Set is thought of in the mass consciousness as one of the most mysterious Gods, associated often with darkness, shadows, storms, and the desert. His enigmatic appearance is one of the most recognizable facets of Ancient Egyptian culture, and it is no exaggeration to say that Set is one of the most famous Gods known to humanity. Many across the ages have interpreted Him as the villain of the Egyptian pantheon, a perception resulting from misunderstanding.
As far as darkness and the storm are concerned, this God represents the plight and force of all beings in nature and the material realm, including the evil and ignorant sides of all beings. For this reason, Set was appointed as the eternal Guardian of the lesser humans and andrapoda subject to samsaric forces, as well as the stern and enigmatic arbiter of their general fate in the world. He was referred to in the Coffin Texts as ‘Outcast’ for this reason. For some, the symbolism of Set could represent potential reversion back to this state:
Ἑλληνικὸν γὰρ ἡ Ἶσίς ἐστι καὶ ὁ Τυφών, ὢν πολέμιος τῇ θεῷ καὶ δι᾿ ἄγνοιαν καὶ ἀπάτην τετυφωμένος καὶ διασπῶν καὶ ἀφανίζων τὸν ἱερὸν λόγον, ὃν ἡ θεὸς συνάγει καὶ συντίθησι καὶ παραδίδωσι τοῖς τελουμένοις, ὡς ἱερώσεως σώφρονι μὲν ἐνδελεχῶς διαίτῃ καὶ βρωμάτων πολλῶν καὶ ἀφροδισίων ἀποχαῖς κολουούσης4 τὸ ἀκόλαστον καὶ φιλήδονον, ἀθρύπτους δὲ καὶ στερρὰς ἐν ἱεροῖς λατρείας ἐθιζούσης ὑπομένειν, ὧν τέλος ἐστὶν ἡ τοῦ πρώτου καὶ κυρίου καὶ νοητοῦ γνῶσις, ὃν ἡ θεὸς παρακαλεῖ ζητεῖν παρ᾿ αὐτῇ καὶ μετ᾿ αὐτῆς ὄντα καὶ συνόντα.
For Isis is Greek, and Set—being Her adversary, puffed up by ignorance and deceit—tears apart and destroys the Holy Word, which the Goddess gathers, composes, and hands down to the initiates. By means of a prudent and continuous consecration—through abstention from many foods and from pleasure seeking, which puts limits on the lawless and pleasure-loving impulses—and by training [the initiates] to endure unbroken and resolute service in the sacred rites, its goal is the knowledge of the first, supreme, and intelligible, whom the Goddess exhorts [us] to seek from Her and with Her, for He is present and abides with Her.
Isis and Osiris, Plutarch
Somewhat paradoxically, Set also represented endings and the way out of ignorance by overcoming it, just as a travelling pilgrim of wisdom leaves the desert wastes and scorching heat. For those wishing to transcend problems they had created, Set was recommended for worship. Plutarch, a very high-level authority on religion, claims that in the Egyptian religion, Set and Nephthys were allegorically considered to be the children of Kronos, suggestive of Their relation to limitations and breaking them.
Many symbolic mythologies of punishment and harshness evolved around the entity. Set was known to be broken on the wheel, gored and half-emasculated by Horus, even cast down from the heavens. In comparison to Osiris, who suffers the fate of being cut into pieces, he remains whole or with some manhood intact amidst these gruesome punishments, showing on a poetic level that no use of the active faculty comes without pain and setback.
Statue of Set anointing Ramsesses II in Osirian garb. Horus is depicted on the left.
For the Egyptian state, Set was widely invoked and heavily represented around the frontier regions of Egypt, both in defense and as a symbol of what was fundamentally foreign and unknowable. References to Set as ‘valorous’ throughout the Egyptian corpus represent one dimension of how he was regarded as a war God. The consent of this deity to initiate combat was seen as an essential element of power projection and maintenance from outside threats. Symbolically, it can be painful and destructive to fight a war against others, yet sometimes it is a necessary step. The Pharaoh often used the imagery of this God in times of war and strife.
Enemies of the Gods were treated as personal adversaries, and the mantle of Set was brought against them. While warlike Pharaohs such as Peribsen, who took arms against foreigners, adopted Set as their patron deity in the past, Ramesses I and his son Seti I did so specifically to overturn the Atenist program of communism. In his grand effort to reshape Egypt with even greater ambition, the legendary and divine ruler Ramesses II, grandson of Seti, also took up the divine mandate of his ancestor, reversing every prerogative of ‘Akhenaten.’
