actor playing the young Antichrist is virtually a mirror-image of me as I was at that age [although he lacks my
infamous eyebrows]. As I watched his bewilderment upon realizing his identity, I felt again the shock of the North
Solstice X and the conviction that has continued to grow in me since that moment.
How foolish they were, those horror-stricken Christians who collected the fables of the “Book of Revelation”!
What would a true Antichrist want with world domination if those under his sway were no more than the semi-
beasts they now are? He would merely be one more Alexander, one more Cæsar, one more Bonaparte.
No, the strength of the Æon which has now been unleashed lies in its promise to free the Elect among mankind
once and for all from the great patterns of animalistic conceptualization and behavior in which they have been
imprisoned for so many thousands of years: to take that realization of True Will as proclaimed by the Beast 666 and
force it into an independent focus of identity and creative power through the principle of Xeper.
Without this ambition the Temple, as colorful and stimulating as it might be, would be inauthentic. With it, and
with the collective will of the Elect in support of it, we are indeed authentic so much so that no one else on this world
can begin to understand how or why this is so.
And therefore, terrified, confused, and suspicious as they are, they are arrogant enough to caricature a Magus as
a mere negation of their own demagogue an “Antichrist” and to think that his weapons would be terror, murder, and
domination by force! Jesus Christ is irrelevant to this Æon, as are all others who champion the return of mankind to
the iron grip of the Natural mechanism. And the power of a true Magus lies not in the tools of a Cæsar or a Napoleon
but in a Word: Xeper.
- 309 -
A41: Book Review - Earthsea Trilogy
- by Robert Menschel II°
Scroll of Set #IV-1, September 1978
A Wizard of Earthsea (#T2168), The Tombs of Atuan (#T8318), and The Earthest Shore (#T2126), by Ursula K.
LeGuin, Bantam Books, N.Y.
This trilogy is a wonderful adventure story. It is a biography of Sparrowhawk (whose true name is Ged), from
his earliest demonstration of magical potential through his final adventure as Archmage of Earthsea. It is very
enjoyable reading. It is also magically quite intriguing. It poses many magical questions and theories.
Sparrowhawk has begun his apprenticeship to Osion, master Wizard. Unknown to his master, Sparrowhawk
opens a book of rituals and reads one. He becomes trapped by the ritual, which seems to summon a frightening
shadow from the underworld. Osion returns to banish the shadow, and has these words for his pupil: “Have you
never thought how danger must surround power as shadow does light? ... Think of this: that every word, every act of
our Art, is said and is done either for good, or for evil. Before you speak or do you must know the price that is to
pay!”Setian philosophy agrees that magic is dangerous, Magicians have created/summoned beings with the power to
destroy their creator/ summoner, probably due to guilt, and certainly due to the lack of a consciously directed and
focused will. Even a Setian must recognize the dangers of magic [See Magister Seago’s “Psychic Hazards and Proper
Use of Ritual Magic” in the Ruby Tablet].
Good and evil are not so well recognized among Setians [see “Sainthood vs. Sethood”, Scroll, September XII].
However we should try to avoid acts which cause effect contrary to our desires, and should perform those acts which
will accomplish our goals.
We should not become paralyzed into inactivity by fear of the unknown effects of our actions. We should,
however, conscientiously examine all acts, magical and mundane, for their likely effects.
Each of us has a responsibility to examine each of our acts, to determine their probable effects. We should act as
our will, backed by intelligent consideration, dictates. We should not react with emotional whim.
In Earthsea the over-exertion of magical muscles can be physically harmful. Sparrowhawk’s first magical feat
was to cloak his village in fog during an invasion, foiling the invaders. After the fog dissipated, “No weapon-hurt had
come to the boy, but he would not speak nor eat nor sleep ... His aunt said, ‘He has overspent his power.’” It
required Master Wizard Osion to bring Sparrowhawk back to life.
After a short apprenticeship with Osion, Sparrowhawk enrolled in the School of Wizardry at Roke. He proved to
be an exceptional student, combining his natural magical talent with a talent for study. During a battle of pride with
another student, Sparrowhawk summoned a beautiful princess from the dead. He also accidentally summoned an
evil spirit from the Unknown, a demon dedicated to destroying Sparrowhawk.
Only the swift action of the Archmage of Roke saves Sparrowhawk and drives away the demon. The Archmage
then strains all his power to close the gate between Earthsea and the Unknown. Ged was put to bed, and his physical
wounds cared for, but:
Not far away, in the unroofed court where the fountain played, the Archmage lay also unmoving, but
cold, very cold: only his eyes lived, watching the fall of moonlit water and the stir of moonlit leaves. Those
with him said no spells and worked no healing ... To check the ungoverned spell and drive off the shadow
from Ged, Nemmerle had spent all his power, and with it his bodily strength was gone, He lay dying ...
