Temple United Vampyre Unitarian Pagan :: View topic

SET:

There is no "god of evil". Set governs chaos, conflict, (male) sexuality, the desert, storms, and becoming strong through overcoming difficulties. His role in the cosmos is to destroy that which needs to be broken down, to test people and gods alike so that they can become strong, and to turn chaos against chaos and destroy that would go beyond mere destruction to uncreating.

Set's got a bad rap, really. That whole killing-his-older-brother thing causes him inordinate amounts of bad press -- but had Asar not died and taken up kingship of the underworld, there would be no afterlife, and souls when they left life would simply cease to be, as they would have nowhere to persist.

The popular conception of Set as some kind of big bad guy owes a fair amount to the fact that the Hyksos seem to have identified Him with their supreme god during the period when they ruled Egypt; this association with unwelcome invaders dented His mythos significantly. He regained popularity with the Ramesside Pharaohs of the 19th Dynasty in the New Kingdom (who seem to have considered Him their family patron; many of them were reputed to be redheads, a trait associated with Set, and names such as 'Seti' were common). By the Greek period, however, He was associated and syncretised with Typhon, who is a significantly less ambiguous character; His myths were changed to cast Him in a more universally hostile and antagonistic role.

_________________
Rev JP Vanir theUVUP ChrstVampyre
http://www.myspace.com/chrstvampyre
Founder High Priest: TempleUVUP.org
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TempleUVUP
http://groups.myspace.com/TempleUVUP
TempleUVUP Book 1
http://www.lulu.com/content/818414
http://www.cafepress.com/templeuvup