The primary centers of worship for this God were the sanctuaries of Omnbos (also called Nubt) in Lower Egypt, around the town of Permedjad. Ten miles outside this town, the most important temple of all was built near Sepermeru, a town considered the ‘gateway to the Sahara’ and highly symbolic of Set. The high regard of Egyptians for Set is shown in the way they reference Him:
Set-Nubit, lord of the South land, great God, Lord of Heaven, fair Child of Ra. Giving praise to thy Ka, Set, the very valorous…
Nubt inscription
Many of these sanctuaries were adorned with sacraments to Nephthys in proximity to Set. History records that Ramesses II contributed many hieratic monuments in this area for the glory of the infernal couple. Indeed, Set and his wife represent the formidable nature of the chaotic world of life and the contemplative realm of the dead, with certain mysteries about existence emanating from both as points of access. Separated, the two realms of natural life and death stand, but choices in one easily influence the other. The epithet of Set as ‘friend to the dead’ is a reflection of this, one of the major reasons Egypt put so much emphasis on the afterlife. The title ‘Finality’ was also applied to Nephthys as the wife of Set.
Set was also worshiped at the Temple of Matmar, which Ramesses tore down a Temple to the Aten to create. In this Temple, Set is signposted in superlative terms as the most important foe of Akhenaten’s heresy. The city itself was dedicated to Set, with numerous cult objects being discovered.
The most infamous and poorly understood myth of Set involves the affair of Nephthys and Osiris after the latter confuses Her appearance for Isis, a matter that leads the vengeful God to cut Osiris into pieces.
Concerning Nephthys, contained in this myth is an allegory for the playful and dormant feminine energies (responsible for processes like arousal and sleep) being gradually focused, condensed, and activated by opening the fertile and creative Sacral Chakra in the practitioner, bringing them into an active state. Starting with the Third Eye of Osiris, the opening of the soul also enables the activation of the Astral senses related to Her realm. There is a union of energy, out of which the creative force of Anubis is born.
Set rules over the electric side of the serpentine energy. As anyone with basic knowledge here hopefully knows, pre-emptive goading of this force (with the goading represented in the adulterous act of Nephthys) due to the Chakras merely being opened can result in total disaster—so does opening them in the wrong order and aligning them incorrectly as the practitioners of lies recklessly advocate.
However, as with many of the Egyptian myths, there are multiple meanings to this. The mutilation by Set also evokes the necessary processes of the Magnum Opus as it symbolizes the destruction of energies and the dissections of the Philosopher’s Stone (elixir). During transformation, the natural ‘part’ withers away, and the elixir is divided into elemental parts in stages, before being continually refined and perfected by each separation and application of elements.
The matter shows why Isis is depicted hovering over the lands as a kite in search of the God of the Dead and stitches Osiris back together with Nephthys’ assistance. Once the Chakras achieve connection, Magick also becomes possible, and the increasing bioelectricity drives the work. The Goddess of Magick then uses Osiris' discarded member (the imperfect elixir) to become pregnant. Horus is born from this union as the embodiment of the perfected elixir, reflected in mythology through his radiant lightness and ‘stone-like’ barque.
In the Greek imagination, Set was represented as the terrifying mythological figure known as the Typhon. Without the intervention of the Holy Zeus, all beings would submit to this formidable figure and become devoured by its presence. Putting it bluntly, this is an allegory for the eventual state of any being without access to the powers of union of the soul: they submit, wither, and potentially disappear. Set and Nephthys assuming power as the king and queen of Egypt in Osiris’ absence also relates to the inevitable primacy of immediate nature. Even advanced beings who have superior genetics, spiritual talents in the soul and other advantages are required to meditate and complete the Work.
Vicious acts by the Typhon terrorizing the world illustrate the case in cryptic terms that the sheer power of the serpent within an activated human is vast, inexplicable, and absolute. Only by using the ultimate and imperial powers of Zeus-like meditation can it be tamed and incorporated once unleashed. Much like the myth of Sekhmet, which represents the chaos of misusing the magnetic and feminine side of this force without preparation, the myth among the Greeks highlights the destructive potential of its fully activated, masculine counterpart when goaded improperly.
