Appendix Part iii

Xeper. Now an Egyptian verb, like an English verb, can have several forms depending on its number, tense, voice, and mood. (Unlike an English verb, Egyptian verbs also have gender.) You can have a verb such as "stative" which can be conjugated (I run; you run; he, she or it runs; we run—I am running—I ran—etc.). There are about 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 the sentence Xepera Xeper Xeperu. It is first person, stative. Now while you're trying to remember your High School grammar as to what tense "stative" is—you 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. Firstly 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 something that has taken place. You are not talking about something taking place at the 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 apprehensions. We are aware that something has occurred to give the particular Being we 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 aware that we have had a moment wherein we acted as gods. We did something divine—we had some peak experience—we made some life-altering choice—and it has produced the creatures 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 and Create ourselves—or 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 religions this desire is a return to the Divine in one way or another (either by union, or by being in the divine presence in some place with far too much harp music). Well that doesn't work—you 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 want 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 magical introspection do we discover that we have passed through them, and can therefore say (with both happiness and terror) "I Have Come Into Being." In the Bremmer-Rhind papyrus this idea is reflected in the fact that Xepera's first two children are Shu (Reason) and Tefnut (Peak Emotions). Through these two Human experiences we can detect the divine, and having detected it learn to Work with it to 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 to 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. The experience might be going into a drugstore to buy a malted milk and meeting the person that becomes your spouse for the next fifty years. Well, that was divine moment; it both Limited and Created your Life. A Christian would say it was the 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 humans—and in fact the reason they/we invented religion in the first place—is that most divine experiences 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 them with magic, or try to deny them by exerting the meaningless nature of the Cosmos. But the Setian, knowing that only through such experiences can he or she find the metamorphosis that our philosophy finds both achievable and desirable, seeks 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 individualistic nature of Xeper (Remember? First Person verb).

This tells you many things about Xeper, the verb. It is NOT continuous. All events do not feed it equally. It is not fully under conscious control, rather consciousness 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 that 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 absolutely personal, but some of its properties (such as being fed/triggered by peak experiences) lead to certain group functions as facilitators. It Limits you—Divine decisions always involve a road not taken. It Creates you—Divine 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 noun. It is usually translated into English as manifestation or "The thing that happened." The plural of the noun is Xeperu. When we talk about our "Xeper" we are talking about a very large thing indeed—and we usually (in our normal slug like mode) 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 the Temple of Set take justifiable pride in the magical items they create. It's easy to see one's magic in a necklace one makes. However as magicians what we do is a make a very large magical object, existing on many levels of reality. Our entire lives considered at any moment is a Xeper, a manifestation. If you can think of all the things that you've wrought—changes in your mind/body complex, your recognition, your reputation... all of those things that represent what you have brought to this Earth—as a giant talisman, then you've got a handle on Xeper the noun. Many of you may have written a Rune to pull something—gold or love—out of the Unmanifest. 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. These extensions can be a thought that you've pulled to a developed conscious level from an intuition—which would represent two levels of being in your Subjective Universe. These extensions can be what others think of you. The extensions are particularity evident in actions that represent a first or personal best effort at some thing. Hence if you really want to Xeper, conquer fear by doing something you didn't think you could. Or find a mystery and bring it to the surface of your understanding—or 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 exists as a noun, you can interact with the Xeper of others—you are affected (usually blindly) 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. Egyptian 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 standard translation is miracle. The Egyptians knew the Sign of something Coming Into Being was the meaningful coincidence. We know too—either bu Shu ("What were the odds of that happening?"), or by Tefnut ("It sent shivers down my spine."). The noun Xeperi shows that manifestations are not continuous, but discrete—actions at a distance—or more simply, magic. Xeper has occurred when two discrete systems resonate with one another. Another form of Xeperi is that moment of communication of wordless 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 the Xeper of the Aeon, and help fulfill her purpose of exporting Xeper into the Objective 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 personal 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 Being, 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 Evolution in the objective universe, and then upon the Evolution of your own subjective 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 test—just as Xeper in yourself gains as you gain new being.

See Appendix Part iv