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Subject: Patron of Sorcery: The Survival of the Ancient Cult of Set
                                   
                              Dakhla Sba
                       16 July XXXI, Aeon of Set
                               (1996 CE)
                                   
   During a recent conversation, a student of ancient Egypt
   mentioned to me the cult of Isis and Osiris and its survival of
   the fall of Egypt as a Mediterranean "mystery religion". As an
   initiate of the modern Temple of Set, I began to wonder to what
   extent the original cult of Set had survived that civilization,
   and what documented forms this survival had taken.
   I found an answer in Hans Dieter Betz's edition of The Greek
   Magical Papyri in Translation Including the Demotic Spells
   (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). In the twilight of
   Egyptian civilization, Set, the Lord of Darkness denounced by
   followers of Osiris, became a patron of sorcery. This apparently
   occurred by way of Egyptian priests moving into freelance magical
   practice after foreign domination led to loss of royal funding
   for the temples.
   It is strange to envision the Egyptian priests consigning their
   lore to the written word, given their notorious reputation for
   xenophobia and secrecy. Significantly, while these spells span
   the full range of magical operations, little of a theoretical
   character is disclosed.
   In PGM IV 154-285, there's an invocation of the Feared One that
   specifically mentions the defeat of Osiris, the dying god, and
   the Setian power over the hypotic gaze of Apep, serpent and neter
   of chaos that threatened the solar barque:
   
     "Oh dark's disturber, thunder's bringer, whirlwind,
     Night-flasher, breather-forth of hot and cold...
     I'm He who searched with you the whole world and
     Found great Osiris, whom I brought you chained.
     I'm he who joined you in war with the gods!
     I'm he who closed heav'ns double gates and
     put to sleep the serpent who must not be seen..."
     
   Later in the same text the magician addresses the rising sun:
   
     "...You who are fearful, awesome, threatening,
     You who're obscure and irresistable,
     And hater of the wicked, you I call,
     Typhon, in hours unlawful and unmeasured..."
     
   As mentioned elsewhere, the rising sun was one of the symbols of
   Xepera, the ancient Egyptian concept of Self-Creation.
   Fragments of Egyptian are found everywhere in these Greek spells.
   The 'true names' "erbeth", "pakerbeth" and "bolchoseth" appear
   repeatedly in invocations of Set. They may be corrupted praise
   names. The words are seen in binding and restraining spells (PGM
   IV 2145-2240, perhaps PGM VII 467-77, PGM XXXVI 1-34), spells to
   charm and subject (PGM VII 940-68, PGM XLVI 4-8), to cause
   separation (PGM XII 365-75, PDM XII 62-75 and XII 76-107), "evil
   sleep" (PDM XIV 675-94) and crazed lust (PGM XXVI 69-101).
   It is in the spells for self-initiation that one gets a sense of
   how the destruction of their civilization shaped the perspective
   of those who used these conjurations. The social machinery of the
   temple tradition responsible for these spells was dying, or
   already dead, and it was the individual who now pursued the
   magical arts for individual ends. Freelance practice of this type
   was solitary and secretive compared to the observances of state
   cults or even the mystery-religions. This presents problems in
   evaluating the significance of the papyri as evidence for
   survivals of the ancient cult of Set.
   The magical papyri presented by Betz are thought to have come
   from a private library in Thebes and date from the 2nd century
   BCE through the 5th century CE. We can't be sure if this
   collection of surviving scrolls is representative, or if it
   reflects a cult of Set in Graeco-Roman Egypt. But they do show
   that some literate Egyptians not only identified Typhon with Set
   but invoked the powers of Set-Typhon, hailed Set-Typhon as a
   divine power, and so forth.
   Strange though the magical papyri seem to us today, they document
   a flow of "operative" temple knowlege from Egypt into the
   Mediterranean world. This naturally invites speculation as to
   what theoretical or abstract knowlege might also have passed by
   way of the Egyptians who wrote these papyri in the twilight of
   their civilization.
   In Hermetic Magic (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1995)
   Stephen Flowers affirms that the magical papyri were a major root
   of the Western magical philosophy called Hermeticism. Betz states
   frankly in his preface to The Greek Magical Papyri--
   
     "It is known that philosophers of the Neopythagorean and
     Neo-platonic schools, as well as Gnostic and Hermetic groups,
     used magical books and hence must have possessed copies. But
     most of their material vanished and what we have left are
     their quotations."
     
   By the 2nd century of the common era, Roman hostility had driven
   underground the legendary state magic of Egypt. Thessalos, a
   Greek physician, reported that Theban priests were scandalized at
   his inqury as to whether anything remained of the old Egyptian
   magic. Nevertheless, an old priest agreed to perform a divination
   for Thessalos. His account of the working corresponds pefectly
   with descriptions in demotic and Greek magical papyri that have
   come into our hands (Robert K. Ritner, The Mechanics of Ancient
   Egyptian Magical Practice, Chicago: University of Chicago, 1993,
   p. 219).
   We thus have cause to think that these papyri reflect authentic
   temple practice, and that priests of Egypt under Greek and Roman
   rule performed such rites until the temples were shut down.
   Whether this includes the invocation of Set for aggressive magic,
   under temple auspices, is an open question.
   However diabolized Set may have become in the final days of
   ancient Egypt, the papyri show that his esteem among magicians
   survived the destruction of his temples and images. The spells of
   the Theban cache found their way onto curse tablets in Rome,
   Athens and Jerusalem. Details and comparisons of the papyri and
   tablets are found in John G. Gager's Curse Tablets and Binding
   Spells from the Ancient World (New York: Oxford University Press,
   1992). More generally, the practice of the "spell-book" of
   European tradition found its prototype in the "magical cookbook"
   approach exemplified by the Theban papyri. Thus the written
   magical tradition of Europe began under the auspices of
   Set-Typhon, and provided the matrix for the Remanifestation of
   Setian thought hundreds of years later.
   That the papyri themselves survived Roman suppression, a
   ferocious campaign of destruction of magical books under
   Christianity (Acts 19:19), and the rise of Islam, may itself be
   reckoned to border on magic. What the papyri may yet reveal of
   the original cult of Set-- and of such survivals as have found
   their way into the wellsprings of Western thought--remains to be
   seen.
   
                                Xeper.
                                   
   
    Compiled by Dakhla Sba, Dakhla@aol.com.
     ____________________________________________________________

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