Thoughts About the Cult of Set-Typhon in Roman-Egypt

I recently wrote an article about how the early Egyptian Christians, Sethian Gnostics and the purported owner of the PGM (Greek Magical Papyri) collection of spells all lived in proximity to each other, and their book burying occurred all within a couple hundred years or less. What I was thinking was that maybe there was some kind of connection between the writers and owners of the books of the Nag Hammadi Library, the Bruce Codex and the PGM. I was intrigued by this connection, but further reflection (and the help of Jake Stratton-Kent who likes to throw cold water on my fervent ideas) has caused me to consider some other options. It is just that the religious world-view of the PGM is so different than the world-view of the early Christians and Sethians that they must be considered incompatible.

What throws my previous thoughts into question is that the role of Set-Typon in the PGM is so pronounced in the various spells which populate that work, so it would have been impossible for Christians or Sethians to even consider them as sources for their work. To them, Set-Typhon was the Devil, perhaps even more evil and diabolical than the supposed Archons who at least were lawful evil instead of turbulent and chaotic evil (like the evil of foreign conquerors). Also, there was no confusion between their Jewish patriarchal hero Seth and the Egyptian God Set despite what some earlier scholars of Gnosticism have claimed. (Jake also supplied me with this paper to read, and you can find it here.)

Set didn’t always have such a bad reputation in Egypt, and in fact he had cultic locations in Avaris and upper Egypt in the delta region (Ombos-Naqada, Kom Ombo, Oxyrhynchus, the Fayum, and particularly, Sepermeru). Set had the exclusive privilege of protecting Ra and his solar-boat entourage in the underworld by nightly killing the great serpent Apep who threatened the Sun-God in the seventh hour of the Am Duad. He was consistently honored as an important deity in the desert oases that bordered the great western desert, along with his wife, Nephthys. His son was supposedly Anubis, so there could have been a connection between Set, Anubis, and the funeral rites of embalming and entombing. Set is a dark and chthonic deity, but he was also the patron god of solders and the warrior pharaohs of the New Kingdom.

The Set animal, unlike the rest of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses who were represented by both animals and human qualities, is characterized by an unknown mythic creature. His elongated snout and long rectangular ears, thin forked tail and canine body might be considered the suggested representation of an aardvark, but other animals became associated with Set as well, such as the fennel fox, jackass, wild pig or the desert jackal. Set symbolizes the desert storms, such as the Khamsin, that plague both upper and lower Egypt during the spring, and as such, he represents the opposite of the regulatory power of Maat that was so important to Egyptian religious thinking. However, violence had its uses, and in the case of the underworld solar boat journey, Set’s violent nature was put to constructive use. He was therefore the deity most associated with warriors and warfare. However, he was also associated with jealousy, fratricide, deception, homosexuality and foreign invaders from the East. Set’s composite animal nature was supposedly explained by the fact that he was impatient to be born and so tore himself loose from his mother’s body, Nuit, while he was still not completely formed. To make up for this discrepancy, he used the parts of other animals to complete himself.

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As an aside, I have always wondered why the Egyptians would have represented their deities as a synthesis of human and animal. Not all deities were depicted as both human and animals (such as Amun), but many of them were. The Greek and the Romans found this peculiar mixing to be quite strange, and it became a hallmark of later Greco-Egyptian synchretism (such as Serapis, Aion, Abraxas, and other animal-human deities of late antiquity). However, very few modern Egyptologists have explained this phenomenon in a manner that made any sense. They seem to gloss over this peculiarity and not attempt to explain what was actually behind it. There just didn’t seem to be any answer that would account for this kind of perspective, particularly since modern western people have been so influenced by the Greeks and the Romans who saw the animal human deities of Egypt as archaic, barbarous and somehow quaint. The way to approach this question is to turn it around and ask how did the Egyptians perceive nature itself. Once the question is turned around then it is much easier to answer. I recently read the follow section in one of Jan Assmann’s books, “The Search for God in Ancient Egypt,” and I have decided to quote it here, since it more than adequately answers this question.    

