Sinclair of Santa Barbara, California; Jinni Bast of Spotswood, New Jersey; Amn DeCecco of
Framingham, Massachusetts, and Margaret Wendall of San Jose, California.
Also on July 4 I sent copies of the initial Articles and By-Laws to the former Church officials
and Agents who by then had endorsed the idea of the Temple of Set: Adept Tom Bari, Adept
Ronald K. Barrett, Priest Robert DeCecco, Priest Robert Ethel, Priest Michael Grumboski, Adept
Thomas Huddleston, Adept William Murray, Adept Stuart Munro, Priest Michael McQuown,
Adept Lynn Norton, Priest Dale Seago, Priestess Lilith Sinclair, Priestess Margaret Wendall, and
Adept Arthur Zabrecky.
Legally the original Articles of Incorporation and By-Laws were signed on July 29, August 1,
and August 7 by the three “filing” directors, Bill Murray, Dale Seago, and myself. They were
officially approved by the California Secretary of State on October 23 and filed in Superior Court
on October 28, 1975.
One Section of the initial By-Laws authorized the High Priest to make initiatory degree
determinations prior to the By-Laws’ official adoption, and to communicate all such
determinations to the Executive Director and Council of Nine not later than October 31. On July
15, in one of my letters to the II°+, I wrote:
To date I have exercised the right of recognition only three times - each an instance of an
imbalance that should have been corrected long ago [in the Church of Satan]. These three
elevations were those of Stuart Munro of Ottawa to Adept II°, William F. Murray of Winnemucca
to Priest of Set III°, and Ronald K. Barrett of San Francisco to Priest of Set III°.
My original intent was to make no IV° nominations until the first Council of Nine was selected
and operational. My reasoning was based upon two factors: (1) According to the By-Laws, IV°
nominations must be approved by a majority of the Nine before taking effect. (2) IV° nominations
by me prior to the selection of the entire Council might be viewed as a means of influencing the
composition of the Council.
But a problem has arisen that has caused me to rethink this. The problem is as follows: The
Council must consist of III°+ individuals. If we simply use existing Church of Satan degrees for
qualification, the potential number of persons who can be considered for Council membership is
quite limited. Furthermore we are aware that the impartiality and effective international
geographic coverage of the C/S degrees were breaking down long before now. I personally know of
several II° individuals who may very well deserve the III°. And yet I do not know them well
enough to make a decision on the matter as thorough as a proper III° recognition should be.
I have decided to resolve the matter in a fashion which I trust will reflect the Will and Mandate
of Set.
At this time, prior to the formal implementation of the By-Laws, I am naming five ladies and
gentlemen to the IV°. Without exception they are well-known throughout our entire fellowship as
Priests or Priestesses of long standing, high reputation, and distinguished achievement. In
addition it is my considered opinion that each one of them possesses the initiatory qualities
indicative of a Master of the Temple of Set. Put as directly as possible, these qualities involve an
intrinsic and proven capability to make decisions and take actions representative of the Prince of
Darkness without an intentional effort to do so. From a magical standpoint this is the primary
distinction between the III° and the IV°, inasmuch as the Priest or Priestess III° has access to this
power when consciously and deliberately seeking it.
In the name of Set, therefore, I now recognize as Masters of the Temple IV°: Robert Ethel,
Michael A. Grumboski, L. Dale Seago, Lilith Sinclair, and Margaret A. Wendall.
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“Behold, it is I who call you, because you are the guardians of the Æon of Set, zealous in what
you do.” 39
August 21 marked the first of my High Priesthood bulletins to the Priesthood of Set. At the
time these were casually called “Xerox letters”; eventually they would be formalized into the
Priesthood newsletter Hieroglyphs. #III-1 went through five pages of general founding details,
from which the following is particularly noteworthy:
“Pylons”: I have had several inquiries and ideas concerning the name that would be used for
local units of the Temple. Neither “coven” nor “grotto” seemed appropriate. Priest Ronald Barrett
came up with “Pylon”, and everyone who has heard of it so far has been sitting up and barking. So
Pylon it is. The reference is to the great trapezoidal pylon gates of major Egyptian temples.
Barrett’s idea is that each Pylon of the Temple of Set is in one sense a “gate” to the entire Temple.
Magistra Margaret A. Wendall has accepted Editorship of the Scroll of Set. She will have a
100% free hand on all contents, so I can’t tell you exactly what will appear in the first issue. But, if
it’s anything like her famous Magic Cat, I’m sure we will not be disappointed. The first issue
should be out next month. I hope you will give her as much feedback and assistance as you
possibly can. Remember that the Scroll is the only regular means via which we can reach out and
touch isolated I°/II° members, so it has a mammoth job to do. 40
Two subsequent events marked the completion of the Temple of Set’s initial organization
process. The first was a letter from the State of California Franchise Tax Board, exempting the
Temple of Set from State taxes as a religious corporation. 41 The second was a letter from the
United States Internal Revenue Service, exempting the Temple of Set from Federal income tax
under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. 42 Both represented months of
correspondence between myself and their respective offices, providing extensive and detailed
answers to their questions concerning the corporate organization and religious principles of the
Temple. We were now, as far as the United States of America was concerned, fully and formally
credentialed.