Both the 144 Laws of Set and the one hundred heads of the Typhon are representative of the 144,000 nadis of the soul. The Typhon myth also contains a warning alluding to the ‘Cup of Poison’ in meditation, as the creature spreads venom to the ends of the earth.
The consequences of sealing off the God power in people have been disastrous:
At the base chakra, human beings have been sealed off from energy. [This is symbolized by those two angels who guard the "tree of life" with flaming swords.] This is analogous to tying off a limb and allowing no blood or lymph to circulate and leaving it to wither and die. This has been the case with the human soul, which "Yahweh" has sealed off from Kundalini energy. Our souls have drastically degenerated. Bringing up the Kundalini serpent is very difficult and can be dangerous for the average person, as we are used to operating on a very low level of bioelectricity.
—My Conversation With Satan, High Priestess Maxine Dietrich
Finally, as many Egyptian artifacts relate, Set was said to rule over the application of Black Magick in certain areas. This was another force of destruction that was meant to be used only when necessary and not on a whim.
Ultimately, Set is also a deity of Life. Just as he represents the harshness of the barren wasteland and its unforgiving nature, He is also embodied in the desert flower, the riverbank, and the oasis—symbols of salvation that harken a gradual path to rejuvenation of the wastelands altogether.
SYMBOLISM OF SET
Plutarch explained that Set’s name is etymologically related to overpowering:
ὄνομα δὲ Τυφῶνος ὑπερβολὴν καὶ βίαν σημαίνει, καὶ τὸ ῥῆμα διερμηνευόμενον τοῦτο δηλοῖ.
The name Typhon [i.e. Set] signifies excess and violence, and the word itself, when interpreted [in Egyptian], implies this meaning.
Isis and Osiris, Plutarch
The most striking aspect of Set’s imagery is the Set animal. Many attempts have been made to identify this animal, with academics guessing it represents a dog, an aardvark, a giraffe, and a boar, amid various other kinds of creatures.
In truth, the peculiar animal was intended to be a composite image of land animals reflecting the state of pure nature and the flow of natural karma. Every being, humans included, must make their way out of the abyss and the storm to reach the divine. The reason why the hieroglyph of Set’s name is also a word for ‘tempest’ is a code alluding to this state of affairs.
Ignorance and the evil side of nature are represented in this animal. The ambiguity of the Set animal reflected the general character of the beings dwelling in the physical world that He rules over. Sometimes, its stark appearance served as a warning for the holy to absolve themselves of the affairs of the ignorant, the dangerous, and the parasitic, lest brute nature consume them whole.
It is feasible that the Predynastic Egyptians traversing through the dangerous desert environment would seek to placate, by worshipping the deity of that dangerous land, to ensure their safe passage to and from the gold mines and the Red Sea coast. That god was not perceived as being one of the resident fauna of the Nile valley but a creature of their imagination that they believed inhabited the inhospitable desert, the Seth animal.
Deconstructing the Iconography of Seth
In the Late period and by the onset of the Hellenistic world, the Set animal was often represented as a donkey instead, sometimes in elaborate themes. The donkey imagery helped in elaborating Set’s functions to foreigners.
This animal also came to represent foreigners as a whole. The Egyptians were fiercely proud of their very holy civilization and frankly considered many of the peoples they encountered to be closer to the natural world. Sometimes, they would use the imagery to represent the babbling and enigmatic nature of outsiders, something misunderstood by historians as representing a disregard for Set as a being.
Set was deemed the Lord of the Red Land, the desert that represented limited samsaric consciousness and the bounds of isfet (chaos). He was also associated with the color red, particularly crimson and dark red. Visual codes of this color are related to the Base Chakra but also matters of rage, blood, the reddish hotness of the desert, and markers of sexual arousal.
The sexual force related to virility and masculine pleasure for its own sake, found among the Book of Aphrodisiacs and many other texts, was associated with Set. Even red-haired individuals were considered lascivious in Egypt due to their visual association with this God.
One way Egyptians viewed sexual functions within a moral framework was through the lens of man and woman—more abstractly, the feminine and masculine forces in any couple—representing distinct and hidden worlds to one another, much like Set and His wife rule over realms that seemingly never overlap. Sexual union, then, forms an unstable meeting point between these worlds, one that can lead to either good or bad outcomes.