“To the Egyptians, nature was curiously open in directions that set it apart from our concept, in the direction of culture – following from the principle of the ‘social interpretation’ of nature,” ... and in the direction of the supernatural. To them, nature was ‘supernatural’ in a way that fundamentally prevented the concept of nature. ... The Egyptians did not experience the divine in nature in explicable, exceptional cases like rainbows, earth quakes, solar and lunar eclipses and the like, but in the regularity of diurnal and annual cyclic processes. Nature was not something distinct from the gods, something that they created, over which they exerted influence, of which they had charge. Although statements to this effect abound, inextricably connected with them and sometimes in the very same text, we find the concept that deities were themselves these natural elements and phenomena. The Egyptians did not view their gods and goddesses as beyond nature, but rather in nature and thus as nature. The deities were ‘natural,’ – that is, cosmic – to the same extent that nature or the cosmos was divine.” (pages 63 - 64)

The use of animal human hybrids in the depiction of Egyptian deities was a way for the ancient Egyptians to show that nature functioned in the guise of deities, and that life itself was a common but supernatural condition. Greece and Rome sought to discover the “will of the gods” through the occurrence of remarkable or unusual natural phenomenon. Thus today, we are prone to look for examples of deity in nature by observing exceptional natural events instead of seeing the whole of the cyclic phenomenon of nature as emanations of deity within and a part of nature. This perspective espoused by the Egyptians was a product of early Bronze age paganism, but it managed to be conserved and even refined in Egypt over the many centuries while more modern perspectives (that we would recognize) emerged in the western and eastern Mediterranean, such as those of Persia, Greece, Rome, and even Judea. While the pagan perspectives of ancient Egypt were archaic by the standards of other nations, the ideas that they espoused are oddly more relevant today than they were in antiquity. However, I have digressed from the original point of my article.

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During the second intermediate period in Egypt, the Hyksos king Apophis established the deity Set as a monolatry probably because he resembled the favored Semitic storm deity Hadad, which would have been recognizable to the Shepherd Kings and their people who infiltrated and eventually conquered northern Egypt. When the Egyptians, under the Pharaoh Ahmose, pushed the Hyksos out of Egypt, the garrison at the old Hyksos capital, Avaris, continued to promote the cult of Set. Set was later incorporated as an important deity in the theology of the New Kingdom, particularly during the Rameside period, where he represented the military power of the Pharaoh and the Egyptian empire. The Pharaoh Seti used the name “Man of Set” to represent his throne name, and several other Pharaohs from that period also incorporated the deity name Set into their throne names.

However, the deity Set lost his place of honor when foreigners invaded and completely conquered Egypt, beginning with the Persians and then later with the Greeks and Romans. It would appear that Set became identified with foreigners and foreign rule. There was also always the wicked reputation that Set had in his role as the brother of Osiris and his murderer. The role of the evil adversary was amplified in later periods of foreign occupation. By the time Christianity became a powerful religious force in Egypt, Set had become associated with the Greek monster Typhon and was considered a deity of evil and destruction. It is likely that Set-Typon personified the invaders who robbed Egypt of its sovereignty, so to good, lawful and observant Christian Egyptians, he would have exemplified the Devil incarnate. It is for this reason that Christians would have continued to vilify Set-Typhon as the Devil, and any magical charms or spells that invoked his name would have been considered highly diabolic. Since Set-Typhon represented the foreign enemy of the local Egyptians, anyone who would have associated themselves with him, whether from the standpoint of religion or even magic, would have been perceived as pagan diabolists.

What that means is that the individuals who would have been using the spells as they were written in the PGM were very much vested in paganism, and in particular a magically diabolic form of paganism. This would be true despite the fact that author of these spells also shamelessly borrowed various incompatible religious forms in a very synchretistic manner from nearly every known religion. Was there a cult of Set still functioning in Egypt during the first three centuries of the common era? Little is known about what happened to the cultic centers that worshiped Set, but it seems obvious that they would have been severely diminished and then shut down some time after the period of Persian occupation. There appears to be some evidence that Set was still worshiped in western desert oases, but his other known shrines had shut down by then.

It would seem that those who still honored Set would have kept their worship secret and likely underground. Magical spells written by pagan sorcerers that required the acquisition of the harshest of magical powers or the ability to fight against foreign domination and persecution might have adopted Set as their patron deity, and even formed a kind of underground insurgency against a common foe. There does seem to be some minor evidence showing that the magical rites of the PGM in some cases duplicated magical practices found in the various cults of the Egyptian priesthood, as noted and reported by the Greek physician, Thessalos, when he visited Priests in Thebes in the 2nd century CE.

Ironically, while many individuals flocked to the new Christian churches and monasteries, others may have been more inclined to keep the worship of the old deities alive, particularly those, like Set, who afforded a certain currency against the oppressive regime. Those who wielded the magical spells as found in the PGM would have been outsiders and inimical to the interests of the nascent Christian church, and therefore would have been passionately condemned by them. The itinerant pagan sorcerer was not someone who would been a devotee to the newly arising creed, but he might have had no difficulty in appropriating various elements of that creed for his own magical purposes.

