The first time I listened to Jaron Lanier talk about the illusions that both virtual reality and artificial intelligence thrive off of, I wanted to punch him. His style comes off as smug in a way that triggers the latent bully in me but only for about a half hour. Over the past few years I’ve found his approach to human interactions with contemporary technology very useful for understanding what is actually going on in contrast to the illusions being generated around these topics. This link is a fairly good starter on his positions:
Semi-alarmist, but not wrong, his Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now has a lot to offer on something that has impacted all of our lives. My recommendation is to consider the points rather than suggesting anyone adopt this positions uncritically.
Ever wonder why so many charlatans and fools seem to be running the world?
Largely, it comes as a result of there being a lack of people with significant visions. In the last hundred years, a few major competing visions of humanity’s horizons have been brought forth and have all largely failed. In the last 30 years, no significant new vision has emerged, and no pre-existing ones could fill the challenges of the emerging conditions. But people remain hungry for visionaries, so any fraud claiming they are one can simply fill the void. Some begin in earnest, but in time mendacity and profiteering dominate the manipulation of their audience’s parasocial capacities and need for a greater sense of access. They offer “the intoxicant of destruction,” as mentioned in the Ninth Part of the Word of Set, which in turn feeds “The Tree in the North” of the Tenth Part.
In such a circumstance, where pre-existing visions are wanting and the “visionaries” of your time are mendacious frauds, the only option, whether you like it or not, is to become a visionary in your own right.
From the moment of its [re]creation in 1975, we have instinctively felt the Temple of Set to be something unprecedented on this world. It crystallized a premise at once more ambitious and more subtle than that of its Church of Satan prelude. And unlike the cynical pessimism of the Church, the Temple has always had about it a wondrous exuberance, an electrifying optimism, a promise of wonders and marvels to be enjoyed by all who ventured through its pylons. We may not have anticipated all of these discoveries accurately on our first exposure to them – and on occasion some Initiates have found the light too intense for their self-possession – but such growing pains as we have experienced have never eclipsed the magic and magnificence of the Aeonic current. And no one who has experienced initiation as catalyzed by the Temple, whether temporarily or over an enduring period, has been unaffected by it.
No initiatory system exists in a vacuum. The great temples and orders of history all were enhancements of, or reactions to social currents and critical events in their time. The Temple of Set has similarly remanifested amidst the dramatic and stormy fluctuations of Western civilization from the 1970s to the 1990s: “the best of times, the worst of times.” Never before in recorded history have some many social absolutes disintegrated to relatives, while at the same time technology has exploded into uncontrollable and addictive extremes. Never before has the individual been able to gather information so quickly, communicate so efficiently, travel so easily. Yet paradoxically humans have never felt so anonymous, powerless, and alienated: infinitesimal cogs in a giant Metropolismachine of history careening onward out of control.
Ultimately, then, what the Temple of Set has done has been to restore to us an awareness of the great dignity of individual consciousness. Once we are awakened to this, all else that we do flows from it as remanifestations of the respective neteru.
Dr. Michael A. Aquino, “A Passing By” Scroll of Set issue 145
There are two, and only two, ways in which an individual can become a member of the Temple of Set. The both require the filling out and submission of our application. If you send in your application directly you will undergo a vetting process by the Temple of Set’s Executive Director, including evaluation of your application material and an interview. The second is to find a member of the Priesthood of Set (III°+) in good standing to sponsor your application. This will still involve some vetting by the Executive Director but will be done in conjunction with your sponsoring Priest.
In this podcast discussion for those seeking to join the Temple of Set it is mentioned that majority of applications to the Temple are rejected. This is true for those who make cold applications to the Temple of Set. However those who garner sponsorship, and are not discovered to be acting in bad faith, almost universally are accepted to the Temple of Set.
Every Priest or Priestess of Set has their own unique approach towards the topic of sponsorship. As it is one of the major ways in which the Priesthood shapes the Temple of Set, none will provide sponsorship frivolously or to those who they have minimal knowledge. The specifics of someone’s sponsorship process is their own.
In the interest of growing the tradition of sponsorship and towards improving dedicated individual’s chances of successfully entering the Temple of Set I will over the next few months be revealing aspects of my own sponsorship criteria and suggestions. Doing what I suggest in terms fo readings, activities, and self-reporting will greatly increase your chances of making a successful application, whether you gain sponsorship from me, another member of the Priesthood of Set, or chose to apply directly. There are however no guarantees of anything.
In order to begin this process, you will need some general orienting material to help you understand the Temple of Set and the unique aspects of Setian Initiation. Some aspects are geared towards laying the foundations for the Setian Hierarchy of Knowledge, while others are aimed at increasing your exposure to different perspectives and human systems for orienting yo the cosmos. As my series on sponsorship unfolds additional texts and resources will be recommended.
