Michael Aquino

Michael Aquino was a founder and major author of the Temple of Set. His religious work is central to the Temple's emergence from the Church of Satan and to the development of modern Setianism. Scholarship places that development within the history of the Left-hand path.^[1]

From Satanism to a Setian framework#

The Temple of Set formed in 1975. Its later teaching gives the Egyptian name Set a central position and uses Xeper to describe coming into being. Aquino's role in this development belongs to the modern history of the movement; it does not establish an unbroken institution reaching back to ancient Egypt.^[1]

The Temple's public introduction emphasizes self-awareness, self-knowledge, and self-creation. These ideas help explain the setting in which Aquino's writings were read, although the organization contains other authors and interpretations as well.^[2]

Xeper and later interpretation#

Don Webb's essay on Xeper explicitly discusses Aquino while developing its own understanding of the word. The essay relates individual transformation, freedom, knowledge, and the responsibility of the practitioner. It also shows that a religious concept can receive further elaboration after its initial formulation.^[3]

Aquino's place in the history of Satanism is therefore both institutional and intellectual. A comparison with LaVey should examine their actual accounts of deity, selfhood, and religious authority. A comparison with the High Satanic Church likewise needs to distinguish Satan-centered acausal theology from the Temple's Setian vocabulary. Similar uses of dark imagery do not settle those doctrinal differences.

See also#

• Temple of Set
• Setianism
• Initiation

This encyclopedia covers traditions beyond the High Satanic Church. Church doctrine is identified as such when it appears.