Set: A Predecessor of Satan?
By Fenris Wolf
"Set goes into Satan a whole lot easier then Satan goes into
Set. A good anology would be a man (the "Set-oriented"
occultist) attempting to fit a good sized elephant into a
shoebox. It simply can't be done."
-Fenris Wolf, A thought
You hear about it among some circles-namely, "Satan is a
bastardized version of Set", or, more kindly, "Set is the
predessesor of Shaitan and Satan." But honestly, is this true?
The author says not. For one, notice the areas of any influence
that Set would have on the, perhaps you could say, "designing" of
Satan. For one, I could be wrong, but I don't believe that
Christians where paying all that much attention to the Egyption
religion, much less "design" as it where, Satan after Set. As the
Christian knee-jerk reaction is to ultimately paint ALL foriegn
symbolic "Gods/Goddesses" as "Evil", it's hard to believe that
they sat down and said, "Ok, now which one is the Evil god in the
Egyption religion? It is best we "design" Satan after him."
Doubtful. I have no proof that they didn't, but just through the
use of common sense-doubtful.
Plus, if Set was truley a 'main' influence on Satan, then why is
there so little resemblence? The Devil and his minions have of
corse been depicted in many different ways over the last few
thousand years, but never as ant-eater or ardvark looking
creature*. Satan has been, in most cases, depicted as rather
fearsome, or at least mischevous. No, rather, if any thing was a
"main" influence on Satan, it would have to be the greek gods Pan
and Dionysus, who's resemblence is uncanny to him.
But lets go beyond looks-how about characteristics? Satan has
always been a figure of intelligence, ultra-pridful,
ultra-lustful, and extreme rebellion-while in the Egyption sense
of things, Set really only existed as a god of destruction, such
as draught for instance. There where other deities, such as
Thoth, Amon etc that represented intelligence and Darkness/The
Hidden respectfully. So therefore, one could possibly gain more
correlation between Amon and Thoth with Satan, then one ever
could with Set.
Bogus occultist Micheal Aquino (from hearon out known as "Mikey
Abeano") claimed something along the lines that Set embodied all
of the Aespects that the Christians used to "create" or "design"
Satan, but this is inherently false. He claimed that various
characteristics, such as "honor, honestly, intelligence, etc"
where of Set. As far as honor goes, in a well known tale about
Set, it was said that he, in his hurry to be born, tore himself
out of his mothers womb. With all due respect to the symbol of
Set aside-thats hardly very 'honorable'. Secondally, we have
honestly-The Devil has been portrayed in many ways, with normally
positive qualities, but being an honest joe wasn't ussually
always in the cards to be honest. Lastly, as said before,
attributes like intelligence, power, etc, while they might have
been placed by the Egyptions onto Set simply because he was a god
(as all mythologies portray they're deities as intelligent,
powerfully suppierior to mortals anyway) they wheren't his "Main
line" if you catch me. Rather, as said before (sorry if I'm
repeating himself) but Set was more destruction oriented and
such, and any portayles of Abeano and others as the epitome of
intelligence and power are simply-as Rev.Hr.Vad once told
me-placing on him attributes that he did NOT have before.
On another way to refute that Set is the 'predessor of Satan'
what about the other, hundreds of gods/goddesses that easily fit,
or are at least related to the Satanic type? Could not Loki and
his progency, when combined wholesale (more on this in another
essay) be concidered Satan? Plus, there was no way that the Norse
mythology could have influenced Satan-yet it is still EXTREMELY
similar to Satan-so in otherwords, there are these "Satans" in
every religion, new and old!(even in new age, although they're
harder to see more on this later too)
As the Italian Fascist Dictator once said (I'm quoting from
memory, forgive me if I'm somewhat off) "We are not like the
English...we call our bread bread, and our wine wine, we tell
things for how they are". In otherwords, unlike Kenneth Grant and
Aliester Crowley, who both where/are intelligent men, people like
Dr.LaVey didn't beat around the bush-they where direct. He called
his Satan Satan, he did'nt make up other names for him.
(Also, I'd like to say that I don't have anything against Set as
a devil, as he certainly was, but I do have something against
this symbol being portrayed as some sort of major Satanic deity
or whatever.....lets face it people, Set was more of a predessor
to Gonzo then he was to anything else!"
Copyright XXXV A.S. / 2000 c.e. by Fenris Wolf. All Rights
Reserved.
END
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