Creative Acts and the Egyptian God Set

 

Barry William Hale, Colour Codex: H&H#7 (Heaven & Hell no. 7)

In my last blog post about the Creative Acts exhibition at State Library Victoria I explained that each case of objects in featured artist Barry William Hale’s part of the exhibition would be explained. We will focus on the relationship between the cases and Hale’s commissioned artwork, his other artistic output, and magickal practice. In this blog post we will focus on the ancient Egyptian god, Set, who appears in the Magic case as both a contemporary figurine belonging to Hale, and an ancient Egyptian amulet loaned by the Chau Chak Wing Museum. 

Egyptian god Set figurine, polymer compound, 1997. Courtesy of Barry William Hale

Who is Set?

Set is the ancient Egyptian god of strength, cunning and protective power, as well as deserts, storms, disorder, violence, and foreigners. One of his most common epithets was “great of strength”, he was the lord of metals and the hardest metal known to the Egyptians – iron – was called “the bones of Set”. An ancient deity, attested from earliest times and up to the late dynastic age, throughout Egypt’s long history Set was perceived as both a positive and negative force.

One of the gods composing the Ennead of Heliopolis: Atum, Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys, in the Heliopolitan creation myth Set is the son of Nut and Geb, and brother of Isis, Osiris, and Nephthys. Adversarial from birth, Pyramid Text 205 claims that rather than being born the usual way, Set savagely tore himself free from Nut’s womb. Plutarch describes Set’s birth as “not in due season or manner, but with a blow he broke through his mother’s side and leapt forth”.   

Ancient Egyptian religion was heavily based on the physical landscape. The god Osiris represented the fertile land around the River Nile; kemet the “Black Land” and ma’at or order, while Set represented the desert, deshret the “Red Land” and isfet, or chaos. According to the ancient Egyptians dualistic view of the cosmos, Set was therefore placed in juxtaposition with Osiris, the god who ruled the land with order and stability through pharaonic kingship.

 

The desert and the fertile zone around the Nile

This oppositional dualism based in the landscape is probably best known from the Egyptian myth of kingship in which Osiris is the mythical prototype of the pharaoh and Set is a usurper who kills and mutilates his own brother. Isis, Osiris’ sister-wife and the personification of the throne, reassembles his corpse and resurrects him long enough to conceive his son and heir, Horus. When Horus grows up he takes revenge on Set. In the myth of kingship the character of Set demonstrates how kingship should not proceed: that is, it should not be transmitted from a pharaoh to his brother, but rather from a pharaoh to his son, so not from Osiris to Set, but from Osiris to Horus. Think of the movie The Lion King with Osiris as Mufasa, Horus as Simba, and Set as Scar.    

Osiris 

But some Egyptian pharaohs identified with Set: the figure of Set appears on the serekh or “Horus name” of Second Dynasty pharaohs Peribsen (2700 BCE) and Khasekhemwy (2686 BCE). The motif of Seth as the murderer of Osiris dates back to the Pyramid Texts (the Old Kingdom, 2686–2181 BCE). By the Middle Kingdom (2055–1650 BCE) Set was assimilated into solar theology as the god who stood in the bow of Re, the sun god’s, barque to repel the cosmic serpent, Apep. Set was the patron deity of the foreign Hyksos Dynasty from the Levant (1637–1529 BCE); and during the New Kingdom (1550–1069 BCE) he was the patron deity of the Ramesside Dynasty. After Egypt was conquered by several foreign nations during the Third Intermediate and Late Periods (1069 –332 BCE), Set acquired negative associations (again) because of his associations as the god of foreigners. During the Late Period (747–332 BCE) representations of Set were often changed into the form of more acceptable deities of similar appearance such as Thoth.

 

Statue of Ramesses III with Horus and Seth, Egypt Museum, Cairo

     

Barry William Hale, Horus/Set Diary sketch

Set’s Appearance

In his earliest form Set was depicted as a composite animal with the body of a dog, a long curved snout, truncated square ears, and a raised tail, as depicted on a ceremonial mace head of King Scorpion dating to the Naqada II period (3500–3100 BCE). An animal on an ivory figurine from Mahasna dating to the Naqada I (4000 – 3500 BCE) might precede this, although its ears are pointed and it does not have a tail. In later examples the Set animal’s tail is tufted, forked, or an inverted arrow shape. Scholars are in disagreement as to the Set animal’s zoological identity and have suggested an ass, oryx, antelope, greyhound, fennec fox, jerboa, camel, okapi, long-snouted mouse, aardvark, giraffe, hog or boar, hare, jackal, tapir, and other animals. It is probably a composite animal, possibly related to the iconography of the griffin. The composite nature of the Set animal may suggest his chaotic function. 

