Dr. Lloyd Keane is a priest in the Temple of Set and Master of the Esoteric Order of Beelzebub. With a PhD in psychoanalytic studies and a focus on creativity, art, and imagination as tools for initiation, his work bridges ritual, psychology, and esotericism.
While researching lately, I came across Dr. Keane’s paper exploring Set as a manifestation of the Jungian Self in its most violent and transformative form. As a student of Qabalah, that got me thinking:
- What if Set isn’t a distant god or limited to the Qliphoth, but rather expressed in the very structure of the Tree of Life?
- What if He can be viewed as a unifying principle helping us overcome stagnation and entropy?
In this one, I’ll share reflections for anyone drawn to Set but rooted in the Qabalistic system. Based on common sense, neither is said to be true by ‘scholars’ and ‘high adepts.’ So feel free to take them with a grain of salt.
The Violent Self
Keane interprets Set through the Jungian concept of the Self, the totality of the psyche with collective, universal aspects. As an archetype, the Self unifies polarities:
- The light and the shadow,
- The king and the adversary,
- The builder or savior and the destroyer.
Psychological Upheaval
Jung believed that the Self, when encountered in full force, is often overwhelming. Keane refers to Bangor University philosophy professor Lucy Huskinson.
In her work on its violent nature, she describes the Self as a force that breaks down everything the ego thought was stable so it can rebuild something real.
From such an angle, Set isn’t just a god of darkness but a force of psychological upheaval. It brings the Black Flame, not as a gift of pleasure, but as a fire you have to survive.
- The Setian path is not about comfort or worship.
- It’s about confrontation with the unknown Self and the will to reshape and transform.
Keane also refers to Don Webb’s The Essential Guide of The LHP, which reveals that while the gift helped us advance in many ways, it brought:
- Fear,
- Dread,
- Anxiety,
- Etc.
And since these are all Geburah, this brings us to the Tree of Life.
Binah
Set abhors stagnation and limitations that are really Saturn Binah. Associated with things like Academia, Binah translates into:
- A stasis or stability from which there is little to no progress.
- Think of the Atom, for instance.
Set and The Three Pillars
Qabalistically, the Shadow is part of the Nephesh, the personal subconscious, which resides in Yesod, the sphere of the Moon. The Self, or Neshamah, sits in Tiphereth, which is above Yesod. Based on the Three Pillars division:
- The Middle Pillar = Consciousness.
- The Side Pillars = Function.
The key detail is that while only the Side Pillars can do the heavy lifting, they need to be illuminated by the Middle Pillar. It is what separates the mystic from the practical occultist:
- The first stays in the Middle Pillar.
- The second engages the whole Tree, which seems aligned with the Setian path and the notion of Set as the unifier of ideas and opposites.
Build and Destroy
Engaging the polarity pillars happens through Tiphereth, which Dion Fortune calls the transformative switch. With perfect proportions of Spirit and Matter, Tiphereth is the most balanced point in the Tree, a god among humans.
Tiphereth is also the synthesis of Chesed and Geburah, which are similar to the Five Percenters’ Build Destroy. Now, while exclusive to black people, the goal of the Five Percent is apotheosis, which is also that of the Left-Hand Path.
With all this, engaging the darker aspects of the Self isn’t necessarily limited to the Nephesh. It includes the somewhat latent yet mighty Side Pillars that most people keep in the dark.
Conflict
Set is violent, which implies conflict, Geburah. Set’s counterpart is Horus, a god of vengeance and war, who is associated with Geburah.
Chesed and Geburah are linked by the path of Leo, which, figuratively speaking, is the most conflicting point in the Tree.
The Thelemic Liber V, which implies confrontation, positions you on the path of Leo. And if you think about it, the Elevefold Seal, Liber V’s first gesture, resembles engaging opposites.
Leo is the single sign ruled by the Sun, the mundane chakra of Tiphereth. Leo is also the Strength card, which Crowley associates with the power of taming wild beasts. The wild beasts are really aspects of your psyche that have been sabotaging you quietly.
The Tower
On the lower arc, we have Hod and Netzach linked by the Tower card, the Path of Peh, Mars, aka Geburah. Geburah eliminates and destroys that which no longer serves a purpose. The tower card really destroys false structures.