Extreme force by men through their libido and thinking purely through their ‘second brain’ (so to speak, a product of ignorance) can burn women to cinders. On the other hand, deliberate sexual deadness in a woman is either emblematic of severe problems or feminine immaturity and often dissolves a relationship. Conversely, the Egyptians believed the rectified and ‘set aright’ forms of Set and Nephthys, in dutiful assistance to Horus and Isis after Set has been overcome and Nephthys joins Isis on Her quest, respectively, represented a couple of balanced forces whose bond could not perish even in death.
The was scepter, whose top end resembles the mysterious animal’s head, represents Set’s power to wield the forces of nature in a corrective manner. It also symbolizes the ultimate and terrifying power of nature, capable of shaking even the Gods. Furthermore, the scepter embodied the Pharaoh’s power to punish the ignorant and lowly through the authority and approval of the Gods and to set them aright. Khnum and Sekhmet also wield this scepter of unimaginable power.
Among actual animals, Set is strongly associated with the hippopotamus, especially in the context of being fought or bound by a resurgent Horus. This animal is known to be the most powerful and fearsome of all land animals.
Set's card in the Minor Arcana is the Seven of Pentacles. Arcadia elaborated this card can definitely mean things feeling like "drawing blood from a stone". In the Rider-Waite deck, the background is represented as being like a desert or savannah. The black-haired, tanned man [note that Set has these characteristics], slouching, additionally overlooks a bush with bountiful fruit from his labors represented in the pentacles or coins. The card represents overcoming karmic obstacles through dedication, hard work and patience: success being around a difficult corner. It also deals with karma and purification in the number seven.
SET AND THE ENEMY
It is known from antiquity that Set’s attributes were used to insult the so-called god of the Hebrews by pagan individuals. Given the general contempt of antiquity against Jews and Christianity, some scholars take this as some sort of proof that Set was considered a highly evil entity and the worst of the Gods. If he was equated with something so despised, how could this not be true?
Firstly, much of this stems from a misunderstanding of the word IAO (rendered in Greek as ιαω and looking like IAW, which appears frequently in Hellenistic Egyptian spells and was later stolen by the Jews and fashioned into the Mosaic myth. Set, Typhon, and IAO-Zeus represent the culmination of the mythology, unifying the serpent into the trine force.
Another truth is that the Egyptians used a certain code, understood among themselves, as a way to defend against persistent Jewish attacks on their Gods, as well as the hostility and genocidal hatred towards Egypt expressed in the Bible—something that, by the Hellenistic period, increasingly filtered into the public consciousness of Gentiles as the notorious acts of specific Jews within the realm were exposed, especially as they came to make up a gigantic portion of Alexandria’s population.
Beyond initial naivety about Jews as merely peculiar foreigners, the symbolism was used to reveal that the Hebrews and the entities behind them were engaging in nothing other than the entropic forces that would ultimately consume them—irreversibly locked into the domain of Set, where they would be judged and destroyed by Him... nothing more. This is also the reason why many pagan authors insult the Jews by claiming that they worship a golden ass.
Therefore, insulting the interlopers in this manner was multilayered and rich with symbolism, not an actual equivalence between Set—or even the monstrous Typhon—and the vile ‘host’ of the Jews. The Jews, however, attempted to reappropriate this collocation for their own purposes, particularly those who adopted Greek manners and lifestyles in Hellenistic Egypt, leading to residual confusion. The so-called magical papyri of Alexandria and other source documents from across the Levant demonstrate how this confusion about entities began to seep into reality.
One book I read some time after grasping this—though quite spurious in many of its assumptions—illustrates the matter well:
Egyptian priests, including renowned historians like Manetho and Chaeremon, would have been horrified by the rhetorical violence of the Exodus myth, wielded against Egypt, its people, and its gods.
The Egyptian gods were depicted as powerless to defend themselves against the relentless attacks of a foreign deity—a being who openly favored his own people while unleashing what was essentially biological warfare upon the Egyptian populace.
Beginning in the first century BCE, Hellenized Egyptian literati pushed back to refute and reverse elements of the Exodus story, drawing on the resources of their own millennia-long cultural memory. In their retellings, it was not the Egyptians who were plagued; rather, the Hebrews were afflicted with leprosy and boils.
Instead of the Egyptians drowning in the Red Sea, it was the Hebrews who drowned in lakes on leaden rafts. Instead of the Hebrews bursting out of Egypt, weighed down with gold, they were disgorged into the desert—the realm of Seth—and left to wander with nothing.
