An Aside on Xeper

Having wrestled with the Eternal Word for roughly twenty-five years and having Uttered my iteration in a way I hope has and will enhance it, I have learned a few things about Xeper.

Perhaps more importantly, I had the privilege of serving as Director of the Soa-Gild once upon a time and spent a good deal of time interacting with new Setians. I had a chance to see many take up our ideas and tools and try to apply them. I saw many fail and many succeed. I was Soa-Director mainly for my Initiation, and so I took to the role with the hope of seeing patterns in when Xeper occurred and when it did not.

The first important thing I learned is that Xeper is an indirect process. Someone can’t say meaningfully, “Excuse me, I will go into the next room and Xeper for the next half hour. See you when I am done.” Instead, one engages in a variety of direct Work aimed at cultivating the Self-Complex from which Xeper arises indirectly. This is powerfully articulated in Ipsissimus Webb’s discussion of his Enhancing Utterance of Xeper:

The proper translation of the verb Xeper is “I Have Come Into Being.” Now, there are some implications of this that we in the Temple have not yet considered. Firstly, 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 reason, or through divine apprehensions. 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.

The second crucial realization that I had, which is embedded in nearly all of my writing about my Enhancing Utterance of Xeper, is that Xeper is not simply an indirect process but an emergent one. One engaged in the Work of the Body and Mind in a particular and uniquely your fashion that, as a result, allows for your unique Divinity or personal neter to emerge. This emergence allows access to the capacity to set into motion new patterns or to become receptive to otherwise unnoticeable patterns in the Universe that will leave you permanently marked by the experience. Finally, for this newly developed being to continue functioning, you will need to expand your World and contact with others who have been transformed in a congruent fashion.

This, among other things, is the Mystery of the Formula of the Aeon of Set:

This emergent neter can only arise with the proper combinations of actions (Work) and features (your Self-Complex en toto). No one can do this Work for you, nor can anyone ultimately tell you what Work you will need specifically to have this emergence arise. Instead, what the Temple provides is living examples of those who have had this experience and who, to a greater or lesser extent, might be able to give you feedback as to whether what you are doing directly shows the signs of the indirect emergence of Xeper.

This emergent aspect of Xeper is why no one set of actions will lead to Xeper. You could do all of the Greater Black Magic in the sense of Workings in a Ritual Chamber that you want, but that alone will not lead to Xeper. You could undertake the intellectual challenge of reading the entire Reading List in the Temple of Set, but that alone will not lead to Xeper. You could spend all of your time learning about the weaponization of meta-communication and how to apply meta-communication ethically, but this alone will not lead to Xeper. You could spend all your time cleaning up and clearing out your mind, body, emotions, and cultural baggage, but this alone will not lead to Xeper.

Instead, what we have found in the history of the Temple of Set is that the Self-directed application of all of these things in an environment of meaningful feedback from others creates the proper conditions for the emergence of Xeper as a real experience and not simply as mislabeling any arbitrary change as Xeper.

But what is it that Xeper emerges from? It is from the Gift of Set, the unique

combination of Life and Mind experienced by human beings, and its exercise in various domains and circumstances. It is for this reason that I have spent so much time and text thus far discussing the Gift, its features, and its tools. From here, the focus will be on strategies for best leveraging these things in a manner that allows for the emergence of Xeper.

Orienting by Desire: Final 2D Iteration

This will be one of the last iterations of your Visions in the manner we have been doing them. New approaches will be taken as this series continues to unfold.

Look over your Visions as they presently stand. How does each Vision potentially affect one of your other visions? Are there any that are clearly at odds with one another? Are there ones that are subtly at odds? In your Work related to Self, how do others impact it in your life or by your environment? How are your relationships with others affected by the qualities of your interior conditions? Re-write your Visions based on your insights.

Look over your Visions again. Which of these are things that you feel like you want but which you haven’t taken any steps to do anything about? Look over this Vision to see if you are stuck in any of the abovementioned pitfalls. Have you been overanalyzing the situation? Have you been planning and planning without action? Have you been ignoring feedback in favor of falling in love with your plans? Once again, re-write your Visions from your insights.