Magister Dale Seago had served as Chairman Pro Tem of the Council of Nine during the
several months of its initial formative nomination/voting process. When in October all seats
were filled, lots were drawn to establish initial terms of office, with one expiring each year, thus
setting up overlapping nine-year terms. Then in December 1975 the Council elected its first full
Chairman, Magister Robert Ethel. Dale Seago remained a Councillor, of course, as well as the
Temple’s corporate Treasurer.
“Well,” as the Founding Fathers are rumored to have said at the completion of the United
States’ Constitutional Convention in 1787, “now that we’re organized, what do we do next?” 43
39 Aquino, M.A., Letter #II°-8, July 15, X/1975.
40 Aquino, M.A., Letter #III°-1, August 21, X/1975.
41 Letter, Albert D. LeBel, Supervisor, Exempt Organizations to Temple of Set, October 17, 1975.
42 Letter, Milton Cerny, Chief, Ruling Section, Exempt Organizations Branch, June 16, 1976.
43 For a survey and analysis of the aspects and implications of a Left-Hand Path religion, see Appendix #93.
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5: Freedom at Point Zero
By the close of 1975 the Temple of Set had completed its initial identification and
>
organization processes. With a founding membership of about one hundred, most veterans of
the Church of Satan, it was ready to move forward. So where was “forward”?
The Left-Hand Path of least resistance, it would seem, was to continue along much the same
activity as the Church, merely exchanging Judæo-Christian dæmonic symbolism for ancient
Egyptian. But numerous problems with such a casual approach quickly became apparent.
The Book of Coming Forth by Night, of course, clearly called for not just a reformation of the
Church of Satan, but an entirely distinct orientation for Temple-affiliated individuals.
But apart from this a number of inadequacies and inconsistencies in the Church had been
becoming steadily more visible, and uncomfortable, during its decade of maturation.
The “founding theology” of the Church had been easy: Christianity derided and lampooned,
through the use of imagery which it itself had created to scare its own followers into obedience.
As there was plenty of corruption and hypocrisy to be found in Christian institutions, the Church
of Satan’s program here was easy indeed. However it was a “denunciation” that, once made,
really did not need endless repeating, particularly among Satanists themselves. O.K., so
Christianity is childish, hypocritical, and corrupt: point made and taken. So where do we go from
here?
Satanists inevitably, if reluctantly realized that their own deity, Satan, was a Judæo/Islamic/
Christian myth-image every bit as much as YHVH. Generally Satan simply stood for whatever
God either didn’t like/permit, or wasn’t willing to be blamed for. It is true that various
iconoclasts and poetic heretics throughout history - Milton, Blake, Twain, et al. - had shocked
and tantalized their audiences with varying heroic/romantic spins on the Devil. But invariably it
all came to the same consensual baseline: Satan was bad, harmful, false, and evil.
Satanists generally grappled with this in two ways. First, they affected their alliance with the
spooky, scary Devil and his dæmonic entourage; this impressed and intimidated many mainline
religionists. Secondly, if somewhat inconsistently, they asserted that Satan was really not that
reprehensible a fellow after all; he had just been the victim of a propaganda smear campaign by
his enemies.
By 1975 the limitations of this essentially defensive and negative posture had become more
and more apparent. Satanists had made it clear that they didn’t like Judæo-Christianity. They
had insisted that its version of the Devil was also all wrong, at least where obviously vile
attributes and practices were concerned. But beyond these positions - which, in America’s
overwhelmingly Christian culture, took seemingly endless reexplanation and reaffirmation - they
had nowhere else to go. As noted in The Church of Satan, Anton LaVey ultimately disengaged
from the dilemma, turning his personal “Satan” into a narcissistic and sentimental nostalgia for
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the underbelly of 1940s’ society. His personal charisma and artistic talent enabled him to indulge
in this reorientation more extensively and intriguingly than just about anyone else could have,
and it certainly carried his glamor along, at least among society’s alienated marginalia, until his
death.
However other Satanists, myself included, were not in the least interested in similarly crying
into our beer. For us the Church, and the confrontation of Satan and Satanism, had been an ever
more electrifying and exhilarating adventure. We had taken a stand, the most daring stand,
against the “norm” not only of society, but of the very universe itself. We took fierce pride in
being “ultimate heretics”, the more so because after our affirmation of such heresy, here we still
stood, unassailed, unpunished, and unrepentant.
