Xeper: The Eternal Word of Set

by Don Webb
I am the Magus of the Word Xeper (pronounced Khefer), an English language coinag
e expressing an Egyptian verb written as a stylized scarab and meaning "I Have C
ome Into Being." This Word generates the Aeon of Set, and is the current form of
the Eternal Word of the Prince of Darkness. To Know this Word is to know that t
he ultimate responsibility for the evolution of your psyche is in your hands. It
is the Word of freedom, ecstasy, fearful responsibility, and the root of all Ma
gic.
An Aeon is a world. As human beings we are familiar with many "worlds". We can t
alk about the "world of Thomas Jefferson" or the "world of Newton". Magical worl
ds are created by Wordsby the verbal power of mankind to express a divine princip
lethrough which the effect of that Utterance on the objective universe brings abo
ut the creation of the world. The Word serves as a gateway for the mind seeking
to enter the world it defines, and the effect of an Utterance of a Word will cau
se many worlds to be reconfigured in order to Hear it. The Aeon of Set is Create
d by the Word "Xeper." Xeper is an Egyptian verb meaning "I Have Come Into Being
." Xeper is the experience of an individual psyche becoming aware of its own exi
stence and deciding to expand and evolve that existence through its own actions.
Xeper has been experienced by anyone who has decided to seek after his or her o
wn development.
Awareness of Xeper usually begins with a moment of rebellion against the spiritu
al status quo. In this sense Xeper is a "Satanic" word, and the condition that l
ed to its re-emergence on this Earth began in the Working called the Church of S
atan. Its properties transcend and are in some ways opposed to that matrix. It i
s the nature of Self-Creation that it continually Re-creates its matrix in the o
bjective universe so that the subjective universe can evolve and expand. To expe
rience that moment of Xeper, of emergent self-divinity one must Love two things
with all of one's heart. The first of these is Freedom, because only in Freedom
can one take the steps (if initially only mentally) that create and limit the Se
lf. The second thing one must Love is Knowledge. This isn't the same thing as in
formation; this is a transformative Understanding of those things within us and
beyond us that determine who we are.
The symbols of Xeper are the scarab beetle and the dawning sun. The beetle is sy
mbolic of self trust and hard work. The beetle goes through very different stage
s from egg to larva to pupa to beetle. Each stage has its own Work, a particular
way of gathering energy and materials, particular ways of transforming them. It
senses its own evolution and works toward iteven though the momentum of that evo
lution will change its shape radicallytaking it at the appropriate time into unkn
own worlds and new modes of Being. The dawn is symbolic of the way the world is
perceived. Unlike the followers of conventional religion who posses guidebooks t
hat explain the world away, the Seeker after Xeper is looking for an intensifica
tion of his or her own Being so that the world may be made intelligible in his o
r her own light. In this darkling universe there are no lights save for those yo
u create through your hard work, your spiritual rebellion, your seeking after th
e mysteries of your own choosing. When that light dawns, it will by its very nat
ure not only give you moments of clarity about the things in your life closest t
o you, it will likewise show you new horizonshorizons for you and you alone to ex
plore. This Secret was known symbolically to the Egyptiansthey identified their g
od Xepera, the Self-Created One with Hrumachis, the god of the Horizon. This Sec
ret was also known (at a divine level) by Aleister Crowley, who predicted that t
he Aeon of Hrumachis would surpass his own.
Set, the Egyptian god of Darkness, is the Divine origin of the Word. Set's name
ultimately means the "Separator" or "Isolator". His chief enemies are the gods o

f Stasis and Mindlessness. The first of these is Osiris, Death himself. Set's sl
aying of Osiris has a two-fold significance for the seeker of Xeper. Firstly thi
s represents the slaying of old thought patterns; the dethroning of those intern
al gods that we have received from society. On a second level this was the act b
y which Set, alone of all the gods of ancient Egypt, became deathless. The Left
Hand Path is a quest to Become an immortal, potent, and powerful Essence.
Set's other enemy is the demon of mindless chaos, Apep. Set is said to slay this
creature every night just before dawn. This symbolizes overcoming self doubt an
d delusion, of acting at the times of greatest despair, or not being lulled to s
leep by the powerful self-hypnotizing engines of mankind. Set achieves (on a div
ine level) this isolation from the universe so that he may say, "Xeper" = "I Hav
e Come Into Being." Each of these breaksthe break from the dead past (by slaying
Osiris) and the break from the confused present (by slaying Apep)is done for the
sake of a self-determined future. One of Set's cult titles, Set-Heh, means God o
f Unending Futurity.
