Sunday, November 11, 2012

SET-The Adversary


Set, master of darkness and the beasts that hunt by night-- advocate of the strong, devourer of the weak. With his legions of serpents and hordes of scorpions and spiders, he preys on the fallen and conspires against the pure. He is lord over every variety of rain and cloud, he brews the most potent storms, and he wracks the cities and the spirits of men with shrieking, violent winds.
Set is the eternal adversary, the shaitan.
At least, this is what his enemies and chroniclers would have us believe. On another level he represents the aspiration of the genetic drive for survival, the animal response, the raw instinct, the drive to ride the natural cycle of the hunter and the hunted. His tools include trickery, subtlety, the refined arts of guerrilla warfare and the silver tongue. His cunning is unmatched, as is his mastery of the nefarious disciplines of sabotage and deceit. He is an utterly immoral being, using whatever means will achieve his ends. In this light (or in the absence thereof), his evil is not that of a blind, raging monster, but rather that of the absence of emotion and conscience, the total domination of will and cold intellect over the other facilities.