Even so, the early Christians in Egypt continued to work forms of magic, as the numerous ostracae would indicate, but that magic had changed so that it used Christian nomenclature even though some of the words of power were the same. There is a continuity between the kind of magic worked in the PGM and that employed by the later Christians, but Christian magic was scoured of all references to pagan deities. The owner of the PGM scroll might have lived in the same neighborhood as the Christians and Sethians, but the worlds they occupied were quite different and distinct. It is unlikely that much contact would have occurred between those who practiced pagan sorcery and those who were Christian or Sethian monks. When we include the myths of the chthonic Greek deity Typhon it becomes quite clear why there was such a distinction between pagan sorcerers and Christian groups.

Typhon was a great monster of epic proportions, a human body with a hundred dragon heads, as depicted in ancient Greek mythology. He was sent by Gaia to fight against Zeus and eventually lost that battle. He was imprisoned underneath Mount Aetna, but with his consort, Echidna, he sired several children, some of whom like Cerberus, the Sphinx, the Nemean Lion, and other monsters were famous in their own right. Typhon was the son of Gaia (Earth) and Tartarus (Hell), so he was a deity of the earth and the underworld, somewhat like Set. The association of Set and Typhon would have certainly empowered Set from a Greek perspective, but made his chthonic qualities even more pronounced so that he would appear completely dark, foreboding and diabolical. As a monstrous power of the deadly underworld, Set-Typhon would have been a remarkable combination, and the hybrid deity would not be one that anyone would lightly summon or seek aid from. Those who made Set-Typhon the center of their religious and magical work would have been considered extreme diabolists, and would likely have had fearsome reputations in their community, that is, if anyone knew about them at all. I can imagine an underground cult of Set-Typhon whose adherents practiced fearsome magical rites and spells, but there is scant proof that such a community ever existed.

Jake is correct in stating that the PGM represents a world view outside and exclusive to that which would have been practiced by Egyptian Christians and even Sethians. They might have employed a vaguely similar form of magic, but it would have been incompatible with the spells of the PGM. Thus, the Headless One exorcism rite is likely unique to the PGM work (and other contemporaneous pagan inspired magic) and wouldn’t have been found amongst the rites and spells that the Sethians might have used. Although I still think that it’s possible that they did perform exorcisms on their initiates as part of the regimen of their work.

Christianity spread very quickly in Egypt during the first few centuries of the common era, and not long after the Theban sorcerer (who owned the PGM scroll) was buried in his tomb, the community religious culture in that locale might have already been changing. In less than a century, the PGM scroll and the magic that it represented would have been something of an anachronism. Pagan sorcerers at that time and in that locality likely went completely underground or maybe even slowly disappeared altogether. They were replaced first by adherents of the Coptic Christian church who practiced magic and later by adherents to Islam, who did the same. Sorcerers for hire have always had to change their methods (and the religions in which they operated) in order to stay employed and keep their customers satisfied. It is likely that such a change happened there just like it did in the rest of the world.

Frater Barrabbas

As the Light Dimmed in Egypt - Linking the PGM, Nag Hammadi and Stele of Jeu

The Roman province of Egypt was remarkable in the great confluence of cultures and ideas that managed to mix and merge together to formulate whole new perspectives. Yet it was also a place where native Egyptians found themselves demoted to third class citizens who were egregiously exploited, subjugated and crushed into unforgiving poverty and despair. While Rome extracted a massive grain harvest every year to feed itself (and its privileged allies in Alexandria) bread, the Egyptians who toiled on the land were oppressed by ever increasing taxes and punitive laws meant to enslave them. It was not a good time to be an Egyptian without also being a privileged Roman citizen. Few managed to achieve that distinguished privilege and the rest faced a hopeless and dwindling future.

There were occasional revolts against this excessive exploitation and subjugation, but these were cruelly put down, and each one only made the plight the native fellaheen more pitiful. It was during this time that the belief and worship of the old Egyptian gods lost their appeal with the common folk and a new religion began to quickly take their place, and that religion was Christianity. Like many other parts of the old world, Egypt fostered many varieties of Christianity and Greco-Roman syncretism.

“Egypt had an ancient tradition of religious speculation, enabling a variety of controversial religious views to thrive there. Not only did Arianism flourish, but other doctrines, such as Gnosticism and Manichaeism, either native or imported, found many followers. Another religious development in Egypt was the monasticism of the Desert Fathers, who renounced the material world in order to live a life of poverty in devotion to the Church.

Egyptian Christians took up monasticism with such enthusiasm that the Emperor Valens had to restrict the number of men who could become monks. Egypt exported monasticism to the rest of the Christian world.”