Temple of Set vol. 1 and 2 by Dr. Michael A. Aquino Uncle Setnakt’s Essential Guide to the Left Hand Path by Don Webb Lords of the Left-Hand Path by Dr. Stephen E. FLowers
General Orienting Materials:
Mastery by George Leonard The Evolving Self by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi The Philosopher’s Toolkit by Julian Baggini and Peter S. Fosl Science Maters: Achieving Scientific Literacy by Robert M. Hazen and James Trefil The World’s Religions by Houston Smith Counter Culture Through the Ages by Ken Goffman and Dan Joy The Science of Enlightenment by Shinzen Young
Once you have acquired and spent some time reading, evaluating and discussing these texts with others I would be interested in hearing from you. I can be contacted at setemheb@gmail.com
On October 3, 2014 EV. I was Recognized by the Temple of Set as Magus of the Word While in English Xeper has only one way of being spoken or written, Egyptian allows for something more nuanced. The core meaning of this Word is “Evolution,” with the specific implication of “Evolution by Force of Mind” or “Mindful Evolution.” It implies that Xeper is not a one-time event, but something requiring repeated engagement with the biological and psychological orderings as an active designer so that your Isolate Consciousness might come to its full unfolding. It is the active redesigning of the Self and the World via the Gift of Set.
The Æon Initiating Utterance of Ra-En-Set, as recorded in the Book of Coming Forth by Night, is
It is the root from which all Words in the Æon of Set arise. Each is a means of the individual Magus/Maga of Remanifesting what they gained from this Primary Utterance, or modifying it, in a manner which constitutes an entire Xeper-derived philosophy in a single Word.
My Utterance, as all Æon Enhancing Utterances, finds its empowerment through the Primary Utterance of Ra-En-Set. Without that, it could not exist in any meaningful manner. This is reflected in the hieroglyphics of my Word. Remove the XPR-root, and it is nothing but a gapping maw and a meaningless scroll. Where Ra-En-Set’s Utterance is the Omnidirectional empowerment of the Æon of Set, mine is a more specific, focused, lens by which his Utterance can be explored and Understood.
Setnakt’s Utterance of Xeper informs and holds some similarities to mine. For details on his Utterance see “Xeper: the Eternal Word of Set.” His Utterance came from an alternate reading of Ra-En-Set’s Utterance emphasizing the stative-tense aspects, “I have come into Being.” This was implicit in the Primary Utterance, but had gone unexplored. It was his Word that showed me my way, and it was from working for years to Understand his Word and its relationship to Ra-En-Set’s Word that my own Utterance took shape. I had been a close student of the tale of how he came to his Word, and knew of the importance of integrating hunches with seeking out linguistic and cultural information about Egypt. It was because of him that I knew where to look in Budge’s Egyptian Language in order to learn the form of the Eternal Word that had survived from Antiquity to ignite the Æon in the mind of Ra-en-Set. His Work had informed the seven years of my Sentinelship of the Black Sun Rising Pylon and my five years as Director of the Soa-Gild.
Ra-En-Set gave me access to the Fire. Setnakt’s Utterance showed me the process by which I could be transformed by what I had Seen and provided me with the clues in order to unravel my Word’s implications.
My own Utterance shares an implicate element with Setnakt’s Utterance. It can be seen as the Verbal Noun form of the Root Xeper, or Evolution as an abstract process. It was this sense, articulated by Dr. Aquino in the August 1990 issue of the Scroll of Set:
What distinguishes Xeper from preceding Magus- Words is the principle that the telos of humanity – at least initiated humanity – lies beyond the capacities of humanity as it presently defines itself. Xeper presupposes the evolution of consciousness into what humanity now holds to be divine levels of being. The telos of Xeper, therefore, is unique in that it is dynamic. It holds up no fixed ideal, as do its predecessors; rather it identifies the evolutionary process itself as telos.
It was this sense of Xeper that had early on empowered me as a Setian. At the time I was pursuing a B.A. in Anthropology focusing on Human Origins and Uniqueness. This work involved learning in detail the science behind the evolutionary synthesis, biological evolution, and cultural evolution. Ra-En-Set’s Utterance and Setnakt’s Utterance entered my life at the same time, providing a way that I could pursue this Work not simply as a secular anthropologist but as an Initiate. It would be during a period of still deeper study of these same topics that I would recognize my Word, having been prepared across 12 years as a Setian to finally See what had always been there waiting for me. In this sense, my Utterance is embedded in the Primary Utterance yet has only found its full articulation in my own. It was always there, but it needed someone to modify and focus upon it.
The wave of Utterances of Xeper has been tied to the Working Years of the Temple of Set, and forms a hierarchy of explaining what to do as an Initiate. On the fundamental, and most important, level we have Xeper as “Become!” Do not worry about the specifics, do not worry that you are going into unknown territories. Become and you will find what you need. Setnakt’s Utterance as “I have come into Being” marks the initial response to having Become. Now that it has happened the individual can look upon the past patterns that transformed them so that they might be able to see the next set of patterns that will transform them still more. My Utterance is what to do when you have come to see those patterns, to actively reiterate and select from them in order to re-design the total of your life and being by the application of the Gift of Set to this process.
The totality of my school of thought derived from my Word is still unfolding. What was Seen could not be unseen, but it could be Uttered, and it will be Uttered. It will be through this Task that I will be transformed, and which will transform others in turn. I could not find a better, more challenging, insightful people with which to engage in this Work than those I have found within the Temple of Set.
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Setemheb 