[…]
Thinking of Yahweh as donkey-shaped was perverse because educated Greeks and Romans knew that the Jews claimed to use no pictures or statues to represent their deity. But claiming that the Jews were in fact hypocrites in this regard was part of the polemical twisting of the knife.
The Evil Creator, M. David Litwa
In the Roman era, this imagery of insult was increasingly directed at Christians across the Empire as well. Beyond the fact that most early Christians were essentially Jews promoting a new type of belief, Christians were considered beastlike, ignorant, and dangerous due to their persistent attempts to undermine Roman religion, their endless vicious sectarianism, and their hostility toward all other creeds.
Much like with Osiris, the destruction of the sanctuaries of Set and Nephthys was caustic and ugly in scope. It is clear that the Jews certainly did not regard the actual deity as representing them.
In the Goetia, Set was represented as Sytry, one of His names. This element of Set focused on the erotic and lesser-known element of His cult, being described as a Demonic entity that brings man and woman together. He is represented with the ferocious head of a leopard and wings of a gryphon. Certain Egyptian representations of Set show Him as gryphon-like.
Certain individuals have also associated Set with certain evil currents over the ages. Other manifestations, such as the Temple of Set, have generally reflected a more positive outlook than traditional occult orders. In my experience, Set is a most helpful and gentle God to all of the followers of Zeus. I believe much of the reputation of Set as a philosopher-figure even in Christian and Islamic confusion (like the below) results from this disposition. HPS Lydia, who has worked closely with Him, has stated many times over the years that Set is a most wonderful and understanding God.
SET AND JUDAISM
For themselves, the Hebrews reinterpreted the figure of Set as Seth, the son of Adam and Eve and the remaining brother of Cain and Abel. This figure appears in the Bible as the progenitor of a fallen humanity.
Many of Seth’s functions relate to Jewish mysticism and certain texts passed down through Gnostic groups. One example is the text known as the Apocalypse of Moses, in which Adam explains to his son the nature of death and illness, noting that no one had ever died from illness prior to being expelled from Eden. He recounts that prior to being cast out, God promised to help Adam become risen to eternity if he led a sinless life. Upon his death, God eventually has mercy on Adam, who is carried off to heaven in a chariot of light (merkaba) and is promised that everyone ‘of his seed’ will rise to this state at some point.
Eve and her son traverse the wastes of the world, knocking on the doors of Eden and begging for the ointment from the Tree of Mercy, from which she was banished. The archangel Michael tells them in a cryptic manner that they are never to receive the ointment and become as Gods until the mission of the Hebrew race is accomplished on Earth.
Tablets written by Seth are placed on the Temple Mount, where only Solomon (the fashioner of the temple of the risen body) is able to recover them. The 144,000 Laws of Set are also incorporated into the Mosaic mythos – following the Laws of Moses rigidly grants the Jews access to Eden. We can see here how the serpent myth is appropriated in the mission of the anti-theists.
One of the infamous groups around the fall of Rome was the Sethians, who directly worshipped this figure. It is unclear whether this group were covert pagans or if they worshipped the Jewish formulation of a serpent in the form of Seth. Some speculate that the Gnostic group attacked by Plotinus in the Enneads was the Sethians, who seemed to believe that matter and the world were evil.
SET AND ISLAM
In comparison to the Jewish scriptures and the Christian Bible modeled after them, Sith (Seth) is barely mentioned in the Qur'an or the Hadith.
In spite of this, certain works by Muslim scholars advertising the ‘wisdom and philosophy of Sith’ appeared in the early Middle Ages, many of these stolen from prior Egyptian works. Sith is represented as the incarnation of the law and the transmission of sacred wisdom, as well as the natural world.
Certain crafts, such as the manufacture of combs from horns, were said to be taught from Sith, a practice associated with Set in Egypt.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Osiris and Isis, Plutarch
The Evil Creator – Origins of an Early Christian Idea, M. David Litwa
Seth, God of Confusion, Herman Te Velde
Deconstructing the Iconography of Seth, Ian Robert Taylor
Matmar British Museum Expedition To Middle Egypt, 1929-1931, Guy Brunton
Seth – A Misrepresented God in the Ancient Egyptian Pantheon?, Philip John Turner
Special thanks to:
- HPS Lydia (general insight into Set helping me to start the article)
- [JG] Power of Justice (editing)
- Arcadia (research on cards, pop culture suggestions)
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