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:
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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.