#seth typhon

[alephskoteinos]

It's funny to think that anyone would waste time with the Set-Setan-Satan myth/fallacy when Celsus is right there saying that Christians got Satan from Set/Typhon and Origen is roundabout agreeing with him (except for the fact that he's like "actually the pagans got Set from us!").

[gbmarian]

[alephskoteinos]

In Euripides' Bacchae, Dionysus could turn into all sorts of animals and also water and fire. In the Apocryphon of John, Yaldabaoth is a shape-shifter who can manifest all sorts of forms. In Bram Stoker's Dracula, Dracula can not only turn into bats but also mist or fog.

[alephskoteinos]

I knew I was going to be interested in Esoterica's latest video about the Demiurge, and I knew I was going to look forward to part two coming up, but I find there's an analysis here that points to a god who has a central place in the "Gnostic" "demonisation" of Yahweh, and whose place as such may yet illuminate a pagan lens of what emerges as satanic outsideness.

The god in question is none other than Set, or Seth, the Egyptian god who ruled over the desert (the Red Land) outside the kingdom of Egypt. For this connection, Justin Sledge leans heavily into M David Litwa's book The Evil Creator: Origins of an Early Christian Idea, which I've since decided I now need a copy of.

It all seems to begin with the myth of Exodus, the Biblical story most people recognise as the one where God brings ten plagues on the land of Egypt to in order to force the pharaoh to release the Israelites from slavery and gets Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. An observation Justin makes is that, for Egyptian audiences, the Exodus story basically positioned the ancient Egyptian gods and the divine pharaoh as being powerless before the might of a single foreign deity, and the pharaoh as dying by drowning, which was apparently considered the worst die in Egypt. To Egyptian eyes, there could not be a more offensive, obscene, or humiliating portrayal of the Egyptian religion, and otherwise, to non-Jews in antiquity, the whole story seemed entirely unbelievable. For all that handwringing about how a foreign god could possibly threaten the good order of the gods of Egypt, there must have been some doubts about that order that entered the mind, if it had to seriously consider the possibility of a god like Yahweh standing toe to toe against Egypt.

But for some people responding to just how far Yahweh went against Egypt at least there was one answer: Yahweh must have been a malevolent donkey-headed god, if not just an angry demon. Or rather, to be more accurate, Yahweh was just Set/Seth, the Egyptian god who was already associated with foreigners who lived outside the kingdom of Egypt.

Set was also at a certain point already identified with Baal, or rather Baal Hadad, the Canaanite god of storms and rain, who Justin says was actually worshipped by nomadic traders in the highlands. That makes for an interesting link as far as local storm gods go. Yet, was Baal really just the main storm of nomadic highlander bandits? The connection to the barbaric outside is an interesting one to say the least, but surely Canaanite religion must have had a certain prominence in antiquity? Unless its presence was also elevated by its interaction with other religious traditions, such as early Judaism, Hellenic polytheism, and Egyptian polytheism? Still, Set being the "demonic" patron of foreigners linked to Baal being the god worshipped by "barbarian nomads" would be just the tip on its own. In a larger sense, one begins to see a massive gulf between that kind of divinity and the Biblical God presented by Christianity. In fact, especially with the link to Baal in mind, the image of Yahweh as Seth and Seth as Iao might seem to have almost nothing to do with the God of Judaism, apart from the calamities attributed to God in the Bible. Whereas Set was an ontologically ambiguous and wild god associated with storms and threats to cosmic and political order, Yahweh or God was associated with the absolute power of cosmic order as the guarantour of political order and sovereignty relevant to the nation of Israel, and only moreso with time, and as time past certain associations with storms, metallurgy, and war gave way to the kind of divinity more associated with El, as well as dominion over celestial objects (which God aggressively emphasizes to Job when he questions the goodness of God). It certainly is a grand and ancient story of recuperation if I ever heard it.