Finally, look at one of your Visions, a particularly compelling one, and think about what you can do today to build an asset in that dimension, which will make it easier for you to get closer to your Visions. Then do it. Don’t worry about knowing everything or having a clearly defined plan. Just do what you think will help. Then look over that Vision tomorrow and see if what you did had an impact and if that changes anything.

The Elusive Obvious: Learning by Doing

One of the great shocks encountered in development comes from the realization that your perception of reality and reality itself are often very, very different. Dr. Aquino alludes to this in “Black Magic” in his discussion of cutting a Moebius strip and how what we think will happen is at marked odds with what does happen. Learning the differences between our perception and reality and developing skills for being more capable of perceiving reality underlies the Setian emphasis on learning things like stage magic, mentalism, geometry, and formal logic. This is done not to restrict perception purely to mimic the objective universe but to train it to create clear-sighted focus when needed.

The fundamental system that underlies our experience as humans can be modeled as Self, Others, and Nature. At any point in your existence, your Self will be present, however blurred or focused. At any point in your existence, there will be other perceiving entities with whom you share a capacity to communicate, however explicit or muddled. At any point in your existence, there will be some form of Nature, some form of the objective universe, creating boundary conditions on your experience whether you realize it or not. Each of these fundamental three divisions or domains can affect the other. Your Self can affect the Selves of others, or it can reshape Nature. In turn, there is direct feedback from the affected domain to you, with your effects on others feeding back into your experience of Self or your effects on Nature feeding back into your Self. There can also be indirect effects within such a system. For example, you might directly influence the Selves of others, which leads to changes in Nature, which in turn feed back into your experience of Self.

Looking at the relations of Self, Others, and Nature, directly and indirectly, forms a practical first point for making decisions and understanding impact.

When attempting to make changes within systems, certain pitfalls tend to arise. The first comes in the form of paralysis by analysis. Because systems can be so complex and their effects challenging to see, it is easy to keep analyzing and analyzing the system to the point where no action plan is formed, and nothing is done. The second common pitfall can be considered a kind of “death by planning.” While an end to the analysis of the system has occurred, the focus becomes an obsessive designing of a plan of action, trying to cover every possible outcome. A third pitfall comes from having fallen in love with the plan at the expense of reality. Failures are seen not as a flaw in the plan that needs fixing but rather as a lack of strict adherence to the plan, which must be perfect after so much effort.

The way around these pitfalls is through committing to learning by action. When you have enough of an analysis and a rough action plan, start taking steps to actualize it and integrate feedback from what results. The faster you can do this, and the tighter the loop from analysis to feedback, the faster you can learn and hem your action towards viable results.

The Elusive Obvious: Transitions

The place within systems where the most energy can be leveraged or lost comes at the points of interaction between parts. If you want to understand a system, and even more if you want to affect the system, training to see how the parts of the system interact is critical. 

In human systems, three major types of activities arise from the human “parts.” The most important for the continued integrity of the system are those engaged in maintenance activities. This keeps things flowing smoothly and is grounded in the system’s continuance. Next, there are achievement behaviors done by those looking to make a name for themselves within the system, often by expanding its scope or the effectiveness of its operation. Finally, there are self-directed behaviors that focus on the individual within the system regarding their rights, autonomy, and control over the system. 

In a healthy system, these three behavior styles work together for the overall benefit of the system. In unhealthy systems, one of these behavior types has often taken over the entire system, causing it to grind into stasis, become a vehicle for the aggrandizement of a few, or disintegrate the system altogether. 

The most reflexive systems, and those most capable of adaptation, are those which have an effective form of feedback. In its technical sense, feedback is any information that, when returned to the system, can change the pattern of behavior of the system. Information, in this sense, counts as unexpected, novel content different from the regular background “noise” of expected content. To become more sensitive to the feedback of the systems you are or are a part of means becoming more sensitive to that which is novel.

Orienting by Desire: Systemic Visions

Take a look over your Visions so far in all six dimensions. How do your individual internal aspects, physical, emotional and intellectual, operate as systems? Are there ways in which “parts” of these systems could be swapped out for better “parts” leading to translative improvements? What things could be brought into a systemic relationship with these aspects to cause transformations and new emergent properties in these areas? What about your external aspects of ecology, community and culture? How might looking at these things from a systemic approach provide you with new insights and refinements as to how to bring your Visions into being?

