The Setian break

The schism that produced the Temple of Set in 1975 is documentarily clear. Aquino had risen through the Church’s priesthood; by the early 1970s he held the rank of Priest of Mendes and edited its internal publication. In June 1975 he resigned over LaVey’s decision to begin offering priesthood degrees in exchange for monetary contribution rather than ritual achievement — a decision Aquino regarded as terminal corruption of the Church’s initiatory structure. Within weeks he had conducted a working which he interpreted as receiving an “infernal mandate” — a direct address from the Egyptian god Set — authorising the constitution of a new order to continue the work the Church of Satan had, in his view, abandoned.

The Temple of Set was formally constituted in San Francisco later that year. Its doctrinal position was distinct from LaVey’s on the central question of metaphysical realism: where LaVey’s Satan was an atheistic symbol, the Temple’s Set is presented as a real non-natural entity, the principle of isolate consciousness, accessible through directed magical work. The Temple’s central practice — Xeper, from the Egyptian verb “to come into being” — aims at the deliberate development of the practitioner’s individual self into a stable and divine identity. Setian doctrine treats this as the genuine work of the left-hand path. The Crystal Tablet of Set (1985), compiled by Aquino, remains the Temple’s principal published doctrinal text.