Justin also points out that Set was, after some time, gradually reimagined as a donkey-headed god, whereas in older traditional iconography, Set has the head of a strange creature referred to simply as the "Seth animal" (or "Typhonic beast"), whose actual species (if it was even a real animal species) we still don't know and have no idea what it could be. The donkey association is pervasive in Greco-Egyptian magic, and it seems to have been prevalent enough in Greece at least that Plutarch references the claim that Typhon fled Egypt while riding on an ass for seven days, which Justin says was probably a mockery of the seven days of creation in the Book of Genesis, and that Typhon then sired two sons named Jerusalem and Judea. This, Plutrarch says, is simply an attempt by some people (apparently including Tacitus himself) to drag Jewish traditions into the legends of Typhon. Whatever the intent it does serve to establish that Yahweh was seen as associated with Typhon, perhaps by people who didn't like Judaism to say the least. There seems to be a similar theme with the Roman link between Yahweh and Sabazios, a god who the Romans detested. Of course, never mind the fact that there was an all the more prolific tendency in antiquity to associated Yahweh with Zeus, the chief god of Olmypus and the adversary of Typhon in Greek mythology.

In antiquity, the donkey was considered the "dumbest" of all animals. We probably still think that to some extent today. But in antiquity that was also meant to denote Typhon's irrationality and the foolishness of his conflict with the gods. The donkey image apparently seems to recur throughout antiquity not only in hostile references to Judaism but also in similar references to Christianity. There are unfortunately certain canards in the ancient Greco-Roman world in which Jews were accused of worshipping a golden donkey or donkey head while practicing bloody sacrifices out of hatred for every nation in the world. These were probably not all that commonly believed, but they existed, and they do seem to have been prevalent enough that Jewish authors such as the historian Josephus felt it necessary to refute them. But then later, when Christianity started to emerge as a new religion in town, both Roman polytheists and some Jews occasionally referred to Christians as worshipping a donkey god, using the word "onocoetes" ("he who lies in an ass's manger"), which was meant to imply. And then of course there's the infamous graffito of Alexamenos worshipping his "god": an image of Jesus Christ on the cross with the head of a donkey.

The fact that Christians were accused of worshipping a donkey-headed deity cannot be seen in isolation from Seth already being depicted as a donkey god and him already being associated with Yahweh previously. Perhaps, then, Christians, and Jews prior, were really being accused of worshipping Set. Of course, the accusation was ridiculous and often xenophobic in context. But what it conveys is the idea of worshipping a god seen as "beastly", unlike much of the gods worshipped by Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians (even though those same gods were sometimes worshipped in animal form!).

At the same time, as Jake Stratton Kent elaborated in Geosophia, Seth Typhon was, for a long time, regarded as the patron deity of magicians, as in the very magicians who wrote the spells of the PGM. Kent also elaborated links between Seth-Typhon and not only Dionysus but also Iao, and suggested that they were sometimes identified. Justin also comments on spells in the Greek Magical Papyri, particularly the "erotic" spells, noting that they invoke Seth/Typhon and also show his image (that of the ass/donkey) along the name Iao or variations thereof. I might examine these spells again for the purpose of my PGM notes. Justin at least implies identification between these gods is in play, and in my opinion that is not at all unlikely to be the case. In fact the presence of magical amulets featuring donkey-headed gods and the name Iao probably support that suggestion. And it has to be stressed that, even though the name Iao is invoked, this is an identity that has very little to do with traditional Judaism. Throughout the PGM Iao or Sabaoth or forms thereof are syncretised with polytheistic gods with Helios or outright identified with them, or even subordinate to Helios, all of which is in stark contrast to how God traditionally establishes himself as distinct from all of the other gods and as the sole recipient of worship ("You shall have no other gods before me"). But, speaking of Helios, Kent also also stressed that Seth-Typhon was a solar-pantheistic god, of the kind of solar-pantheistic divinity also represented by gods such as Helios and Abrasax.