We must know who we are; we must know what we are. Just as we recognize the unlimited power we may Xeper
to, we must recognize the relatively limited power we currently have. This is the concept of balance as expressed in
the Satanic Bible.
Sparrowhawk spends over a year recovering from the attack. He finally meets the new Archmage, who has these
words:
You have great power inborn in you, and you used that power wrongly, to work a spell over which you
had no control, not knowing how that spell affects the balance of light and dark, life and death, good and
evil. And you were moved to do this by pride and by hate. Is it any wonder the result was ruin?
When do we act willfully, and when do we act emotionally? Humans are rationalizing creatures. We must ever
examine our intentions to determine if we are rationally following our will, or rationalizingly following our
emotions. The latter can act in opposition to our goals.
After Ged earns his wizard’s staff, he leaves Roke and has several adventures, running from the demon. Ged
eventually turns and boots the demon. Several more adventures are in the offing, until Ged finally catches up with
the demon in the uncharted ocean surrounding Earthsea.
Ged overcomes the demon by naming the demon with his own name, recognizing the demon as himself, as the
demon within which must be recognized to be defeated. These were a wizard friend’s observations:
- 310 -
And he began to see the truth, that Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death
with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or
possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life’s sake and never in the
service of pain, or hatred, or the dark.
Each of us must know ourself. In Earthsea this is an exceptional quality which Ged attains: being whole,
knowing himself. Because of it he is more powerful, more magically balanced.
>
As Setians, knowing ourselves is essential. Even as Set created HarWer so that Set could define himself, so must
we determine what we are and what we are not. We must know ourselves and be whole; only thus can we willfully
Xeper.
One of Sparrowhawk’s earlier lessons:
“You want to work spells,” Osion said presently, striding along. “You’ve drawn too much water from
that well. Wait. Manhood is patience. Mastery is nine times patience. What is that herb by the path?”
“Strawflower.”
“And that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Fourfoil, they call it.” Osion had halted, the coppershod foot of his staff near the little weed, so Ged
looked closely at the plant, and plucked a dry seedpod from it, and finally asked, since Osion said nothing
more, “What is its use, Master?”
“None I know of.”
Ged kept the seedpod a while as they went on, then tossed it away.
“When you know the fourfoil in all its seasons, root and leaf and flower, by sight and scent and seed,
then you may learn its true name, knowing its being: which is more than its use. What, after all, is the use of
you? Or of myself? Is Gont Mountain useful, or the Open Sea?” Osion went on a half mile or so, and said at
last, “To hear, one must be silent.”
Ged himself later explained the subject thusly:
“Do you see, Arren, how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and
it hits or misses, and that’s the end of it. When that rock is lifted, the Earth is lighter; the hand that bears it
heavier, When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls the universe is
changed. On every act the balance of the whole depends, The winds and seas, the powers of water and earth
and light, all that these do, and all that the beasts and green things do, is well done, and rightly done, All
these act within the Equilibrium. From the hurricane and the great whale’s sounding to the fall of a dry leaf
and the gnat’s flight, all they do is done within the balance of the whole. But we, insofar as we have power
over the world and over one another, we must learn to do what the leaf and the whale and the wind do of
their own nature. We must learn to keep the balance. Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance.
Having choice, we must not act without responsibility ...”
“But then,” the boy said, frowning at the stars, “is the balance to be kept by doing nothing? Surely a
man must act, even not knowing all the consequences of his act, if anything is to be done at all?”
“Never fear. It is much easier for men to act than to refrain from acting. We will continue to do good
and to do evil ... But if there were a king over us all again, and he sought counsel of a mage, as in the days of
old, and I were that mage, I would say to him: ‘My lord, do nothing because it is righteous to praiseworthy
or noble to do so; do nothing because it seems good to do so; do only that which you must do and which you
cannot do in any other way.’”
Just as we act in our own best interests, we need to be patient enough to gather the data required for the logical
and willful analysis of our acts, their causes, and results. We must be patient enough to not be misled into error.
“Can it be a kind of pestilence, a plague, that drifts from land to land, blighting the crops and the flocks
and men’s spirits?”
For when it rained Osion would not even say the spell that every weatherworker knows, to send the
storm aside. In a land where sorcerers come thick, like Gont or the Enlades, you may see a raincloud
blundering slowly from side to side and place to place as one spell shunts it onto the next, till at last it is
buffeted out over the sea where it can rain in peace. But Osion let the rain fall where it would. He found a
thick fir-tree and lay down beneath it. Ged crouched among the dripping bushes wet and sullen, and
wondered what was the good of having power if you were too wise to use it, and wished he had gone as
prentice to that old weatherworker of the Vale, where at least he would have kept dry.