Magic flourished in these lands at that time, and many Christians of different stripes practiced magic along with their liturgical rites. Perhaps the most interesting of all of the Egyptian stripes of Christianity were the Sethians, whose massive volume of books and mysterious initiatory teachings have come down to us in the present era as various selections of their peculiar writings and puzzling theological statements. We know something about them from their extent writings but not enough to fully understand their teachings and beliefs. Time has nearly ablated their memory, like the shifting sands of the Egyptian desert that have scoured the painted surfaces of statues and shrines leaving only traces of their past glories.

We know so little about the Egyptians living in the area around Thebes in the Greco-Roman period because the focus of the world at that time was on the city of Alexandria. However, from the period of around the 1st through the 4th century various scrolls and codices were buried in that location which were only discovered in the last two centuries. The largest collection of codices was discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945, a veritable library of forbidden books hidden in a sealed pot and buried next to a stone in an ancient monastic graveyard. However, other codices and scrolls were discovered in the same area around Thebes, such as the Bruce codex (containing the Books of Jeu) and the Greek Magical Papyri. All of these notable relics that have been intriguing scholars for decades as well as ordinary members of the reading public, and I might add, occultists and practitioners of magic, have been reconstructed, translated and published. All of these truly remarkable writings from antiquity were likely produced in this single location around Thebes during a period of three hundred years, and that is also quite remarkable.

Whether or not these writings represent the thoughts and beliefs of a single group of people, or the combined ideas and practices of an era participated by many individuals is unknown. We can speculate based on how they were written, in what language and the media (scroll or codex) of their presentation, and we can examine the content of the writings and notice the differences and similarities. Still, this is all speculation, but it is intriguing none-the-less.

We should also briefly examine the writing techniques of ancient Egypt and its history, since this will also assist us in assessing the historical context of these writings.

“As writing developed and became more widespread among the Egyptian people, simplified glyph forms developed, resulting in the hieratic (priestly) and demotic (popular) scripts. These variants were also more suited than hieroglyphs for use on papyrus. Hieroglyphic writing was not, however, eclipsed, but existed alongside the other forms, especially in monumental and other formal writing. The Rosetta Stone contains three parallel scripts – hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek.

Hieroglyphs continued to be used under Persian rule (intermittent in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE), and after Alexander the Great's conquest of Egypt, during the ensuing Macedonian and Roman periods. It appears that the misleading quality of comments from Greek and Roman writers about hieroglyphs came about, at least in part, as a response to the changed political situation. Some believe that hieroglyphs may have functioned as a way to distinguish 'true Egyptians' from some of the foreign conquerors. Another reason may be the refusal to tackle a foreign culture on its own terms which characterized Greco-Roman approaches to Egyptian culture generally. Having learned that hieroglyphs were sacred writing, Greco-Roman authors imagined the complex but rational system as an allegorical, even magical, system transmitting secret, mystical knowledge.

By the 4th century, few Egyptians were capable of reading hieroglyphs, and the myth of allegorical hieroglyphs was ascendant. Monumental use of hieroglyphs ceased after the closing of all non-Christian temples in 391 CE by the Roman Emperor Theodosius I; the last known inscription is from Philae, known as The Graffito of Esmet-Akhom, from 394 CE.”

If we consider the Nag Hammadi library, the Bruce codex and the Greek Magical Papyri as having a common geographic location, we can also order these collections according to their content and writing styles, based on an understanding of the history of writing in that area.

The Greek Magical Papyri was likely written earlier than the other books because it was a large scroll written in Greek and Demotic. Since there are some parts of this book that were written in Demotic we can assume that the ancient Egyptian language was still being spoken and written at that time. So, perhaps the time period when it was written might have been in the 3rd century when the old pagan religions and the new were coexistent. The magical spells show a decided heterodoxy of religious beliefs with an emphasis on Pagan Greek and Egyptian gods, but with other religious elements, such as Judaism, included. There is only a hint of Christian theology to be found in these spells, so it represents the collective work of someone whose sympathies were not particularly Christian.

We know nothing about the owner of this scroll, other than he seemed to be collecting every notable magical spell that could be found or discovered in that time period. Because of the cosmopolitan nature of his collection, it is likely that he was privileged and well traveled, perhaps even having a residence in Alexandria. Magic is the focus of this work, so we can’t really deduce the owner’s religious beliefs other than to state that he was obviously open to all religions and didn’t discriminate between them. This large scroll was probably buried with the mummified body of the owner along with other artifacts at an unknown site somewhere outside of Thebes. If there were any other burial possessions in that tomb, none has ever been either recognized or recovered. 

Then, probably a century or so later, the various codices of the Nag Hammadi and the Bruce codex were written and kept by individuals in the same general area. These books were written in Coptic, representing a change in linguistic status. While it is likely that these books were originally written in Greek, they were translated into Coptic which was becoming the liturgical language of Egyptian Christianity. Hieroglyphic writing, including hieratic and demotic, had been abandoned as too complex, but Greek was replaced with an alphabetized writing modified to fit the phonetics of the Egyptian language.