The heavy-handed link that Justin (and perhaps M David Litwa as well) presents between Set and Yahweh in the minds of the ancient Egyptians and Hellenes actually makes it much easier to look at a "non-Abrahamic" "satanic outsideness" centered around Set and the Greek Magical Papyri. Well, I say easier, at the least it could provide a much clearer set of clues. I'm already somewhat more interested in the centrality of Seth-Typhon in the notion of divinity in play and its arcane religious outsideness than in any of the standard reasons for which people like Gnosticism. This is where we get not to the standard narrative of the "Judeo-Christian God is the Demiurge keeping people imprisoned from the Pleroma [which is still very much the Christian God!]", but Seth as the insidious "evil" god of magic and chaos, specifically the disorder of matter, but also, perhaps, the heroic strivings of the transgressive magician. There is the possibility of much to be found in common with Satan after all, or at least the Satan of Stanislaw Przybyszewski. There may also in fact be a sense here in which Bataille's Base Materialism and Gnosticism can have a very good effect, not as an analysis of Gnosticism but as illuminating a much greater, lost religious world.

And unfortunately I suppose Soul Hackers 2's Seth also makes a little sense in this light.

Fuck my entire life.

[alephskoteinos]

Something in Don Webb's "Seven Faces of Darkness" alerted me to an aspect of solar myth linked to lust that I probably intuited when reading about Aleister Crowley's portrayal of the Devil as Pan-Pangenetor. It concerns the "total wakefulness of Mendes" via PGM IV. 3255-74.

"Total wakefulness" is linked to the erotic unrest meant to be induced by the spell and many other spells within the PGM, while Mendes links to B3-nb-Dd.t, or rather the Ba of Djedet, Banebdjedet, the Ba of Mendes in the form of a ram. Webb pronounces the name as Bab-Net-Tett and refers to it as a goat who personified lust. Believe it or not that's not totally off the mark. Hans Dieter Betz identified B3-nb-Dd.t as the name of a ram-formed incarnation of Ra, the sun god. Betz notes that this form of Ra was frequently identified with gods such as Pan and Priapus, both of whom were often associated with sexual desire. This is also predictably where we get into Herodotus' legend of the "goat of Mendes", which he identified with Pan.

Banebdjedet though was always traditionally identified with Osiris or as an aspect of Osiris, though he has been linked to other deities such as Ptah, Ra-Atum, Shu, and Geb. The ram was usually a symbol of virility and also the nocturnal form of Ra as Ra-Osiris. That this Ba of Mendes is associated with sexual desire and lust in the magical context makes sense, since rams were already symbolically associated with virility. Greek writers thus identified Banebdjedet, or a sacred goat alleged to have been worshipped at Mendes, with Pan. There is apparently even a legend about a Persian king who sacked the temple of Mendes and then went mad after eating the sacred goat.

I suppose then the link that Webb proposes between Banebdjedet/Bab-Neb-Tett and Baphomet is not a total stretch of the imagination. In fact, Eliphas Levi himself identified the goat-headed image of Baphomet with Banebdjedet based on Herodotus’ description of the “Ram of Mendes”, which in turn became the Goat of Mendes, either way a Greek reference to Banebdjedet as Pan. From an occult standpoint, that link is definitely credible, and speaks to solar lust and virility, and, in the context of PGM IV. 3255-74, its association with the power to overturn the order of nature, despite also affirming that order to some extent through procreation.

But now we have to look at a paradox. On the one hand, Plutarch associated the "goat at Mendes" that Herodotus talked about with Osiris, ironically on the grounds that Osiris is really Reason (Logos), which is pretty ironic for the lust that Herodotus associated with the goat. On the other hand, the association of Banebdjedet with Seth-Typhon in PGM IV. 3255-74 implies an association of the lust of the ram/goat with the power to overturn the natural order, which more closely befits the way Plutarch associatied Typhon with the sun and irrationality. Indeed, the ram as a solar symbol had both associations in ancient Egypt: positive creative divine energy on the one hand, and the power to threaten the cosmic order on the other hand. Such is the dual symbolsim of the Black Ram.

