Michael Aquino LIVE 11/17/18 Streaming Live On YouTube
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Michael Aquino makes his return to the program.
Born in 1946, Michael Aquino was a military intelligence officer specializing in psychological warfare. In 1969 he joined Anton LaVey‘s Church of Satan and rose rapidly through the group’s ranks. In 1970, while he was serving with the U.S. military during the Vietnam War, Aquino was stationed in Bến Cát in South Vietnam when he authored a tract entitled “Diabolicon” in which he reflected upon his growing divergence from the Church of Satan’s doctrines. In this tract, teachings about the creation of the world, God, and humanity are presented, as is the dualistic idea that Satan complements God. The character of Lucifer is presented as bringing insight to human society, a perspective that was inherited from the depiction of Lucifer in John Milton‘s seventeenth-century epic poem Paradise Lost.
By 1971 Aquino was ranked as a Magister Caverns of the IV° within the group’s hierarchy, was editor of its publication The Cloven Hoof, and sat on its governing Council of Nine. In 1973 he rose to the previously unattained rank of Magister Templi of IV°.According to the scholars of Satanism Per Faxneld and Jesper Petersen, Aquino had become LaVey’s “right-hand man”. He had nevertheless developed concerns about the Church of Satan, feeling that it had attracted many “fad-followers, egomaniacs and assorted oddballs whose primary interests in becoming Satanists was to flash their membership cards for cocktail-party notoriety”. When in 1975 LaVey abolished the system of regional groups, or grottos, and declared that in future all degrees would be given in exchange for financial or other contributions to the Church, Aquino was disenfranchised; he resigned from the organisation on June 10, 1975. While LaVey seems to have held a pragmatic and practical view of the degrees and of the Satanic priesthood, intending them to reflect the social role of the degree holder within the organization, Aquino and his supporters viewed the priesthood as being spiritual, sacred and irrevocable. Dyrendal, Lewis, and Petersen describe Aquino as, in effect, accusing LaVey of the sacrilege of simony.
Aquino provided what has been described as a “foundation myth” for his Setian religion.Having departed the Church, Aquino embarked on a ritual intent on asking Satan for advice on what to do next.According to his account, at Midsummer 1975, Satan appeared and revealed that he wanted to be known by his true name, Set, which had been the name used by his worshippers in ancient Egypt.Aquino produced a religious text, The Book of Coming Forth by Night, which he alleged had been revealed to him by Set through a process of automatic writing. According to Aquino, “there was nothing overtly sensational, supernatural, or melodramatic about The Book of Coming Forth By Night working. I simply sat down and wrote it.”The book proclaimed Aquino to be the Magus of the new Aeon of Set and the heir to LaVey’s “infernal mandate”.Aquino later stated that the revelation that Satan was Set necessitated his own exploration of Egyptology, a subject about which he had previously known comparatively little.[28] In this account, the direct word of Set was appealed to as a source of legitimation. Moreover, by drawing connections between itself and ancient Egypt, this young religion adopted a legitimization strategy that tried to antedate both Judaism and Christianity.
Aquino’s Book of Coming Forth by Night makes reference to The Book of the Law, a similarly ‘revealed’ text produced by the occultist Aleister Crowley in 1904 which provided the basis for Crowley’s religion of Thelema. In Aquino’s book, The Book of the Law was presented as a genuine spiritual text given to Crowley by preternatural sources, but it was also declared that Crowley had misunderstood both its origin and message.In making reference to The Book of the Law, Aquino presented himself as being as much Crowley’s heir as LaVey’s,and Aquino’s work would engage with Crowley’s writings and beliefs to a far greater extent than LaVey ever did.
In establishing the Temple, Aquino was joined by other ex-members of LaVey’s Church,and soon Setian groups, or pylons, were established in various parts of the United States The structure of the Temple was based largely on those of the ceremonial magical orders of the late nineteenth century, such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and Ordo Templi Orientis.Aquino has stated that he believed LaVey not to be merely a charismatic leader but to have been actually appointed by Satan himself (referring to this charismatic authority as the “Infernal Mandate”) to found the Church.After the split of 1975, Aquino believed LaVey had lost the mandate, which the “Prince of Darkness” then transferred to Aquino and a new organization, the Temple of Set. According to both the historian of religion Mattias Gardell and journalist Gavin Baddeley, Aquino displayed an obsession with LaVey after his departure from the Church, for instance by publicly releasing court documents that reflected negatively on his former mentor, among them restraining orders, divorce proceedings, and a bankruptcy filing. In turn, LaVey lampooned the new Temple as “Laurel and Hardy‘s Sons of the Desert“. In 1975, the Temple incorporated as a non-profit Church in California, receiving state and federal recognition and tax-exemption later that year.
The Temple was established in the United States in 1975 by Michael Aquino, an American political scientist, military officer, and a high-ranking member of Anton LaVey‘s Church of Satan. Dissatisfied with the direction in which LaVey was taking the Church, Aquino resigned and – according to his own claim – embarked on a ritual to invoke Satan, who revealed to him a sacred text called The Book of Coming Forth by Night. According to Aquino, in this work Satan revealed his true name to be that of the deity Set, which had been the name used by his followers in ancient Egypt. Aquino was joined in establishing the Temple by a number of other dissatisfied members of LaVey’s Church, and soon various Setian groups were established across the United States.
Setians believe that Set is the one real god and that he has aided humanity by giving them a questioning intellect, the “Black Flame”, which distinguishes them from other animal species. Set is held in high esteem as a teacher whose example is to be emulated but he is not worshipped as a deity. Highly individualistic in basis, the Temple promotes the idea that practitioners should seek self-deification and thus attain an immortality of consciousness. Setians believe in the existence of magic as a force which can be manipulated through ritual, however the nature of these rituals is not prescribed by the Temple. Specifically, Aquino described Setian practices as “black magic“, a term which he defines idiosyncratically.
Following initiation into the Temple, a Setian can proceed along a series of six degrees, each of which requires greater responsibilities to the group; as a result, most members remain in the first two degrees. Governed by a high priest or high priestess and a wider Council of Nine, the Temple is also divided into groups known as pylons, through which Setians can meet or correspond in order to advance their magical work in a particular area. Pylons of the Temple are now present in the United States, Australia, and Europe, with estimates placing the Temple’s membership between 200 and 500.