Detail of Votive Macehead, Naqada II period

 

Ivory from El Mahasna, Naqada I period

 

Set animals from the Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom

Egyptian gods were distinguished by their head or headdresses. Set is also depicted with a human body and the Set animal’s head and this form of his iconography is particularly common during the New Kingdom (as seen above). Some examples depict Set wearing the White Crown of Upper Egypt, the Double Crown of all Egypt, or fused with Horus as a two-headed deity – symbolically binding the rulership of Upper and Lower Egypt. During the Late Period, Set is depicted as a donkey or as having a donkey’s head. He is also depicted with a flamingo head. In the Temple of Amun at Hibis in the el-Kharga Oasis he is represented as a winged figure slaying the serpent Apep.

 

Seth Slaying a Serpent, Temple of Amun at Hibis. Late Period 521–486 BCE. Charles K. Wilkinson

The Set Amulet

Set was frequently invoked or mentioned in magical spells where his power was utilised against other hostile deities or against conditions which were relevant his mythology. Amulets of Set are not common, although some which are extant are finely made. The Set amulet on display in the Creative Acts exhibition at State Library Victoria has been lent to us by the Chau Chak Wing Museum and is part of the Nicholson Collection belonging to the University of Sydney. It measures 1.3 x 0.5 cm, is perforated lengthwise, and was surely intended to be worn.  

Amulets are small protective charms that could also bestow certain qualities upon the wearer. In Egyptian they are called meket, neher or sar (all deriving from verbs meaning “to protect”) and wedja (“well-being”). Egyptian amulets date back to the Pre-Dynastic period and are made from stone, metal, glass and most commonly faience. The Set amulet is made of white faience and has figures crudely carved in low relief on both sides. One side depicts a crouching animal, which may be the Set animal – although it does not have a curved snout, truncated ears or a tail – and in the upper left a possible game board hieroglyph, while the other side depicts an anthropomorphic figure with a protruding profile, possibly intended as the Set animal head, and the reed hieroglyph. The museum dates it to between the Late New Kingdom (Ramesside Dynasty 1295–1186 BCE) and the Ptolemaic Period (332–30 BCE). We have displayed the amulet with the anthropomorphic side on view to complement artist Barry William Hale’s Set statue placed to the right. 

     

White faience amulet depicting the Egyptian Seth animal. Glazed composition (faience). On loan from Nicholson Collection, Chau Chak Wing Museum, The University of Sydney Donated by Mrs M L (Molly) St Vincent Welch in memory of Lieutenant Colonel J B St Vincent Welch DSO (1881 – 1919) and Dr J B St Vincent Welch 2017NM2017.166

Set in Modern Magick

So what is Hale’s interest in Set? Mythologically, although Set was the sun god’s defender against the great chaos serpent Apep (in Greek, Apophis) he could also be identified with it, and he was identified by the Greeks (who called him Seth) with their own rebellious god Typhon.[1] Moving many centuries ahead in time to the magical revival of the late nineteenth century CE, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn infused their ritual program with aspects of ancient Egyptian religion, often through a Greek or Latin lens. In one example, higher degree members encountered the myth of Isis and Osiris, as told in Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride, in symbolic form through the mystical “L.V.X. signs”. These encapsulated the story of the Egyptian god Osiris’ murder by Typhon (Seth), the subsequent mourning of Isis, and Osiris’ eventual resurrection, syncretising this with Christianity by associating Osiris with the crucified Christ. Golden Dawn renegade student Aleister Crowley also utilised the Egyptian myth of kingship when breaking with the Order and establishing his new religion of Thelema. 

The L.V. X Signs

The L.V. X. Signs are a ritual expression of the “Formula of IAO” which concerns death and rebirth. As Crowley explained, “this Formula is the principal and most characteristic formula of Osiris, of the Redemption of Mankind. I is Isis, Nature, ruined by A, Apophis the Destroyer, and restored to life by the Redeemer Osiris.” Crowley later identified the letter A in IAO with the Hebrew letter Ayin, which in magickal Kabbalistic tarot is attributed to The Devil. The Devil, Satan, and Set are identified with the messenger of the New Aeon, Aiwass.

