the

  evidence of the senses as reliable and to some extent impersonal.]

  - 175 -

  Recalling Thomas Aquinas’ failure to demonstrate the existence of God through logic, and

  the consequent relapse of Christianity into a faith-based system, rational minds of the

  Enlightenment era approached this “ordering” of the OU in two significant ways:

  First there is pantheism (sometimes called monistic idealism), whose most noted

  advocate was the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677). According to pantheism, God

  and the universe are one and the same substance; everything that exists or occurs is an aspect of

  God. Being neither separate from nor independent of the universe, God has no personal

  qualities. [It should not be supposed that Spinoza meant this as an “attack” on God after the

  fashion of Nietzsche. Spinoza’s recommended attitude for human beings was what he termed the

  “intellectual love of God” through a generalized appreciation of nature.]

  The perception of an “enforced” system of order or consistency throughout the entire OU,

  however, led some philosophers to induce the necessary existence of something external and

  superior to that universe. Conceptually the OU cannot “regulate” or “order” itself. Hence another

  school of thought - deism - arose, its most noted proponent being Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

  (1646-1716) of Leipzig. Deists differed from pantheists by postulating a superior and

  independent God, but one who, after creating the OU and its laws, refrains from tampering with

  them. Hence such a God never intervenes in human affairs or fortunes, whether or not he is

  interested in them.

  The Church of Satan adopted an essentially deistic attitude towards cosmology: “God”

  probably exists, but since he doesn’t involve himself in human affairs, there is no reason to court

  his approval. Opening the door to the existence of “God”, however, opens the same door to the

  existence of another intelligent entity apart from the OU. The Devil can thus exist in theory. Is

  there any evidence that he does in actuality?

  The Enlightenment philosophers assumed mankind to be compatible with, hence included

  in the order of the OU. Human behavior was just another kind of science to be explored and

  mastered. [It is no accident that the Enlightenment saw the birth of “social contract” theories of

  government, based on speculations about the “natural ordering” of human society.] But, while

  social contract approaches to government and politics have enjoyed some measure of success in

  the subsequent centuries, they have by no means demonstrated their inclusion of individual

  creative power and the force of will. At the close of the 20th century, most of the great social

  contract experiments, if they have survived at all, have mutated into a kind of technological

  Machiavellianism in which individual drive, leadership, and fortune determine the shape of the

  present and the direction of the future.

  We confront, therefore, a scenario in which the OU is increasingly exposed as a consistent,

  interrelated machine - and in which the human intellect is increasingly exposed as something

  which has defied all attempts to relegate it to a function of this machine. Mankind displays a

  potential for intellectual external-perspective and willful creation that is in sharp contrast to

  everything else that is known concerning this OU.

  Consider the vast intellectual gap between mankind and every other species on the planet.

  One has only to walk into a major library to sense the extent of this gap. Much is made about the

  relatively high intelligence of chimpanzees, dolphins, etc.; yet the most intelligent of their

  number cannot remotely compare with even the most primitive examples of homo sapiens.

  Moreover, say physiologists, even the most exalted levels of human intelligence and knowledge

  have been attained with only 10-20% of the reasoning potential of the human cerebrum. How

  and why did humanity acquire this freakishly high intelligence potential?

  While anthrop
ologists can chart the stages of prehistoric human evolution to the limits of

  available data, they remain unable to explain why the entire phenomenon should have occurred

  at all. The best they can do, in textbook after textbook, is to say that “man developed high

  intelligence because he needed it to survive”. According to this theory, proto-men were lacking in

  - 176 -

  speed, strength, fighting teeth & claws, and other physical attributes necessary for survival.

  Mutants with greater intelligence tended to survive through cunning, sustaining their

  descendants, while less-intelligent groups died out. This process, repeated over some five million

  years, resulted in homo sapiens, the prototype of Cro-Magnon, Neanderthal, and Modern Man.

  The escape clause in this theory is the time factor: Five million years is plenty of time for

  almost anything to evolve into almost anything else. Besides, the anthropologist will say, the

  entire primate development process can be traced to origins some fifty millions of years ago.

  Hence the condition of Modern Man isn’t as startling as it would be had it happened “overnight”.

  All well and good, but there are at least two problems with this proposition. One is that

  proto-man was just one of many animal species fighting for survival over the millennia. If his

  brain could evolve through processes of natural selection, then why did the brains of other

  creatures not similarly evolve - at least a little? The fact is that the brains of other creatures have

  remained practically the same size while man’s has “evolved”. This is inconsistent, and it will

  be recalled that the hallmark of the OU - and deistic proof of God - is its consistency. By the

  law of averages - which applies to natural selection as much as to anything else - there should

  have been at least some species other than man evolving in intelligence at least partway to the

  human level. There is none.

  The second problem arises through application of one of the bastion theories of Darwinian

  natural selection. It is that nature always takes the easiest way out - that selection favors the less-

  complicated adaptation over a more complex alternative. When a time of famine favors species

  able to reach higher for herbal food, longer-necked giraffes survive. We do not see short-necked

  giraffes with wings. A more-or-less easy physical modification must first accidentally occur in

  a species; thereafter selection takes place against those who do not possess the characteristic.

  That is the way evolution actually works.

  But there is no explanation for human brain evolution in the laws of natural selection. The

  biophysical factors of a sophisticated brain are far too intricate. A proto-man trying to adapt to

  hostile environments through brain modification would have died out long before such external

  stress as he could bring to bear on his brain would have any effect upon that organ [if indeed

  they would have any physiological effect at all]. In the case of proto-man, natural selection would

  occur in favor of almost anything else besides the brain. He would become stronger, hairier,

  tougher, meaner, and faster. According to natural selection, you and I should be gorillas.