The Elusive Obvious: Translation and Transformation in Systems

When functioning, systems operate with general efficiency within the context in which they operate. However, any system can be subject to stress, threatening the overall system with collapse and dissipation. Most systems have two means of coping with stress being applied: translation and transformation.

When a system adjusts to stress via translation, it maintains the overall integrity of the system but either adjusts the flow of operations within the system or swaps out parts for more efficient parts that, in turn, make the system more efficient. A relatively simple example would be changing the oil in your car to a low-temperature viscosity oil and using steel belted tires in conditions of cold and heavy snow. The overall system remains roughly the same. However, it can now cope with the stress of colder environments. Its operations have been translated in such a way that the overall form of the system remains roughly the same.

When a system adjusts to stress via transformation, the overall form of the system changes. It will likely need to integrate new materials into its operation to transform the system. It will produce an entirely new system with unexpected and unpredictable features. This leads to a higher level of complexity overall and causes the original system to integrate holonically into the new system.

The unpredictable features of the new system as a result of transformation are emergent properties. These properties cannot be predicted based solely on the features of the lower-ordered parts. This kind of emergence is how novelty enters into systems.

The Elusive Obvious: Holonic Systems

One approach towards thinking about phenomena that can be profoundly powerful is that provided by Systems Theory. What qualifies as a “system” is relatively simple: a set of connected things or parts forming a complex whole. Once understood, systems thinking can provide a powerful tool for understanding physical, chemical, biological, and social phenomena and give insights into what changes can influence the entire system. This is particularly relevant to those systems which you are a part of. 

There are various ways to look at systems, some with fine detail and distinctions, others very broad. What follows is a fairly broad approach focusing on usefulness concerning the kinds of systems Initiates are likely to find themselves interacting with. 

In The Ghost Machine, writer Arthur Koestler provided a valuable coinage: holon. A holon is a whole in and of itself, which can also be part of a greater whole. A holon, in turn, is comprised of parts which are also holons. Holons can operate independently or enter larger holonic systems where some of their features will be constrained, and others will be given greater reign. A simple example of a holon in nature can be an atom made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, which, in turn, can become part of multi-atomic systems or molecules. Much like molecules, the mutual interactions of the parts of a holonic system define it rather than one part being the pure defining feature. Also, like a molecule, if a holonic system is stripped of its parts, it will not display the same features or capacities. Some function of the system is lost when its parts are lost. 

A system, in this sense, has five primary conditions: 

1. The whole has one or more defining functions. 

2. Every part of a system is necessary, and removing a part will cause the system to cease functioning. Each part in the set can affect the behavior or properties of the whole. 

3. A subset of the parts of the system is capable of carrying out, to a greater or lesser capacity, the defining function of the whole. These are the critical parts. 

4. No single part of the system directly affects the outcomes of the system. Each part has an indirect or additive effect through its relations with the other parts. 

5. Removal of the parts of the system, or their complete dismantling, will cause the defining function of a system to be lost. The defining function only arises as a result of the interactions of the system. 

For Initiates, the most critical holonic systems they participate in are human relations systems. These include but are not limited to family systems, employment systems, systems of investment, political systems, social systems, and the like. Within such systems, additive or synergistic functions arise, increasing the available variety of behavior. The greater the variety, the more adaptive the system becomes. New options are available if one behavior does not work.

Orienting by Desire: Compelling Visions 

Why does having a Vision for yourself matter? Why bother revising your Visions regularly? 

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi estimates in Flow that the human mind can integrate roughly 126 bits of information per second. This seems like a reasonably large amount of information at first glance. However, it is estimated that our nervous system is being bombarded by millions of bits of information from which it can only extract and operate with 126 bits. As a result, the nervous system has to prioritize, delete, distort, and generalize to operate. As a result, a good deal is lost. 

The criteria for this selection seem to be guided by several factors. Cognitive priming is an implicit memory effect where references to a given subject directly or indirectly will make recall related to that subject easier. This priming process also seems to affect the selection of information entering the nervous system. Priming effects are relatively easy to induce and tend to be fleeting. Another factor, cognitive momentum, can be thought of as the force and direction in which one’s thoughts are traveling, which they will continue to travel in unless acted upon by another cognitive force. Cognitive momentum presents a more significant challenge for making changes. Still, once made, they continue their trajectory until acted upon by another outside force. Finally, emotional inertia can be thought of as the tendency to resist changes to the restricted spectrum of emotions that a person has come to express habitually and which will use language and imagery of the cognitive aspects to maintain itself. This is the most challenging level to change, but once made, it will have significant long-term effects on all higher levels. 