The Lesser Pentagram moves us from Malkuth, mundane consciousness, to the intersection of Samekh and Peh. The idea is that before experiencing higher principles and currents, we first need to get rid of crap and psychic entropy accumulated in mundane life.
Fighting Stagnation
Going back to Saturn Binah, besides stagnation, that’s entropy and randomness. Malkuth sits on the Throne of Binah. What counteracts Saturn are the Chesed Jupiter and Geburah Mars.
- Chesed, the principle of perpetual change and growth, expands beyond the existing forms.
- Geburah destroys, eliminates, and burns out the forms that interfere with and stagnate progress.
Due to the myth of Chronos, Jupiter gets all the credit for overcoming Saturn, as it’s the primary initiator of change. However, each Sephirah exists in the context of the Tree, while the side pillar Sephiroth are pairs of opposites.
- There’s no Chokmah without Binah.
- No Chesed without Geburah.
Sacrifice and Creativity
“Adjectives used to describe the Self in this numinous capacity include: awefulness, overpoweringness, urgency, and violence. Violence for Huskinson occurs when “the ego is exposed to the creative forces of the Self that seek to destroy the inferior ego-orientation with its tendency to prejudice in order to create a more affluent and well balancedego- orientation…the Self therefore constitutes a primordial experience of the “visionary” mode of artistic creation.“
— Lloyd Keane
The violence “describes the destruction necessary to initiate the vital creative process of individuation, and the Self is “violent” because it is experienced as an overwhelming force that violates the self-contained ego, and forces the ego, often against its will, into a new identity.“
— Lloyd Keane
Once more, we have Build and Destroy:
- Radical transformation
- Creativity and change.
Necessary destruction coupled with visionary or big-picture thinking, which is really Jupiter partnering with Mars.
- The Creative Engine and King, who builds infrastructures.
- The Sacrificial Priestess and Warrior Queen who conquers.
Set can be seen as the principle that lets you leverage both forces, rather than be leveraged by them like most people are.
Muppets of Qabalah
“By attempting to avoid delving into the unconscious, one runs the risk of psychological stasis, becoming a puppet suspended by psychological strings—that is, until something comes along to disrupt the perceived calm.”
— Lloyd Keane
Everyone can be seen as a muppet of the Sephiroth. By increasing our understanding of their impact, we increase control through self-knowledge.
An approach helping with that comes from Phylis Seckler. Seckler advocated accomplishing balance not by excess banishings but by emphasizing your deficits, especially of Chesed and Geburah.
- If you tend to be meek, pushed around, or easily taken advantage of, emphasize Mars.
- If aggression and mindless conflict dominate you, focus on Chesed.
- Repeat with Netzach and Hod.
The ritual to use is the Greater Hexagram, letting you work Paths and Sephiroth, as they’re aspects of the same principles.
The Collective
“I only know there is no point in wishing to know more of the collective unconscious than one gets through dreams and intuition. The more you know of it, the greater and heavier becomes your moral burden because the unconscious contents transform themselves into your individual tasks and duties as soon as they become conscious. Do you want to increase loneliness and misunderstanding? Do you want more and more complications and increasing responsibilities?“
— Carl Jung
The Setian answer to these questions, as well as anyone working with the “darker” or “deeper” approach to individuation, would be “yes”.
— Lloyd Keane
In my humble opinion, and that’s just an opinion, a rite that does that is the Supreme Pentagram. Rending the veil from the position of Samekh and Peh, the SRP lets you experience global transgenerational currents and egregores expressed through cultural and political ideas.
You have the names of Chesed and Geburah, such as transpersonal concepts that are the Zodiac signs working through the personal Elements.
Rending the Veil is really an apocalypse. Once you see, you cannot unsee. And the actual truth can be disturbing.
For instance, rather than being boundless and free, the Internet has a new iron veil in the face of algorithms, pushing your content to the wrong people and presenting themselves as people, as Yuval Harari says.
For creators outside of the US, UK, or Canada, that could be quite disturbing. Yet it’s true. Hard-wired notions about who you are start losing ground as metals start melting.
Either way, you have to confront it if you are to embody Set or simply be more complete and aware. Thank you for your time.