In 1975 The Temple of Set was established by a number of members of Church of Satan, who felt inspired to break from the atheist / materialist direction Anton LaVey was taking it, as well the Abrahamic oppositional nomenclature. Lt. Col. Michael Aquino, it’s first Magus and founder, was a political scientist and U.S. Army intelligence officer and war veteran who specialised in psychological warfare – notably during the Vietnam War, and a high-ranking Satanic cleric very close to Anton LaVey.

Aquino had embraced an initiatic approach to his magical practice, and found his own ideas at odds with what LaVey was inspired to achieve with the Church of Satan. The Church of Satan wanted to forge a collection of movers and shakers toward pragmatic, immanent, outsider driven ends; and celebrated those who applied the subtle whiles and guiles of the world-wise to attain their goals. Aquino favoured the idea of internal development that was something sacred and spiritual, and that reflected a transcendent individual state. While The Church of Satan was moving more to favour an atheistic, Jungian, symbolic view of Satan as representation of an abstract force in nature – Aquino holds the position that the neter Set is a conscious, self-aware entity – one that could be communed with in some special cases.

In an act of what Aquino describes as Greater Black Magic, he alleges that he was contacted by The Prince of Darkness, and The Book of Coming Forth by Night was authored. In it, the force called Satan revealed that he preferred to be known by his earliest historically known form – the Egyptian neter Set, who was as Aquino describes like the platonic “first form” of contra-distinct consciousness– instead of the accursed Hebrew adversary.
“The Temple of Set was originally thought to take the context of what the original Satanic experience has been, out of the Judeo-Christian mythology system,” said Aquino to a “The Lip” TV reporter during a live interview in in March 2015. “ ..harking back to the original Church of Satan days, we were looking really to find the nature of what was generally called the human soul – in other words what it is within us that animates us, that gives us freedom of decision, of conceptualisation.. the intellectual life force. The Church of Satan had a certain social criticism aspect to it, and it also liked to hold Judeo-Christianity’s feet to the fire. After ten years both those became sort of played out, and we were looking … to “take a first step into a larger universe” … So what you see in the Temple of Set is not anything with an agenda towards “good” or “evil” per se, but rather towards understanding consciousness, and once you understand consciousness to maximise your personal use of it in such a way that you are not the slave to conventions or to propaganda of any sort, so that you are in effect a god yourself responsible for your own decisions..”

Satanic New Zealand does not represent members of/or religions based on faith in the “supernatural” – or more precisely religions that exhort individuals to believe in following a dogma with the justification that “God says so,” or individual magicians who insist others respect and heed their imperatives … for any arbitrary reason at all against their pre-manipulated will. Satanism and the Left Hand Path are unequivocally the antithesis of such organisations, and it’s participants will often work against such movements and individuals – however, in the opinion of the inner council of SNZ this need not necessarily exclude all those who may consider whether or not such super-physical entities exist in some way, by some definition.

For instance, Aquino goes on in the same interview quoted above; “..the question of are there demons or are their entities like you see in a horror move.. well: No, not in the way most people would think, but we view the consciousness as a particularisation of a universal principle (which is what we refer to as Set), which is the source of all individual consciousnesses, a little bit like in the platonic concept of forms or first principles.”

Further, having close contact with high ranking members of the Temple of Set, this author can confirm that unlike religions most people are familiar with; no pressure is put on it’s members to “believe in” Set as a self-aware consciousness, or to act in any way according to a dogmatic code outside their own will.

Today, the Temple of Set is ordered apparently much like the magical orders with their roots in the 19th century; such as the Ordo Templi Orientis and The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. It’s most visible celebrated initiates tend to include strong occultists and academics; such as Dr. Stephen E. Flowers (AKA Edred Thorsson) and author and lecturer Don Webb (AKA Uncle Setnakt). It is presided over by it’s own Council of Nine, who elect it’s High Priest annually. The Temple has had six different High Priests / High Priestesses in it’s history – including Ipsissimus Michael Aquino himself, Zeena Schreck (nee LaVey), and Don Webb.

Although the Temple has no easily described set of “articles” to indicate it’s values, it’s initiates may be guided in part by “Aeonic words”. Magus Don Webb wrote; “An Aeon is a world. As human beings we are familiar with many “worlds.” We can talk about the “world of Thomas Jefferson” or the “world of Newton.” Magical worlds are created by Words—by the verbal power of mankind to express a divine principle—which through the effect of that Utterance on the objective universe brings about the creation of the world. The Word serves as a gateway for the mind seeking to enter the world it defines, and the effect of an Utterance of a Word will cause many worlds to be reconfigured in order to Hear it.”

The chief of these is “the eternal word of Set;” Xeper (pron. Khefer). Xeper is the anglicized version of an ancient Egyptian verb which means “I have come into being.” It is often socially used to communicate the idea of personal “Becoming”. It’s ancient Khemite hieroglyphic character is that of the Scarab beetle. This is accompanied by the formula “Xepera Xeper Xeperu” or “I have Come Into Being, and by the process of my Coming Into Being the process of Coming Into Being is established.”

Xeper is enhanced and clarified by other trans-aeonic words, some of which are which are:
Runa (mystery) – “Reyn til Runa” – “Seek the Mysteries”
ReManifest – According to Don Webb: “..a renewal and rebirth of the self through deliberate use of all that has been previously in order to bring about a Magician who Comes Into Being as a new and more fully faceted Being.”
Ipsos (by the same mouth)
Xem (perhaps: “self-divine state of being of eternally conscious becoming other-in-self.”) -This concept was uttered by the late second High Priest of the Temple. It is derived from Khem, root word for “Chemistry” etc. It is also the name the ancient Egyptians called their own land. Khem in Egyptian literally means “Black” and comes with the association of fertility (So Alchemy = Black Art & Khemet = Black Land). In terms of the Aeonic word, no satisfactory definition is agreed upon even among the Temple. This author is aware that he will likely receive criticism from Temple members for my likely inadequate attempt, and his happy to receive such constructively.

The Temple also recognises at least two other proto-Setian Aeonic words:
Thelema (will) – via Aleister Crowley
Indulgence – via Anton LaVey

To learn more about the The Temple of Set you may visit https://xeper.org, or purchase a large and growing number of excellent books and other texts authored by it’s members. Along with Michael Aquino’s works, I highly recommend considering the works of both Stephen E. Flowers, and Don Webb. Each are magicians who have attained a high degree of “self-evident” mastery, who design their works to be of benefit to anyone who sincerely wishes to strengthen themselves as such.

The Temple’s foundation text is The Book of Coming Forth by Night, and due to it’s brevity is available from several sources online.