The primary religious focus of these books was Christian, but a form of Christianity that is both strange and unusual by today’s standards. Within many of these works are to be found the specific theological speculations of the Gnostic group known as the Sethians. While it is likely that these books were part of a monastic library, probably the Pachomian monastery at Chenobokion (modern al Qasr), it represents that the Christian monks were likely tainted by the beliefs and perhaps even the practices of Sethian Gnosticism. The fact that these books were buried represents a kind of intellectual purge, due to the edict of the archbishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, who in 367 CE decreed that all Christians reject illegitimate and secret books. He produced a list of 27 books that were to be considered the accepted books of Christianity, and these books are what later became part of the New Testament. However, the monks from this monastery (so far from Alexandria) revered these books and rather than burn them, they decided to bury them instead. So they carefully sealed these codices into a storage pot and buried them in a nearby cemetery with a proper marker, as if they had hoped to someday return and recover them.

It would seem that the location around Thebes was a veritable hotbed of Sethian Gnosticism and also the practice of magic. Because the Sethians taught that one needed to undergo a five-fold initiation ordeal in order to be considered a proper Christian, or “one who knows,” they had quite a body of magical lore to aid them in this task. They also practiced forms of practical magic and likely infected the early Coptic Christian church with the practice of using magical spells that archeologists have recently discovered written or inscribed on various artifacts. The Sethians probably were in the area for at least three centuries before disappearing, and they may have melded their beliefs with those of the local pagan magical practitioners, since they believed that magic was the key to escape the material world ruled by the cruel and ruthless archons.

In many ways the Sethian’s theological ideas would have been very popular in the oppressed area of upper Egypt because it seemed to explain their world in a mythopoetic manner. No longer was life on the Nile one that was good and abundant, so there wasn’t much desire to perpetuate this material circumstance in the afterlife. In fact life was cruel, brutal, poor and apparently lacked the blessings of the gods for the average Egyptian. It was no wonder that a theology of escape, release from bondage and deliverance from one’s evil oppressors was quite intoxicating and attractive. I believe that this is the reason why Egypt embraced Christianity so ardently, and why a tradition of Sethian Gnosticism was popular amongst the literate elite.

Now this brings me to the main point of my article, which is to see these supposedly unrelated events and artifacts as representing a common thread that should be quite profound when we consider it as such. What I am proposing is that the magic in the Greek Magical Papyri and the magic practiced by the Christian Sethians and Coptic Christians was analogous. They are not the same, of course, because they are separated by time, but not by locality. The writer of the Greek Magical Papyri was aware of Sethian practices and beliefs even though he might not have shared them. The Sethians were likely aware of some of the magical spells written in the Greek Magical Papyri as well.

Previously, I have never really paid much attention to the rubric or title for the ritual of the Invocation of the Bornless One because it seemed to be not particularly important. The title of this spell is the “Stele of Jeu, the hieroglyphicist.” The name Jeu seemed to be familiar to me, but I had thought that it might be a reference to a real individual who still had the skill of being able to read Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. It was pointed out to me that the name Jeu was actually a Gnostic pseudepigraphic author name that was used to lend legitimacy to a writing or a spell. However, since there is indeed a series of Books of Jeu that were particularly sacred to the Sethians (Bruce Codex), attributing the Bornless One Invocation to Jeu was analogous to attributing it to the Sethians. Also, assigning a writing to a stele was a way of making it a highly important work, because an actual stele was writing and illustrations painted or carved on a stone tablet making it something of a permanent edifice. Three of the more important works in the Nag Hammadi library are the three Stele of Seth, so one could assume that the Stele of Jeu would also be a monumental work.

What does all of this speculation and background information really mean? It means that the ubiquitous Invocation of the Bornless or Headless One was possibly an important rite in the Sethian creed. The headless one then becomes analogous to the theological construct of the Gnostic concept of Autogenes, the self-begotten one. Autogenes was the principle intermediary between the One as the Father-Spirit, and the Father-Mother as Ennoia-Barbelo, and the rest of humanity. Autogenes was part of a trinity that was loosely based on the Neoplatonic Noetic triad of Being, Life and Mind that act as an intermediary between the One and the psychic domain. Summoning this entity to perform an exorcism would make sense, and it would be part of the Sethian initiation process to purge the self of all spiritual influences and pollution associated with the archons.