Which is the true knowledge? Xeper is not the only choice. Is it the best? Each of us must continually decide.
Why do I, a Setian, worry about such things as these? I do so because I am a Setian, a willful being.
- 311 -
Nature acts in equilibrium with itself. All natural acts are just that: natural. Men, however, have the power to
side-step nature, to upset nature’s equilibrium.
Many willful acts (magical or otherwise) are not of global importance. Some, however, upset nature’s
equilibrium such that there is a natural backlash, which may interfere temporarily with our goals. [One such
backlash is the ever-increasing pollution caused by our unnatural but often desirable industries. Another might be
the drought affecting the southwest.]
Even fewer are the acts so disastrous as to need to be countered by another willful act. One such would be a very
powerful psychic “sniper”, who would locate and destroy individuals of Setian outlook and power. Another might be
a mad president [of any country], intent on using the Bomb.
In Ged’s final and greatest adventure:
“A pestilence is a motion of the great Balance, of the Equilibrium itself; this is different ... This is not a
righting of the balance, but an upsetting of it. There is only one creature who can do that.”
“A man?” Arren said, tentative.
“We men.”
“How?”
“By an unmeasured desire for life.”
“For life? But it isn’t wrong to want to live?”
“No. But when we crave power over life endless wealth, unassailable safety, immortality then desire
becomes greed. And if knowledge allies itself to that greed, then comes evil. Then the balance of the world is
swayed, and ruin weighs heavy in the scale.”
Arren brooded over this a while and said at last, “Then you think it is a man we seek?”
“A man, and a mage. Aye, I think so.”
“But I had thought, from what my father and teachers taught, that the great arts of wizardry were
dependent on the Balance, the Equilibrium of things, and so could not be used-for evil.”
“That,” said Sparrowhawk somewhat wryly, “is a debatable point. Infinite are the arguments of mages ...
Every land of Earthsea knows of witches who cast unclean spells, sorcerers who use their art to win riches.
But there is more. The Firelord, who sought to undo the darkness and stop the sun at noon, was a great
mage; even Erreth-Akbe could scarcely defeat him. The Enemy of Morred was another such. Where he
came, whole cities knelt to him; armies fought for him. The spell he wove against Morred was so mighty that
even when he was slain it could not be halted, and the island of Solea was overwhelmed by the sea, and all
on it perished. These were men in whom great strength and knowledge served the will to evil and fed upon
it. Whether the wizardry that serves a better end may always prove the stronger, we do not know. We hope.”
- 312 -
A42: From Psychology to Philosophy, or Know Thyself
- by Ricco A. Zappitelli III°
Scroll of Set #IV-2, October 1978
In Egypt and ancient Greece psychology [defined by Webster’s as “the science dealing with the mind and mental
and emotional processes”] originally existed in a form known as the Mysteries, but later split into several
fragmented forms, among them alchemy, magic, masonry, occultism, and Theosophy.
The important thing to note from this historical information was that the ancient form of the study of man’s
behavior was reduced from the “all-encompassing” school of Mysteries to specialized parts, making comprehension
of the whole almost an impossibility.
Today the two systems of psychology as they exist are (1) the study of man as he is imagined or thought to be - a
system based upon man’s being asleep, and (2) the study of man from the point of view of his possible evolution - a
system based on man’s awakening.
An acceptance of the former system (placing rest and preservation as ultimate goals) can only bring about
stagnation, whereas pursuance of the latter (placing change and creating above all, or Xeper) is our concern.
I give to you my great pentagram ... and it is shown inverse that creation and change be exalted above
rest and preservation.
The first step toward this evolution must be brought about by efforts of a controlled kind in an observant
state. The other factors which are vital toward this growth are a “learning” of certain techniques and/or knowledge
of methods, and secondly help by interacting with others. [Ouspensky defines this as a “school”.] This I feel is one
of the most valuable functions of the Temple of Set and its pylons - to afford a vehicle to aid towards the individual’s
total possible expansion toward the goal of Xeper. I can’t help but feel without this “school” our individual
evolution, [and thus the Temple’s evolution] would be slower and more arduous to bring about.
There are several reasons I can see why we could be obstructed from further growth. They might be:
(1) On true introspection the “cost” of advancement in clarifying our lifestyles would be considered too
great and thus dispensed with.
(2) Because we wouldn’t have a strong enough desire to evolve, or the persistence to struggle toward that
end for a prolonged-enough length of time. Desire and duration are vital in seeking evolution!
(3) Because of our inability or failure to comprehend or even understand the theory of future
development, even if it were explained in detail.
(4) Last and most importantly [described by Ouspensky as the “missing link”] to overcome our inability to
The Temple of Set II Page 76