Working with Visions integrates all of these issues. You are engaged in cognitive priming by reviewing and reiterating your Visions regularly. Thinking about and interacting with the Visions causes your nervous system to “light up” memories associated with the Vision and to start to screen incoming information for data related to your Vision. By working to train the cognitive system with clear ideas and taking in new education and experience related to your Vision, you can exert enough force to change your overall cognitive momentum. Finally, by changing the language and imagery around your Visions concerning your emotions, you can break up your moods, overcome existing emotional inertia, and reset it to function following your Visions. 

The more thoroughly you can include emotionally stimulating thoughts and imagery in your Visions in a clear and intellectually stimulating fashion, the more powerful they become. 

This session of Orienting by Desire comes rather quickly behind our last. However, the speed of iteration can be helpful. Look at your last set of Visions and integrate the material discussed above, the model for decision processes, and any life experiences since your last Vision exercise. How have they changed in the past few days? How have they changed based on what you’ve learned? How have they changed by what you have experienced? Now take these older Visions, integrate your new understanding, and re-write them in an emotionally and intellectually stimulating fashion on a new sheet of paper. 

Start considering the imagery of your Visions. For those of you artistically inclined, you can also start to draw some aspects of your Visions as we proceed. If you are less capable of creating your images, consider looking at and collecting images related to your Visions that inspire you. These images do not need to be perfect representations of your Visions, but they should create some sense of connection for you. This should be done in addition to writing well-formed statements to help bring the imagistic aspects of cognition into play in this process.

The Elusive Obvious: Decision Making

Basic decision making by humans follows a fairly similar pattern. This pattern can be made conscious and used as a tool, or it can be allowed to operate in the background, often with bad habits. Each phase of this pattern has its own pitfalls, which will be discussed. I bring up this topic in the hopes of helping you develop better strategies for

Basic decision-making by humans follows a relatively similar pattern. This pattern can be made conscious and used as a tool, or it can be allowed to operate in the background, often with bad habits. Each phase of this pattern has its pitfalls, which will be discussed. I bring up this topic in the hopes of helping you develop better strategies for making your decisions and getting towards the desired outcomes. 

Decisions start with a trigger. Something arises in experience, internally or externally, that requires you to develop a new course of action than the ones you have been using. The significant errors at this point in a decision process are either starting the decision-making process before it needs to be made or procrastinating on starting the decision and missing opportunities for getting to your outcome. Working to become sensitive to when to wait and when to take action is critical. 

Once the decision process has begun, you move towards the operation of the decision. Here, you collect data about the decision and evaluate your alternatives. 

You need to use your senses to understand your alternatives to collect data. Regarding the standard Western division of senses, you need to see, hear, taste, touch, and smell what your options are. Unfortunately, our biases often lead to us collecting data irrelevant to the actual decision. Because there can only ever be a partial understanding of the situation, most decisions must be made with insufficient data. Fear of wrong decisions can create an additional problem of endless data collecting to forestall having to make any decision that you might ultimately find unfavorable. 

There are single dimension alternatives of “yes/no” to a single action. There are two-dimensional alternatives, which often take the form of dilemmas., between two mutually exclusive courses of action. And there are three dimension alternatives with a broader spectrum of options. Additional dimensions can also be added, though very quickly beyond three alternatives, you start to enter into a problem of too many options, and thus, no action seems possible. 

If you can get past the data collection period, some form of test for your decisions is needed. This can involve a small action linked to the final decision to gain feedback or some other way to see if the proposed action will lead toward the desired outcome. This is best done by generating something new related to the decision, which can be tested against your experience. If you do not find a match that looks like it will lead to your outcome by the testing phase, returning to one of the previous steps is the best course of action. 

The best decision-makers develop the best tests for their outcomes. They also pursue a varied set of lived experiences from which they can draw better options and criteria for decision-making.