Fairy Tale Spotlight: Set

Of all the demons I have covered so far in these blogs, the one that eludes me the most, at least so far, is Set. Set is the famed Egyptian god of chaos, fire, deserts, trickery, storms, envy, disorder, violence, and... foreigners. Yes, he is all those things. But exactly how can he be all those things? Well, the truth is that Set is actually one thing that embodies all those things: namely just chaos.

Despite his name, there is nothing really set about Set. He is all over the place. I have not even been able to determine what animal he is. Nobody has. The drawings of him are confusing. Is he an aardvark? A bird? A jackal? Donkey? A fox? Seriously, nobody knows. Maybe he is one of those things... or maybe he is all of them. Maybe he shifts between them. Nobody knows. But then that just makes the chaos that he embodies all the more real, doesn't it?

I recently pointed out that it is very common for demons to exhibit birth defects. I'm beginning to think that Set was a birth defect. He was a little too much of everything that caused him to be a big horrible nothing. Yet he was still powerful as he was. And I get the distinct impression that he was not super upset with the way he turned out.

Set always seemed to embrace who he was. And there was a lot of violent energy inside him that needed to get out. And so he let it out in all of its terrible glory. He was not only a sociopath... but also a psychopath. A sadist. A being that enjoyed the endless suffering of others. He reveled and laughed at each and every disaster.

And yet, as much as we know about him, he still somehow eludes us. He can never truly be pinned down for what he actually is. It's in his nature. Chaos cannot be tamed. Chaos cannot be understood. Do the hurricanes that destroy our coasts have a reason to do what they do? Set never had a reason to do anything. He just did it, and reveled in pleasure at being able to exist at all.

You may find it interesting that he fathered Anubis. Don't think much of it though. There was no love there. Set thought very little of anything but himself. He was only placing himself well within the hierarchy of the gods. Seating himself in an immutable place where nobody could ever contest him.

Set is an example of unbridled terrible evil on a scale far greater than any human dares to consider. He is a careless, brutal, horrible creature. And sadly his influence still exists to this day. Demons don't really die. They just get slightly misplaced. And from there, they still have a say in how things are done. And how Set does things is the very last thing we need. We'll be better off without him.

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