So, this might be the context for the Bornless Invocation rite, that it functioned as an important tool in the Sethian repertoire to purify the soul and make it ready for transport beyond spheres of the archon ruled material world, where it might unite once again with the One Source of All Spirit. That we use this rite today in a similar manner is quite interesting and also ironic. All of this is pure speculation on my part, of course, and it could easily be refuted as spurious and erroneous. However, my approach does seem to pull together a lot of interesting pieces of the puzzle, and the final resultant context is rather elegant - at least I think so.

Over seventeen hundred years separate our world from that of the Egyptian Sethians and magicians of the early centuries of the common era. But we seem to be connected by the thread of a common interest and a common need for a fusion of magic and religion as well as authentic visionary experiences. That common thread might be the vaunted Perennial Philosophy, or perhaps it is the just the convoluted evolution of society and the never ending spiritual search for authentic spiritual experiences.   

Frater Barrabbas

Art of Armadel, Theurgic Ascension and Sethian Gnosticism

We have already obliquely defined the art of Armadel as the art of disposition, and that such an art was dedicated to the acquiring and obtaining knowledge, wisdom, deep mystical insights and illumination - a kind of gnostic wisdom. We have also been able to determine how the magician would approach the grimoire and unlock its various sigil characters in order to obtain that knowledge. However, the biggest stumbling block to organizing the Grimoire of Armadel into a fully operational work is to organize, decipher and make sense out of the strange sub-chapters where the sigil characters are exhibited. In other words, we need to make thematic sense out of the two books, which are entitled as Book I, “Theosophy of Our Fathers”, and Book II, “Sacro-Mystic Theology of Our Fathers.” As they presently stand, there seems to be no pattern or structure to these two books.

A cursory glance at the sub-chapter headers for each of these books seems to only demonstrate a profound disorganized confusion and a seemingly obsessive focus on highly obscure biblical themes. What could possibly be gained from unlocking the sigil characters of Zaphkiel to have that spirit reveal the secrets of the lives of angels before the fall? One could acquire more insight by reading and studying Milton’s “Paradise Lost” than performing this operation. Even more absurd is the sigil character for Thaveal who reveals supposedly what transpired at the circumcision of Jesus at Nazareth. How do these operations aid the magician to obtain the coveted blessed state of illumination? This question goes unanswered, but it would seem that each of the sub-chapters would represent some kind of step or stage in the process of acquiring a god-like acquisition of the Spirit World and all that it contains.

As I have said previously, it is likely that the chaotic thematic nature of the books and sub-chapters would have to be exchanged for something that does make sense. I even proposed making use of certain Sethian Gnostic works that are near and dear to my heart, but before that can be done, I will need to determine the structure and operational use of these two books - to plumb their nature and function. Perhaps the only way to accomplish that task to is first step back from these two books and look at them in a more oblique manner.

Book I contains twenty-two sub-chapters, which shouldn’t be too surprising, considering that the grimoire has an obvious Qabbalistic bias. Book II contains sixteen sub-chapters, so it would represent a more earth-based mixture of good and evil, light and darkness, since the number sixteen is analogous to the Divine Tetrad emanating into physical manifestation.

The first book could be compared to the twenty-two paths of the Tree of Life as well as the Ten Sephiroth, which would accord some of the archangelic spirits a dual representation. The key to Book I is the occurrence of nine Hebrew letters thinly disguised as angelic spirits. One could assume that all of the sub-chapters in Book I are associated, either directly or indirectly, with the twenty-two paths of the Tree of Life. When Qabbalists encounter the pathways in some work, they realize that this indicates some kind of implied spiritual ascension. To walk the pathways is synonymous with ascending the planes through transformative initiation, ultimately achieving full union with the Absolute Spirit - the One. So the thematic function of Book I is to provide a catalyst for union with the Deity, which is a form of theurgistic ascension.

If we carefully look over the twenty-two sub-chapters, we can see that there are eleven archangels, nine Hebrew letters and one Olympian spirit. Samael is listed twice, and the attributes of Haniel and Anael both refer to the Sephirah Netzach. The sub-chapter “Concerning Pythene - Abuses of Necromancy,” which is attributed to Samael, and the sub-chapter “Concerning the Nature of the Genii,” which is attributed to Anael, could both be swapped for two sub-chapters in the second book so that each of the attributes of the first book would be unique, refering to qualities that are not influenced by demonic spirits. For this reason, I would pull the sub-chapter “Concerning the Life of the Angels Before the Fall,” which is attributed to Zaphkiel, and the sub-chapter “Concerning the Creation of Angels,” which is attributed to Och, from the second book and put them into the first book, thus allowing all of the attributes to be unique. So we now have twenty-two unique attributes containing the first nine pathways, followed by eleven Sephiroth (Samael is now accorded to Daath) and two planetary Olympian spirits, which are Mars and the Sun.

