Self-deification through Xeper

The Temple of Set affirms self-deification through Xeper, an ancient Egyptian word meaning "to come into being" or "to become," which the Temple takes as its central principle. Founded in 1975 by Michael Aquino after a split from the Church of Satan, the Temple venerates Set as a real deity representing isolate, individual consciousness, and it teaches a path of deliberate self-development by which the practitioner strengthens and immortalises the individual psyche, the aim being the conscious evolution of the self toward a divine condition. Michael Aquino, a former Church of Satan priest, split from LaVey's organisation in June 1975 over both administrative disagreements and a fundamental theological difference: where LaVey held Satan to be a symbol rather than a literal being, Aquino affirmed Set as a real, independently existing intelligence.

Aquino described receiving the Temple's founding document, The Book of Coming Forth by Night, through a ritual working in June 1975 in which he held Set himself dictated the text, including the instruction to use the ancient Egyptian name Set rather than the Judeo-Christian Satan, since the Temple holds Set predates and is independent of that later, and in its view distorting, biblical reworking of the same being.

Xeper names both the goal and the process: the ongoing, willed becoming of the self into a higher, self-created being. This distinguishes the Temple of Set from the atheistic Satanists, since it affirms a real god (Set) and a genuine metaphysical project of self-deification, and it organises members in a graded, initiatory structure of study and practice. The affirmation is presented here as the Temple describes its own teaching, an esoteric philosophy of individual becoming under the patronage of Set.

Advancement within the Temple follows a graded initiatory structure of six degrees, administered by its Priesthood of Set and governed by a Council of Nine, with promotion based on demonstrated personal development through study, including a structured correspondence curriculum, rather than on time served. This genuinely esoteric, initiatory structure, restricting fuller teaching to members who progress through its internal curriculum, distinguishes the Temple's organisational model from both the more publicly accessible Church of Satan and from the decentralised, non-hierarchical character of most modern Pagan and occult movements. Members progress through a correspondence-based curriculum, the Crystal Tablet of Set, before being considered for higher initiation, a structure intended to ensure that advancement reflects genuine philosophical and magical development rather than mere seniority.