According to Crowley (1929, 35–6): This “Devil” is called Satan or Shaitan, and regarded with horror by people who are ignorant of his formula, and, imagining themselves to be evil, accuse Nature herself of their own phantasmal crime. Satan is Saturn, Set, Abrasax, Adad, Adonis, Attis, Adam, Adonai, etc. The most serious charge against him is that he is the Sun in the South. The Ancient Initiates, dwelling as they did in lands whose blood was the water of the Nile or the Euphrates, connected the South with life-withering heat, and cursed that quarter where the solar darts were deadliest... Capricornus is moreover the sign which the sun enterers when he reaches his extreme Southern declination at the Winter Solstice, the season of the death of vegetation, for the folk of the Northern hemisphere. This gave them a second cause for cursing the south. A third; the tyranny of hot, dry, poisonous winds; the menace of deserts or oceans dreadful because mysterious and impassable; these also were connected in their minds with the South. But to us, aware of astronomical facts, this antagonism to the South is a silly superstition which the accidents of their local conditions suggested to our animistic ancestors... We have therefore no scruple in restoring the “devil-worship” of such ideas as those which the laws of sound, and the phenomena of speech and hearing, compel us to connect with the group of “Gods” whose names are based upon ShT, or D, vocalized by the free breath A. For these Names imply the qualities of courage, frankness, energy, pride, power and triumph; they are the words which express the creative and paternal will.

It is this “god of the south” which has also inspired Hale to interpret Australia’s red kangaroo as a figure pertaining to Set. 

 

Barry William Hale, Sketch of Kangaroo, Waratah and Sigils 1994. Ink on paper. Creative Acts exhibition, State Library Victoria. Photo by Eugene Hyland.

To give the last word to Hale, he explains: There is great power in the things that people are afraid of. “The Devil” is the name a new regime gives to the God(s) of those they oppress. These repressed forces become the locus of forbidden power imprisoned by the walls of taboo. For me, these Crowned Anarchies become the agencies of liberation.

Barry William Hale, Wheels of Heaven & Hell 231

Creative Acts: Artists and their inspirations runs until May 2026 and is in the Victoria Gallery at State Library Victoria, 328 Swanston Street, Melbourne 3000, Australia

Further Reading

Crowley, Aleister. 1929. Magick in Theory and Practice. Paris: Lecram Press.

Griffiths, John Gwyn. (trans). 1970. Plutarch’s De Iside Et Osiride. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Lichtheim, Miriam. 2019. Ancient Egyptian Literature. Oakland: University of California Press.

Te Velde, Herman. 1967. Seth: God of Confusion. Leiden: Brill.

Tully, Caroline. 2024. ‘Lifting the Veil of Isis: Egyptian Reception and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.’ In Alternative Egyptology: Papers in Honour of Willem van Haarlem, edited by Ben van den Bercken. Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam.

Tully, Caroline. 2020. ‘Celtic Egyptians: Isis Priests of the Lineage of Scota.’ In Ancient Egypt in the Modern Imagination, edited by Eleanor Dobson and Nichola Tonks, 145–160. London: Bloomsbury.

Tully, Caroline. 2018. ‘Egyptosophy in the British Museum: Florence Farr, the Egyptian Adept and the Ka.’ In The Occult Imagination in Britain, 1875–1947, edited by Christine Ferguson and Andrew Radford, 131–145. London: Routledge.

Tully, Caroline. 2010. ‘Walk Like an Egyptian: Egypt as Authority in Aleister Crowley’s Reception of The Book of the Law.’ The Pomegranate: International Journal of Pagan Studies 12:1. 2010.

Wilkinson, Richard H. 1992. Reading Egyptian Art: A Hieroglyphic Guide to Ancient Egyptian Painting and Sculpture. London: Thames and Hudson.

Wilkinson, Richard H. 2003. The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. London: Thames and Hudson.

Wilson, Penelope. 2003. Hieroglyphs: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

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[1] Although, technically, Set is a storm god and was identified with the Levantine storm god Baal, who was identified with the Greek storm god Zeus, while Osiris was an earth/underworld god, identified with the Greek Hades.