Set did not receive the aid of other gods in his two quests, nor does Set give a
id to those who seek to emulate these quests on a human level. Those who struggl
e (like Set) with the principle of Xeper are of his Essence. Their actions are e
ssentially the same. Those who want to share their quests and pool their knowled
ge seek after Set's chief tool of His Aeon, the Temple of Set. It is the most co
ncentrated environment for the study of Xeper, both as noun and verb. Xeper can
not be studied as an abstract intellectual idea, it must be experienced. One can
read about Justice, or one can hope for it, but to truly Know Justice you must
bring it into Being. One can read about Xeper, as your interest in secret things
has brought you to do. You can hope for it. Or you can seek the solitary self-t
ransformation that will cause you to experience it. The Temple of Set represents
a concentration of the Aeon; like Set himself, it does not answer prayers, and
by its very Being provides challenges for those who would seek after the Word of
Xeper. It is the embodiment of the Emerald Dawn envisioned by the Fraternitas S
aturni. We are not necessarily a "Satanic" order, other than we Understand that
for Initiation on the Left Hand Path to be effective for those who have just beg
un Work on that path, the antinomian aspect of the Work does Need to be fulfille
d by some means. The imagery of the Black Arts provides that Need for many, but
it likewise can be limiting as it is mastered. Our predecessor was caught by thi
s trap, and we hope by exploring the manifestations of the principle of Xeper in
many cultures and times and in our own creations to have much further horizons.
Diabolical imagery is useful only in a culturally bound antinomian sense; beyon
d this it represents a new stasis to be discarded.
Xeper. Now an Egyptian verb, like an English verb, can have several forms depend
ing on its number, tense, voice, and mood. (Unlike an English verb, Egyptian ver
bs also have gender.) You can have a verb such as "stative" which can be conjuga
ted (I run; you run; he, she or it runs; we runI am runningI ranetc.). There are ab
out 140 forms for an English verb (I remember this because my Junior High School
Latin teacher often made us write the full conjugation of English verbs when he
was mad at us). We happen to know the tense and person of the verb Xeper from t
he sentence Xepera Xeper Xeperu. It is first person, stative. Now while you're t
rying to remember your High School grammar as to what tense "stative" isyou won't
. We don't have the tense in English. It refers to a past event that modifies a
current state. We do have first person, of course; that means that 'I' did it.
The proper translation of the verb Xeper is "I Have Come Into Being." Now there
are some implications of this that we in the Temple have not yet considered. Fir
stly the verb refers to a moment that HAS happened that explains why we are here
. When you write or speak or think the word "Xeper" you are talking about someth
ing that has taken place. You are not talking about something taking place at th
e moment of the speech act. Xeper is NOT a continuous process. It is a series of
events, whose presence we sense either through reason, or through divine appreh

ensions. We are aware that something has occurred to give the particular Being w
e have at any moment. We are aware that whatever the great shaping potential of
that something we don't have that potential at this moment. In short we are awar
e that we have had a moment wherein we acted as gods. We did something divinewe h
ad some peak experiencewe made some life-altering choiceand it has produced the cr
eatures we are now. Now this produces two great realizations:
First, we are aware that we have a capacity beyond wherever and whenever we are
right now to both Limit and Create ourselves. All moments of Xeper both Limit an
d Create ourselvesor to use both of those ideas at the same time, all moments of
Xeper Isolate ourselves from the Cosmos.
Second, we want to do this again. Humankind wants the Divine. In erroneous relig
ions this desire is a return to the Divine in one way or another (either by unio
n, or by being in the divine presence in some place with far too much harp music
). Well that doesn't workyou can't go back to the state where Xeper last occurred
. You can't go back to a previous divine state any more than you can fold an oak
back into an acorn. You can only go forward to another divine state. If you wan
t to both achieve and experience your godhood, you've got to go forward. In our
Earthly incarnation we never fully experience the divine moment; only through ma
gical introspection do we discover that we have passed through them, and can the
refore say (with both happiness and terror) "I Have Come Into Being." In the Bre
mmer-Rhind papyrus this idea is reflected in the fact that Xepera's first two ch
ildren are Shu (Reason) and Tefnut (Peak Emotions). Through these two Human expe
riences we can detect the divine, and having detected it learn to Work with it t
o have more divine experiences.