Liminal Sources of Dangerous Powers: A Case of the Black Ram - Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections

This article proposes a semiology-inspired model for the description of “demonic characters.” In this model, an image of a mythological char

Corvis Nocturnum has an interesting description of Baphomet that points to something valuable: "mindless, only filled with a Dionysian will to grow, feed, mate, survive and die, again and again, and it exists inside every living being." That description is essentially Crowley's description of Baphomet as the figure of The Devil in his Book of Thoth, which he identified with not only Pan but also Satan, Set, and the Sun.

Crowley refers to The Devil as representing creative energy in its "most material" form. The goat on the card is linked to Baphomet, as portrayed by Eliphas Levi, and to Pan. In fact, Crowley refers to the card itself as Pan Pangenetor, or Pan the All-Begetter. The card is also linked with the sign of Capricornus ("horned goat"), which Crowley interprets as a "goat leaping with lust upon the summits of the earth". The sign is ruled by Saturn, selfhood and perpetuity, and is exalted in Mars, the fiery and material energy of creation. The creative force represented by Capricornus is said to be "rough", "harsh", "dark", or even "blind". It is an impulse that does not account for reason, custom, or even foresight, divinely unscrupulous, without care for the result. Essentially, this force is "pure will". The sun, like The Devil, is seen by Crowley as a universe creative force. In fact, Crowley also argued in Magick in Theory and Practice that Satan was believed to be evil because he was associated with the burning rays of the sun, just like Typhon according to Plutarch.

The link between the goat and the sun in Crowley's context certainly had a lot to do with his own solar-phallic persona and solar myth, as Kenneth Anger noted, but it also inevitably lines up with certain Gnostic concepts of the Demiurge, some of which were really Devils. Yaldabaoth goes by another name: Samael. In this Gnostic context, the name Samael denotes the blindness of the creator of the world, a demon who created matter and claimed himself to be God, but was not the true God (remember, this is still by Christian standards). In early Christian writings "the creator of the world" was blind. In context this is meant to mean unaware and ignorant of the presence of Jesus Christ and the "true" God of Christianity. This argument is emphasized by Paul in the First and Second Epistles to the Corinthians, and in this respect Paul and some Gnostic sects are actually on the same page.

At the intersection of it all I think we get closer and closer to the kind of solar creativity and lust that fixates Satanism, "modern" occultism, and ancient pagan magic, perhaps bringing these worlds together in the forma of antinomian, Crowleyan, and satanic solar myth.

[alephskoteinos]

For a while after seeing Sledge I had a thought: Yaldabaoth as "child of chaos" (etymologically questionable), or Samael as "blind god" (On the Origin of the World), may well accord with the way Schopenhauer's Will is described as a kind of blind striving. Set may well be linked to this conception. I was hoping to write something about "The Evil God" and its creative principle for months now. Haven't gotten around to it but there may be some link here that could even extend into Nietzschean Will.

[alephskoteinos]

Crowley clearly perceived the donkey-headed Seth Typhon figure as being a kind of Satan parallel, or in his terms a form of what we call Satan. I'm convinced he had some idea about Seth Typhon that allows him to perceive a link. Funny, in this respect him and Kenneth Grant aren't so far removed from each other.

[alephskoteinos]

I have located an early Christian discourse in which Satan is explicitly linked to the Titans, possibly to Typhon by extension. Both the Christian Origen of Alexandria and the pagan Celsus agree on the myth of the Titanomachy as the basis of the myth of the Fall of Satan.

Celsus, as quoted by Origen, accused Christians of impiety by posing an adversary to God - that being The Devil, or rather Satan. Celsus argued that Christianity poses a God that desires to do good but is helpless to do it because he has someone (Satan) counterveiling his will. Then, Celsus discusses ancient mythology concerning war among the gods. He focuses specifically on a myth told by Pherecydes of Syros, in which in the gods Kronos and Ophioneus raise their armies against each other in a battle to determine who will rule the cosmos.

