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                     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