During a recent conversation, a student of ancient Egypt mentioned
to me the cult of Isis and Osiris and its survival of the fall
of Egypt as a Mediterranean "mystery religion". As an
initiate of the modern Temple
of Set, I began to wonder to what extent the original cult
of Set had survived that civilization, and what documented forms
this survival had taken.
I found an answer in Hans Dieter Betz's edition of The Greek
Magical Papyri in Translation Including the Demotic Spells
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). In the twilight
of Egyptian civilization, Set, the Lord of Darkness denounced
by followers of Osiris, became a patron of sorcery. This
apparently occurred by way of Egyptian priests moving into freelance
magical practice after foreign domination led to loss of royal
funding for the temples.
It is strange to envision the Egyptian priests consigning their
lore to the written word, given their notorious reputation for
xenophobia and secrecy. Significantly, while these spells span
the full range of magical operations, little of a theoretical
character is disclosed.
In PGM IV 154-285, there's an invocation of the Feared One that
specifically mentions the defeat of Osiris, the dying god, and
the Setian power over the hypotic gaze of Apep, serpent and
neter of chaos that threatened the solar barque:
"Oh dark's disturber, thunder's bringer, whirlwind,
Night-flasher, breather-forth of hot and cold...
I'm He who searched with you the whole world and
Found great Osiris, whom I brought you chained.
I'm he who joined you in war with the gods!
I'm he who closed heav'ns double gates and
put to sleep the serpent who must not be seen..."
Later in the same text the magician addresses the rising sun:
"...You who are fearful, awesome, threatening,
You who're obscure and irresistable,
And hater of the wicked, you I call,
Typhon, in hours unlawful and unmeasured..."
As mentioned elsewhere, the rising sun was one of the symbols
of Xepera, the ancient Egyptian concept of Self-Creation.
Fragments of Egyptian are found everywhere in these Greek spells.
The 'true names' "erbeth",
"pakerbeth"
and "bolchoseth"
appear repeatedly in invocations of Set. They may be corrupted
praise names. The words are seen in binding and restraining spells
(PGM IV 2145-2240, perhaps PGM VII 467-77, PGM XXXVI 1-34), spells
to charm and subject (PGM VII 940-68, PGM XLVI 4-8), to cause
separation (PGM XII 365-75, PDM XII 62-75 and XII 76-107), "evil
sleep" (PDM XIV 675-94) and crazed lust (PGM XXVI 69-101).
It is in the spells for self-initiation that one gets a sense
of how the destruction of their civilization shaped the perspective
of those who used these conjurations. The social machinery of
the temple tradition responsible for these spells was dying, or
already dead, and it was the individual who now pursued the magical
arts for individual ends. Freelance practice of this type was
solitary and secretive compared to the observances of state cults
or even the mystery-religions. This presents problems in evaluating
the significance of the papyri as evidence for survivals of the
ancient cult of Set.
The magical papyri presented by Betz are thought to have come
from a private library in Thebes and date from the 2nd century
BCE through the 5th century CE. We can't be sure if this collection
of surviving scrolls is representative, or if it reflects a cult
of Set in Graeco-Roman Egypt. But they do show that some
literate Egyptians not only identified Typhon with Set but invoked
the powers of Set-Typhon, hailed Set-Typhon as a divine power,
and so forth.
Strange though the magical papyri seem to us today, they document
a flow of "operative" temple knowlege from Egypt into
the Mediterranean world. This naturally invites speculation as
to what theoretical or abstract knowlege might also have passed
by way of the Egyptians who wrote these papyri in the twilight
of their civilization.
In Hermetic Magic (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, Inc.,
1995) Stephen Flowers affirms that the magical papyri were a major
root of the Western magical philosophy called Hermeticism. Betz
states frankly in his preface to The Greek Magical Papyri--
"It is known that philosophers of the Neopythagorean and Neo-platonic schools, as well as Gnostic and Hermetic groups, used magical books and hence must have possessed copies. But most of their material vanished and what we have left are their quotations."
By the 2nd century of the common era, Roman hostility had driven
underground the legendary state magic of Egypt. Thessalos, a Greek
physician, reported that Theban priests were scandalized at his
inqury as to whether anything remained of the old Egyptian magic.
Nevertheless, an old priest agreed to perform a divination for
Thessalos. His account of the working corresponds pefectly with
descriptions in demotic and Greek magical papyri that have come
into our hands (Robert K. Ritner, The Mechanics of Ancient
Egyptian Magical Practice, Chicago: University of Chicago,
1993, p. 219).
We thus have cause to think that these papyri reflect authentic
temple practice, and that priests of Egypt under Greek and Roman
rule performed such rites until the temples were shut down. Whether
this includes the invocation of Set for aggressive magic, under
temple auspices, is an open question.
However diabolized Set may have become in the final days of ancient
Egypt, the papyri show that his esteem among magicians survived
the destruction of his temples and images. The spells of the Theban
cache found their way onto curse tablets in Rome, Athens and Jerusalem.
Details and comparisons of the papyri and tablets are found in
John G. Gager's Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient
World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). More generally,
the practice of the "spell-book" of European tradition
found its prototype in the "magical cookbook" approach
exemplified by the Theban papyri. Thus the written magical tradition
of Europe began under the auspices of Set-Typhon, and provided
the matrix for the Remanifestation of Setian thought hundreds
of years later.
That the papyri themselves survived Roman suppression, a ferocious
campaign of destruction of magical books under Christianity (Acts
19:19), and the rise of Islam, may itself be reckoned to border
on magic. What the papyri may yet reveal of the original cult
of Set-- and of such survivals as have found their way into the
wellsprings of Western thought--remains to be seen.