Ra-En-Set and the Aeon

Dr. Michael A. Aquino’s experience on the North Solstice of 1975 CE, or the Year X of the Age of Satan, as recorded in the Book of Coming Forth by Night, has dramatically clarified the doctrine of Aeons, Magi, and Words. I will not be going into a complete account of this text, what led to its reception, or how Dr. Aquino has interpreted it. For that, his excellent memoir titled Temple of Set will provide copious details and a general introduction to the fundamental theories underpinning Setian philosophy.

The Book of Coming Forth by Night suggests that this Aeon of HarWar’s primary temporal duration lasted from the 1904 CE reception of the Book of the Law to 1966 CE, where “The Age of Satan” superseded it. This had been a time of purification, where Initiates could purge historically accumulated stasis and delusion to make way for a new vision. At the moment of the North Solstice, 1975 CE, the Age of Satan was undergoing its full realization as the Aeon of Set, which was encapsulated in the Word of Xeper, meaning most essentially the imperative “Become!” to be Uttered by Michael A. Aquino as its Magus under the magical name Ra-En-Set, “He Who Speaks as Set.”

The Book of Coming Forth by Night accepts that Crowley’s 1904 CE reception of the Book of the Law had opened an Aeon of Horus. Still, the Aeon of Horus described is not that of Horus the Younger. Instead, the force attempting to bring people into its Aeon was the Great Horus, also known as Horus the Elder.

Rendered in the text as HarWar, and in the contemporary transliteration of Egyptian as Her-ur, Horus the Elder was one of the oldest deities within the Egyptian religion. Instead of being the son of Isis and Osiris, Horus the Elder was one of the five neteru recognized as siblings. Along with Isis and Osiris, and Seth and Nephthys, Horus the Elder helped lay down the pattern of being for humanity, each with a different emphasis. Horus the Elder’s emphasis was upon kingship and command authority. This figure was reflected upon the Stele of Ankh-ef-en-Khonsu as both the fused neter form of Ra-Harakhty and the winged disc figure of Horus of Behdet. Indeed the anteceding materials for the Book of the Law all point towards this figure of Horus the Elder. However, this was unknown to its receiver, Aleister Crowley.

From the start of the Aeon of Set, the notion of Aeons received from Crowley would have to be re-evaluated. If taken seriously, his Aeon of Horus had not run the course of the ~2000-year interval of the Equinox of Aquarius. Crowley’s association not only of his Aeon of Horus with Horus the Younger was in error, but there was a reasonably good chance that his Aeons of Isis and Osiris, at least as he understood them, had also been in error.

Dr. Aquino would return to Florence Farr’s Egyptian Magic and find the root of Crowley’s notion of Aeons in this text. Rather than ruling the Zodiacal periods, the Aeons had been a Gnostic notion tied to one’s individual Initiation. As one developed and became, one could gain access to increasingly more sophisticated Aeons or refined Understanding while still retaining access to the previous Aeons accessed.

 The Aeons that had come into being in the 20th Century CE were not a product of linear time progression but reflective of the increasing sophistication of Initiates. They need not be tied to any fixed length of time but were a series of lenses through which one could view themselves, their interactions with others, and their relation to nature. As Dr. Aquino writes, “[An Aeon] is simply an attitude which one chooses or is conditioned to adopt.”

As such, when one emphasizes nurturing ideas and individuals, one could be said to inhabit the Aeon of Isis. When one was acting to preserve the patterns of the past, one could be said to inhabit the Aeon of Osiris. When one was acting to find one’s place in the ruling systems of the world and act with command authority, one could be said to inhabit the Aeon of Horus. Now, with this one understanding, when one was pushing beyond the boundaries of the well-lit world of the known into the outer darkness of the unknown to seek individual integration, one could be seen as inhabiting the Aeon of Set.

The fundamental bedrock of the Aeon of Set was, and always will be, that sense of Xeper as Become!