Now the first question is: how do I have more divine experiences? Xeper happens
to every sapient being (note I didn't say every intelligent being, I'll return t
o that point in a future article). Most humans (and most of us, most of the time
) stumble across those experiences that would set up the conditions so that they
could later say "Xeper" if they had a large enough brain to hold the concept. T
he experience might be going into a drugstore to buy a malted milk and meeting t
he person that becomes your spouse for the next fifty years. Well, that was divi
ne moment; it both Limited and Created your Life. A Christian would say it was t
he hand of God, a Hindu would invoke Karma. But we know who did it: that man or
woman we face in the mirror everyday. The scary thing for all humansand in fact t
he reason they/we invented religion in the first placeis that most divine experie
nces occur blindly. So most humans either ask some fairy tale on bended knee not
to give them bad experiences, or if they're a little braver try to influence th
em with magic, or try to deny them by exerting the meaningless nature of the Cos
mos. But the Setian, knowing that only through such experiences can he or she fi
nd the metamorphosis that our philosophy finds both achievable and desirable, se
eks out the divine experience. I can't tell you where to find yours. If you did
what I did, you would mainly find that it didn't work. That is because of the in
dividualistic nature of Xeper (Remember? First Person verb).
This tells you many things about Xeper, the verb. It is NOT continuous. All even
ts do not feed it equally. It is not fully under conscious control, rather consc
iousness and emotion arise from it; but can and must be used to seek more of it.
This means that Xeper is NOT simple self-development or self-improvement, but t
hat those things chosen rationally can put us in the place where Xeper can occur
. All sapient beings experience Xeper, but those who can name it and Understand
its purpose have a much better chance of achieving it. The paths to it are absol
utely personal, but some of its properties (such as being fed/triggered by peak
experiences) lead to certain group functions as facilitators. It Limits youDivine
decisions always involve a road not taken. It Creates youDivine decisions always
lead to much more than can be rationally deduced. When you can say "Xeper" you
are in some way a different person.

The noun "Xeper"that thing we speak of us as our "Xeper"is likewise an Egyptian no

un. It is usually translated into English as manifestation or "The thing that ha
ppened." The plural of the noun is Xeperu. When we talk about our "Xeper" we are
talking about a very large thing indeedand we usually (in our normal slug like m
ode) give very little thought to it. Yet if we simply Become aware of Xeper our
personal magical and philosophical horizons greatly expand. Many magicians in th
e Temple of Set take justifiable pride in the magical items they create. It's ea
sy to see one's magic in a necklace one makes. However as magicians what we do i
s a make a very large magical object, existing on many levels of reality. Our en
tire lives considered at any moment is a Xeper, a manifestation. If you can thin
k of all the things that you've wroughtchanges in your mind/body complex, your re
cognition, your reputation... all of those things that represent what you have b
rought to this Earthas a giant talisman, then you've got a handle on Xeper the no
un. Many of you may have written a Rune to pull somethinggold or loveout of the Un
manifest. That Rune is a tiny, tiny version of the great talisman your Xeper is.
The creation of Xeper is the Working whereby we attract what we're going to get
in this life, and the divine memory we will have of this life.
Xeper, the noun, is the extension of existence to a further level of Being. Thes
e extensions can be a thought that you've pulled to a developed conscious level
from an intuitionwhich would represent two levels of being in your Subjective Uni
verse. These extensions can be what others think of you. The extensions are part
icularity evident in actions that represent a first or personal best effort at s
ome thing. Hence if you really want to Xeper, conquer fear by doing something yo
u didn't think you could. Or find a mystery and bring it to the surface of your
understandingor better yet the understanding of others. Or create something new (
the last would be an example of the verb for Create, S'Xeper). Since Xeper exist
s as a noun, you can interact with the Xeper of othersyou are affected (usually b
lindly) by the Work of past magicians, or if you have learned the art of Shaping
and Seeking your own Xeper first you can consciously Work with other's products
. An excellent example of this would be the Wewelsburg Working.