At this point we need to step back a bit. Ophioneus, or Ophion, is the name of a serpent deity who seems to represent the forces of chaos. In some myths, Ophioneus is presented as the first divine ruler of the cosmos, though Pherecydes doesn't agree with that. As for Kronos, it is possible that in Pherecydes' myth this refers to both the Titan Kronos and Chronos the personification of time. The two figures are not traditionally conflated with each other, but it seems that Pherecydes probably did interpret them as being the same deity. In Pherecydes' myth, Kronos and Ophioneus battle each other before the ordering of the cosmos begins, though the full account of this battle is not entirely clear. Celsus believed that the loser of this battle, Ophion, was cast into the ocean (or rather Oceanus).

Some fragments seem to support the notion that it is Oceanus rather than Tartarus that Ophion is cast down into. But Ophioneus seems to also be considered identical or parallel to Typhon, who, in Greek mythology, was cast down into Tartarus or under Etna after his defeat by Zeus. It is possible that Ophion may have been thought to be born in Tartarus, which Pherecydes depicts as a cave below the earth, whereas Typhon was also born in a cave as the son of Gaia (earth) and Tartaros.

One thing to note is that, for Pherecydes, unlike many other ancient cosmogonies, it seems there is no primordial chaos that precedes an act of primeval demiurgy resulting in cosmic order. Instead, the forces of order and chaos existed besides each other forever and in conflict. For Pherecydes there was also no creation out of nothing. Instead, three gods were the first to exist all along: Zas (Zeus), Chthonie (Ge/Gaia), and Kronos/Chronos. He believed that these gods existed eternally, and that Chaos somehow came to be with no explanation.

Anyway, Celsus brings up Pherecydes' myth while discussing the concept of Satan, and then says that the Greek myths concerning the Titans and/or the Giants, and the Egyptian myths concerning Typhon (obviously meaning Set in this context) shared a similar symbolic meaning. He also relates that Hepheastus told Hera that he once felt the might of Zeus and hurled down from Olympus, and that Zeus boasted to Hera of how he bound and hung her in golden chains and hurled all the gods who opposed him from Olympus, as if to relate these to the Fall.

Celsus then does something interesting: he identifies the words of Zeus to Hera with the word of God to matter, arguing that this signifies matter that was originally was in discord before God then took and bound it together and arranged it with law, and then banished disorder. Demons who create disorder in the cosmos are related in Celsus' analogy to Titans and rebelling gods: they are chastised and hurled down. Tartarus, according to both Celsus and Pherecydes, is the place where Zeus banishes disorderly or insolent gods: in a word, prison.

Origen seems to actually agree with this analogy. In fact, in Book 4 of Against Celsus, Origen referred to "earthly demons, who delight in frankincense, and blood, and in the exhalations of sacrificial odours, and who, like the fabled Titans or Giants, drag down men from thoughts of God". Moreover, Origen argued that the writings of Moses mentioned a "wicked one" and his "falling from heaven" before the time of Homer and Pherecydes. Origen believed that Satan was the serpent that tempted Adam and Eve and that this was the original myth behind Ophioneus. If Origen interprets Satan as Ophioneus, then I would argue that he implies this connection for Typhon, and the Titans and Giants in relation to his demonic host. Origen also says that Satan is the "destroying angel" and the scapegoat Azazel.

This is interesting to consider in light of Plutarch and other sources whereby Typhon Seth is represented as a sacrificial animal. For Plutarch, Typhon is destined to never be completely defeated, and his power resides in the sacrificed animals and their slain blood, which, for Plutarch, ultimately nourishes the cosmos at least in the act of sacrifice, which pleases the powers of Osiris and Isis.

In any case, Origen seems to agree with Celsus on the Titanic-Satanic analogy, with the difference being that Celsus thinks the Christians were simply imitating pre-Christian myths while Origen thinks the Christian narrative preceded those same myths.

It might be worth noting that 2 Peter 2:4 says that God did not spare the angels who "sinned" against him, and that he threw them into "the pit". This is sometimes rendered as "hell", but in the Greek New Testament "the pit" is translated as Tartarus. Yes, none other than Tartarus, the prison of the Titans, and perhaps of Typhon and Kronos. From the pagan (or at least Celsian) standpoint at least, the parallels could not be clearer than this.