  But we are not gorillas. Indeed, as our intelligence has made life progressively easier for us,

  we have become weaker and more vulnerable physically. We are healthier and more long-lived

  only because our intelligence has enabled us to produce medicines to stave off diseases, and

  dietary standards to maximize our health and growth potential. We have controlled

  environments to fend off the elements, and have developed weapons to fend off other creatures.

  Take away our abnormal intelligence and mankind would die out or be killed off within a few

  generations. Because of our brain, then, the natural evolution of the rest of our body [which

  would normally operate in favor of an unaided tougher, more disease-free physiology] has

  actually operated in reverse. Once more this is inconsistent.

  There is a corollary to the second problem. It is that natural selection, when it does occur,

  does not overcompensate. If conditions allow all giraffes with four-foot necks to survive, there is

  no reason for the species to evolve in the direction of forty-foot necks. If the human brain were

  presumed to be the product of natural selection, why should it possess intelligence greater than

  that required to raise man to stone-age culture? More than than, why should it possess the

  capacity to be ten times smarter than it is today?

  If human high intelligence is a violation of OU law, how did it occur? There are two possible

  explanations: accident or deliberate cause. If accidental cause is assumed, then the accident

  would have had to be both a major violation of the law and one which sustained itself over

  - 177 -

  several millennia. And if there were one such accident, the laws of probability would necessitate

  others in lesser degrees [and greater numbers]. In all of the many manifestations of life and

  evolution with which we are familiar, we know of no other such accidents. Natural law’s grip on

  everything else besides ourselves appears total and inescapable. We are left with the second

  explanation: deliberate cause.

  During the Age of Satan (1966-1975 CE) a certain “racial memory” of some prehistoric

  change to the natural course of human evolution seemed to be asserting itself. 74 The most

  spectacular and explicit example was the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke’s

  variation on the theme of his earlier novel Childhood’s End. In 2001 proto-man’s intelligence

  was artificially boosted by a rectangular monolith. In Childhood’s End the same operation was

  performed by an extraterrestrial creature looking precisely like the traditional Devil. Presumably

  the spectacle of a tribe of man-apes thronging around Satan would have been a bit too shocking

  for audiences; hence the substitution of the more abstract monolith in the film. Intriguingly the

  monolithic Satan-symbol provoked no adverse criticism from viewers, religious or otherwise.

  Once the religious myths are removed, the “fall” of man is seen as his rise.

  Such a 2001-style tinkering with human intellectual evolution would have had to occur at

  the genetic level, and presumably [so as to be sustained by normal reproduction] over an

  extended period of time. So we are looking at a subtle process, not a sudden, dramatic event [as

  in Adam & Eve’s apple-munching or Prometheus’ fire-giving]. We do not have sufficient

  knowledge of genetics or of the brain’s physiology to know precisely how such tinkering might

  have taken place - though we can estimate it. 75 That it did in fact take place is indicated only -

  but inescapably - by the presence of the fait accompli.

  The “ancient astronaut” theories of van Däniken et al. may be dispensed with peremptorily.

  The human body displays an organic constitution completely compatible with those of other

  Earthly species, and alien astronauts could not have taught anything to a proto-man whose

  intelligence had not already developed to a high level.

  There are a great many genuine curiosities of antiquity which suggest that mankind’s

  advanced intelligence made its presence known long before the recorded civilizations of Egypt,

  Sumer, China, etc. But, despite torturous efforts to interpret toys or Meso-American murals as

  “spaces
hips”, evidence of alien astronauts on Earth remains conspicuous for its absence.

  Mankind’s inability to detect the author of our “high intelligence experiment” should not be

  considered as evidence that he does not exist, but simply that he has not been discovered and

  identified. Nor, one may add, has mankind been actively looking for him. Instead it has been off

  first on the wild-goose chase of religious-creationism, then on the wild-goose chase of natural

  selection [as applied to the brain]. Nevertheless he exists; the conclusive evidence exists. To

  quote Walt Kelly’s Pogo: “Us is it.”

  To sum up: We know that there is evidence for the existence of an intelligent entity distinct

  from the OU and thus in incidental, if not deliberate conflict with its laws. For whatever its

  reasons, it has instilled in humanity the potential to enjoy the same external perspective, as well

  as the intelligence to do so with deliberate, creative purpose. Some humans sense this potential

  and thrill to it; we call them the Elect. Most others do not think precisely and rigorously enough

  to detect it in themselves; or, if they do, they fear it and try to sublimate, repress, or destroy it.

  Hence they have represented our Mysterious Stranger as the Devil. We know him by his most

  ancient name of Set.

  The Temple of Set is thus an association of the Elect to honor Set, exalt his Gift to ourselves,

  and exercise it with the greatest possible wisdom. As Set is a metaphysical entity, apart from the

  74 See Appendix #95.

  75 See Appendix #96.

  - 178 -

  OU, he may be likened to a “god” as conventional society employs the term. In this sense the

  Temple of Set is a religion - not one which is based on irrational faith, but one which derives its

  core principles from exercise of the evident and conspicuous Gift of its neter.

  P. Historical OU/SU Interpretations

  The cosmological premise of the Temple of Set is that there is one multiverse, consisting

  of the totality of existence. Within it are the OU [whose components occupy space and are

  related by time] and each sentient being’s SU. The SU may be thought of [at least during one’s

  OU-bodily incarnation] as one’s personal perspective on the OU, together with any self-created