With the all of the attributes determined, the twenty-two sub-chapters of the first book can be directly associated with the twenty-two paths of the Tree of Life, where the paths begin at the lowest level and ascend to the highest level. Since the first nine paths at the highest order are already determined, it’s only necessary to find attributes for the remaining thirteen paths. This was accomplished, but the results were less than satisfactory, since the top three Sephiroth were already fully allocated to the top nine pathways; less troublesome were the two planets, Mars and the Sun. However, the list of archangels, angels and planetary spirits can now be grouped in a logical order, beginning with the bottom most path (Thav) and ascending to the top (Aleph). I have determined the following list of spirits, but I would assume that others might come up with a slightly different list. (The two paths with an asterisk were taken from Book II.)

1. Caphael (Thav)
2. Michael (Shin)
*3. Och - Sun (Resh)
*4. Zaphkiel (Qoph)
5. Gabriel (Tzaddi)
6. Phaleg - Mars (Peh)
7. Samael (A’in)
8. Raphael (Samek)
9. Haniel (Nun)
10. Camael (Mim)
11. Uriel (Lamed)
12. Zadkiel (Kaph)
13. Thavael (Yod)
14. Tetehatia (Tet)
15. Hathatia (Chet)
16. Zainael (Zain)
17. Vau-Ael (Vav)
18. Hetael (Heh)
19. Dalate (Daleth)
20. Gimela (Gimmel)
21. Bethel (Beith)
22. Alepta (Aleph)

The second book contains sixteen sub-chapters, and looking over the spurious topics, it would seem that there are eight sub-chapters associated with diabolic themes, three associated with the Deity, three associated with humanity, and two miscellaneous topics (paths of wisdom and knowledge of good angels). As I have already said, sixteen sub-chapters are synonymous to the sixteen elementals. If we are able to attribute positive and negative qualities to these elementals, we would come up with eight negative and eight positive ones. This is done by making a relative determination that Fire and Air are positive, and Water and Earth are negative. That means that combining the elements using only positive to positive and negative to negative attributed elements will produce four combinations that are positive, and four that are negative. When combining a positive element with a negative element, if the top element is positive, then the resulting elemental will be positive; conversely, if the top element is negative, then the resulting elemental will be negative. Using this simple rule, four positive and four negative elementals will be produced - giving a total of eight positive and negative elementals. The following list should make my proposed structure quite clear.

1. Fire of Fire (pos.) - Cassiel (God universally One)
2. Air of Air (pos.) - Michael (God as Trinity)
*3. Water of Water (neg.) - Samael (Concerning Pythene)
4. Earth of Earth (neg.) - Lucifer, Belzebut, Astarot (Angelic Rebellion and Expulsion)
5. Fire of Air (pos.) - Gabriel (God as Preserver, Destroyer, Creator)
6. Air of Fire (pos.) - Spirits/Angels of Power, Joy and Love (Three Paths of Wisdom)
7. Water of Earth (neg.) - Hemostopile/Mephistopheles (Invisible Devils)
8. Earth of Water (neg.) - Brufor (Binding Devils)
9. Fire of Water (pos.) - Zadkiel, Sachiel (Knowing Good Angels)
10. Fire of Earth (pos.) - Phul, Gabriel (Life of Man)
11. Air of Water (pos.) - Ophiel (Regeneration of Adam)
12. Air of Earth (pos.) - Aratron (Destiny of Man)
13. Water of Fire (neg.) - Bethor (Devils and their lives)
14. Water of Air (neg.) - Asmode, Leviatan (Binding Devils)
*15. Earth of Fire (neg.) - Anael (Nature of the Genii)
16. Earth of Air (neg.) - Laune (Knowledge of Devils and Banishing them)

Notice that numbers three and fifteen were pulled from the first book.

I have now given a structure and an organization to the two books where little or none had existed previously. The names of the two books could also be considered spurious, so in my opinion, better names for them would look something like this:

Book I - Ascension of the Initiate Into the Heart of God,

Book II - Descent of Spirit into Light and Darkness - the Heart of Mankind.

These two names would be much more functionally useful, so I will use them instead of what was used in the original grimoire. Therefore, it would appear that the two books now have a completed theme and structure, which consists of a theurgistic ascension and then a descent, ostensibly, to redeem and regenerate the material world with the product of that ascension. This brings us to our next consideration, and that is elaborating on the specific themes for all of the sub-chapters, since what is listed and elucidated in the original grimoire seems quite superficial and even extraneous. I am proposing, of course, to institute a completely different theme altogether; yet one that will further and deepen the thematic structures already solidly determined.


