Michael Aquino Revisited

From Alex Constantine:

"The uncanny attraction of the Third Reich – Nazi Germany – lies in the fact that it endorsed and practiced both dynamism and life-worship without end and to a world-shaking degree of success." — Michael Aquino

To hear High Priest Michael Aquino tell it, his Temple of Set, a splinter group of San Francisco’s Church of Satan, is no more sinister than the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry. Setianism, he insists, "is a legitimate and ethical religion, incorporated as such in California in 1975 and enjoying since that time full state and federal recognition as a religious institution."1 Aquino bristles at any suggestion of Satanism at the Temple of Set. The cult "does not believe in ‘Satan’ – our mythology is ancient-Egyptian, after all."2 Yet he has described himself in Temple literature as the "Anti-Christ" and published essays on "Greater" and "Lesser" Black Magic.3 And Don Webb, a priest in the Temple of Set, describes it as a "Satanic religion." The Setian, Webb writes, "chooses as role model a ‘god against the gods.’ We choose an archetype that corresponds the disharmonizing part of our own psyches…. This role model is the ‘Lord of this World,’ who is rejected by the Right Hand Path as the Prince of Darkness."4 Visitors to the Temple’s Web site are met by a blazing white pentagram, and the Temple answering machine has boasted that the caller has reached "the only international Satanic religious institution’ recognized by the government.5 So perhaps it's really about Satan, after all.

The decorated veteran of the Army’s 306th Psychological Operations Battalion is as skilled in the art of black propaganda as he is black magic.

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