I saw a shape with human form and face,
If such should in apotheosis stand;
Deep in the shadows of a desolate land
His burning feet obtained colossal base,
And spheral on the lonely arc of space,
His head, a menace unto heavens unspanned,
Arose with towered eyes that might command
The sunless, blank horizon of that place.
And straight I knew him for the mystic one
That is the brother, born of human dream,
Of man rebellious at an unknown rod;
The mind’s ideal, and the spirit’s sun;
A column of clear flame, in lands extreme,
Set opposite the darkness that is God. 44
Perhaps this may explain to the yet-confused why Anton LaVey’s 1975 abandonment of his
own commitment to this vision so dismayed and angered Satanists to whom it had become that
“column of clear flame” in their lives.
Nevertheless Anton was gone, and now the Book of Coming Forth by Night was saying that,
this departure notwithstanding, the entire conceptualization of Satan, the Church of Satan, and
indeed their entire Islamic/Judæo/Christian theological edifice, were all wrong, “useless lumber
and wreckage” to be thrown on the trash-heap of our previous education and experience.
This, I hardly need observe, was a tall order.
Jettisoning the Church of Satan - all that we had been studying, exploring, and refining for
the past ten years - was daunting enough. But the established conventional religions of the world
had, like it or not, been responsible for the prevalent shaping of human self-perception over the
last two thousand years. Even in post-Enlightenment Western cultures, Christian assumptions
and habits remain the baseline of society. For one hundred ex-Satanists to venture out into a
world, a cosmos in the utter absence of such an accustomed frame of reference seemed nothing
short of lunatic.
Or it would have had we then taken the time to really confront the implications of what we
were then setting out to do.
Pathetic earthlings - hurling your bodies out into the void, without the slightest inkling of who
or what is out here. If you had known anything about the true nature of the universe, anything at
all, you would have hidden from it in terror. 45
44 Smith, Clark Ashton, “A Vision of Lucifer” in Selected Poems. Sauk City: Arkham House, 1971, page #155.
45 Emperor Ming the Merciless, Ruler of the Universe, in Flash Gordon (1980).
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As discussed in Chapter #3, ancient Egypt proved to be the gateway to the void, in a sense
and sophistication that in 1975 we had no way to anticipate. Its academic/ archæological image
at the time was [and in those same professional circles remains today] that of a mere basic
agricultural society with an animal-totem and death-fixated mythology. For the Great Unwashed
it was the stuff of Hollywood mummy horror movies and sword-and-sandal epics, habitually (as
in The Ten Commandments) as the bad guy threatening virtuous Jews and protoChristian
monotheists.
To date Egypt had fared little better within organized occultism. Its mystery had made it
attractive to individuals and organizations selling exactly that, so Egyptian art, costumes, Aida-
processions, and talismans were a staple of Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Illuminism, and any
number of greater or lesser imitators, all the way down to Laurel and Hardy’s Sons of the Desert
farce (to which Anton LaVey scornfully compared the Temple of Set once he l
earned of its
Egyptian interests).
So had Egypt been a purely arbitrary choice for us, it would have seemed a foolish one,
carrying way too much sillified baggage along with its apparently meager historical significance.
What overruled all of this - initially for myself and later for a great many others over the decades
to follow - was direct contact with one of Egypt’s supposedly false and nonexistent “gods”, Set.
“I’d enjoy it all more if I knew what it meant.”
That pleased Conchis. He sat back and smiled.
“My dear Nicholas, man has been saying what you have just said for the last ten thousand
years. And the one common feature of all the gods he has said it to is that not one of them has ever
returned an answer.” 46
Only in this instance an answer had been returned, and that mere fact made everything very
different indeed.
Historically humanity has developed its base of knowledge by three means: observation,
reasoning, and belief. The first, especially since its release from dogmatic constraints upon the
Enlightenment, has today matured into the well-known “scientific method”. The second
originally enjoyed prominence dating from the logical discourses of Socrates and his Greek
colleagues, but except in acknowledged matters of opinion has generally given way to science.
The third - belief - is neither scientific nor logical, indeed emphatically and sometimes
combatively so. This is the realm of religion, of superstition, of mere feeling. It can range from
the staid dictates of organized churches in the name(s) of their God/gods, to a simple, gnawing
personal conviction that, scientific evidence and/or logical reasoning notwithstanding, the truth
is otherwise.
As conventional religion, particularly in the West, has degenerated into little more than
unthinking social rote-participation, the average person’s experience with belief-knowledge is
perhaps more easily exemplified by phenomena such as romantic love, which is an emotion or
sensation neither scientific nor logical. It is also present in situations of trust, in which a child,
student, subordinate, or disciple accepts something as true because of trust in the source so
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