Neoplatonism, Sethian Gnosticism and Cultic Ascension

Spiritual ascension, as determined by the practice of theurgy or religious rites, has many mythic and metaphysical exponents in the Western Mystery tradition, beginning with late classical times and continuing through the modern age. This is not a new spiritual perspective, by no means, and we can therefore pick and choose from any number of pagan, Christian, gnostic, Masonic, Rosicrucian, alchemical, occultic or even neopagan perspectives. However, the structures of the two books have determined at least that the basic foundation will be qualified by the Qabbalah, regardless of the system used. What may not be completely realized is that this underlying theme will allow us to choose something that hearkens back to the Neoplatonic roots that they all share. Still, if I am going to build a specific theme from a known tradition, I should state my reasons for doing so, and also apply that tradition to the existing underlying structure. That, of course, is my next objective. (I will keep in mind that everyone else is free to pick and choose their own source tradition to work with this grimoire.)

For the past several years I have been reading and studying the written works of an obscure Gnostic group called by scholars, Sethians or Barbeloites. They are called this because they believed that they represented a secret line from the third son of Adam, who was known as Seth. Whereas all of the people who considered themselves Jews could mythically claim to descend from this remote biblical ancestor, the Sethians believed that they represented an exclusive or rare lineage. Sethians also appeared to believe in a spiritual being whom they called Barbello, a feminine Spirit or Goddess like entity who, along with the ineffable and unnameable One, generated the host of entities who were collectively called the Pleroma (fullness). If you could imagine a Qabbalistic system consisting of the Sephiroth Kether through Hod, excluding Yesod and Malkuth, then that would be a good approximation of the Pleroma.

Was this lineage that the Sethians wrote about a secret blood line? No one appears to know - the last Sethians probably disappeared before the fall of Rome. Yet looking over their texts, they seemed to promote a secret teaching and represent an esoteric lineage of individuals, who happened to chose a specific biblical patriarch to mythically represent their cult, rather than a rare blood line. The Sethian cult probably emerged out of Alexandria, and it may have initially contained a splinter group of esoteric Jews, however their religious beliefs were based much more on a deep antinomian interpretation of Jewish religious beliefs and traditions, making them more like a counter movement. They seemed to have engaged in some form of baptism or ritual immersion, although whether that rite involved any kind of water is unknown - it may have been more like a cultic initiation. They also appear to have practiced forms of Neoplatonic theurgy and extensively used the philosophical constructs of emanationism, the three Hypostases, cultic ascension and salvation through spiritual wisdom (gnosis). The Sethians would have found the modern Qabbalah to be a system very close to their own doctrines and beliefs, since both drew heavily from the same Neoplatonic sources. Therefore, their writings should be capable of being interpreted and understood from a Qabbalistic perspective, which would server a dual purpose of determining the sub-chapters of the grimoire and defining the specific gnostic scriptures.

Perhaps in many ways, the Sethians seemed to mix, in a heterogeneous manner, pagan philosophy, gnostic and Jewish beliefs and practices. They were also reputed to engage in some kind of practical sex magick and erotic sacramentation, at least according to their Christian polemicists. I have found these ancient practitioners and their beliefs to be surprisingly very similar to my own, even though the context of my practices are rooted in a post-modern setting, and the Sethians existed in antiquity. I am a polytheist pagan, but also a monist (in the Neoplatonic definition of that term), who practices ritual magick and theurgy. Qabbalah and Angelogy are very much a part of my occult work, so what I do has elements of Jewish Neoplatonism blended into it.

Reading over the surviving books from the Nag Hamadi collection has shown me that the Sethians and their spiritual perspectives are very similar to my own. Therefore, I believe that two of their texts, the “Apocryphon of John” and the “Trimorphic Protenoia” would be quite suitable to act as the thematic basis for the two books in the Grimoire Armadel. I also believe that certain sections and text can be also taken from the “Three Stele of Seth” and the “Secret Gospel of the Egyptians.” The latter two documents are actually rituals; the Stele documents were used in a fragmented cultic ascension rite, and the Gospel of the Egyptians was a baptism/initiation rite.

I will select specific textual parts from these documents and use them to give a gnostic-pagan Qabbalistic theme to the Grimoire of Armadel. However, before I do that, I will need to carefully analyze, examine these four books, beginning with a general overview as well as highlighting those sections that are very pertinent to the work of the grimoire. We are looking for twenty-two sub-chapters that will be used to build a form of theurgistic ascension, and also sixteen sub-chapters that represent the descent into matter and the provenance of daimonic intermediaries of the Godhead. With these points in mind, and the internal qualifications of the twenty-two paths and the sixteen elementals, we have our work cut out for us. 

Frater Barrabbas