I'll leave you with one other word for your word-hoard: the dual noun Xeperi. Eg
yptian nouns can be singular (one cat), dual (two cats) or plural (too many cats
). The noun Xeperi can best be translated as synchronicity, although the standar
d translation is miracle. The Egyptians knew the Sign of something Coming Into B
eing was the meaningful coincidence. We know tooeither bu Shu ("What were the odd
s of that happening?"), or by Tefnut ("It sent shivers down my spine."). The nou
n Xeperi shows that manifestations are not continuous, but discreteactions at a d
istanceor more simply, magic. Xeper has occurred when two discrete systems resona
te with one another. Another form of Xeperi is that moment of communication of w
ordless magical information with one another. The most familiar form of this is
through our interactions with the Aeon, and as before the more adept you are at
Seeking and Shaping your own Xeper, the more you can positively interact with th
e Xeper of the Aeon, and help fulfill her purpose of exporting Xeper into the Ob
jective Universe.
Think about these things. Think about them till that shiver runs down your back.
Then put this aside for a while and come back to it. Then, after the most perso
nal and individual of experimentation you too can Know and Heed the Law: Xepera
Xeper Xeperu = "I Have Come Into Being, and by the Process of my Coming Into Bei
ng, the Process of Coming Into Being is Established."
I will speak on the Word's history, and I will ask you all to think on this Evol
ution in the objective universe, and then upon the Evolution of your own subject
ive universe: how you, the reader, has experienced Xeper. With each evolution of
the Word, note how it doesn't lose meaning, but gains through each historical t
estjust as Xeper in yourself gains as you gain new being.
The formula "Xepera Xeper Xeperu" has been traced by French Egyptologists back t

o the First Intermediate period. There it was a formula of power for finding mea
ning when the Divine Kingship, the most important source of order, had collapsed
. This was probably the birth of the Left Hand Paththe idea that meaning can only
come from the individual. "Xeper" was the last fortress, the mind and body of t
he individual. "Xeper" was the word of anyone who would not let the divine princ
iple of Isolation and Evolution fail.
The second appearance was in Ramses III's time. The formula was used to empower
travelers through the desert. "Xeper" was a touchstone for those who extend exis
tence by passing boundaries. "Xeper" was the word of the extender of Egyptof the
Known Order.
The third appearance was at the beginning of the Hermetic tradition. "Xeper" bec
ame the word of the individual magician seeking two types of power: power to see
through the illusions of this world, and power for a coherent afterlife. These
practitioners began a magical practice that went beyond the state goals of Egypt
or Greece or Rome.
The fourth appearanceconnected with the purchase of Budge's Egyptian Language by
a Priest of Mendeswas very different. The Left Hand Path was up and running. The
Word Worked on a matrix of its own making. Michael Aquino had to find the word (
cast in Roman and Greek letters) in a translation from its last appearance. He d
idn't write the Rhind papyrus, any more than its author came up with the spell o
f Continuous Re-Creation. But his Utterance of that Wordin a matrix conditioned b
y its last appearanceproduced a new access to energy and power beyond any previou
s utterances. Aquino's Utterance in 1975 e.v. was the Utterance of the Word of A
eons, defining the process that each sapient being must experience in order to c
hange him- or herself. Xeper is the concept upon which the cycles of manifestati
on are actualized (in both the noumenological and phenomenological worlds). The
actual activity of cyclical dynamism is generated by the formula of Xepera Xeper
Xeperu, and my Remanifestation of the Word with my own Utterance of Xeper on th
e Spring Equinox of 1996 e.v. will raise and attune the imagination of the world
to a new and permanent understanding of the principle.
My Utterance of the Word is in the tradition of Michael Aquino's. I am Uttering
the Word into a Matrix of its own conditioning. The results should be stronger a
nd further reaching than Michael Aquino's Utterancejust as he or she that follows
me will extend the Word further.
Each Pharaoh attempted to extend the borders of the country further than his pre
decessor. I am extending the possibilities for Xeper further than Michael Aquino
. My accomplishments will be less; the time of seeing an Aeon being born is very
rare. My job will be to find and articulate more of the properties of Xeper, so
that each student of the Black Arts will have new types of tools for their coll
aboration with Set.
If I manage to extend the boundaries and make there my Oath of Truth, then I wil
l be seen as a successful Magus. If I fail, others will Utter "Xeper," just as m
ankind has been doing for the last four thousand years. It is the job of the Tem
ple to keep the connections of the Word alive, so that long periods of ignorance
come not again. In fact, if we fail utterly then the Word will not be heard on
this earth again.
To those that dare the Black Magic, that take up the uniquely personal challenge
of Xeper, both as a spiritual quest for Self-deification and a psychological ex
ploration of antinomianism, I send greetings, and the sure Knowledge that when y
ou think of Set, He thinks of you.
Xeper.