This has been a highly requested topic for a while now, and was requested again for the podcast. I decided to write this one out for many reasons, including some personal, but also just because I feel they should be articulated in the best way possible, which for me is writing. I plan to use this as a script for a podcast episode at a later date though.
First Interaction with Setesh
When I first interacted with the god I had no expectation of doing so. I was rather notoriously opposed to “Setianism,” the ToS, and all related things, not only criticizing but childishly mocking them. I was a staunch atheist, physicalist, determinist, and nihilist-trying-to-be-existentialist, though I did dive into new ageism now and then, even ancient alien theory for a while. But I would have called myself a “gnostic atheist” and was certain we lived in a godless, meaningless universe. My self-image was equally pessimistic, having no hope in my abilities, finding love, maintaining my friendships, overcoming my flaws, I was very much fed up with life and myself.
The event itself was part of an intended psychodramatic ritual to “prove” gods didn’t exist. For a while I had a pastor friend who insisted you just needed to reach out to Yahweh and he would get back, which like many I tried to do and it did not work. My thought was to apply this to all gods I could think of, to give each and every one of them a last, desperate chance before I gave up all hope in them. Long story short, name after name yielded no recognizable results (though to be fair I was hardly giving it the right kind of time or care). As you may predict, the story was different when I called out “Set.”
Since the very day it happened, the best way to describe the immediate response was a light switching off. I specifically say off because it was as if the world “fell away,” like you may expect in a psychedelic trip despite being sober. There was not an illumination in the way of mystics, it was more like a luminous-darkness, with an almost purplish hue. I felt the presence of a being, whom I now know to be Setesh, join me as an equal, again differing from the overpowering nature of most divine experiences. People always ask things like “do you speak to the gods,” and the answer for me is an absolute no. Indeed let it be known, the only voices I hear in my head stem from my own mind. Nor was there some sort of burning bush scenario. I have always described the feeling as “understanding,” like just an innate wisdom passed from Setesh to myself about my nature, the world, and my place in it.
All of this surely happened in moments, and it faded as quickly as it came on. The impact of it, however, has not faded to this day. I remember immediately after the event I went to take a shower, I just felt the need to “start fresh,” not even then knowing Setesh was associated with rain and storms. And I remember my perspectives rapidly shifting by the time I got out. I was not some worthless accident of biology, nor was anybody else, but we were unique, divine individuals far greater than anything of this world. I was not a slave to my genes, biology, and brain, but had the strength and will to fight against them in favor of happiness and growth. Along with this I, again within a few minutes of an experience, rejected determinism and accepted the existence of my free will, rejected physicalism in favor of, at the time, a type of dualism. And while I cannot say I was fully convinced of literal theism in that moment, I certainly knew my anti-theism was objectively wrong. The best part is as the years went on these changes remained, have been observed by more and more people, and I understand them more deeply with each passing year. So perhaps the best way to describe my first interaction with Setesh was him sharing his wisdom of the human condition with me, and it forever changed my life.
Early Interactions with the Gods
One of the two main ways I connected with the gods in the early days was intoxication. This was the lesser of the two, and it was only things like alcohol, valerian root, marijuana, and other less intense substances. Personally I do not recommend this as a long-term method of spiritual development, especially once you get to psychedelics and worse drugs, but that is a rant for another time. More than helping me actually reach the gods, I think intoxication helped me break through my materialist/anti-theistic/anti-paranormal/etc biases more than anything.
What really worked at the time, and which I can in fact recommend, is yoga. I mean this is a very traditional sense, such as simply sitting/laying still and clearing your mind or focusing on a specific goal. Yes, it can be as simple as laying flat and not letting your physical body move, don’t let anyone tell you it must be more complicated. Due to the pain I was having at the time this was much easier to achieve than sitting or standing. Specifically I utilized chakras and kundalini visualizations, which first started my relationship with the divine serpent as well. I sometimes wondered if my pelvic problems could have been related to my “awakening” without preparation, the serpent kind of “busting through” those chakras, but in the end the question wasn’t very relevant.
When I was able to raise the snake all the way to the top (which I attribute more to a visualization than a metaphysical requirement, I used the image to focus my mind and let the world fall away), I would be able to enter what I came to call the garden of the gods. Note that I am not saying this is some objective metaphysical/astral place, I am sure our own psyche plays a huge role in what manifests. Essentially it was this garden floating in space, beautiful beyond belief, stars everywhere, with people and gods walking the aisles, and each having their own throne somewhere within. Here I would mainly interact with Setesh, Djehuty, and Ra at the time, and these interactions were always similar in nature to the first, if expectedly less impactful. The garden was likely an “astral” place to use the term, at least that is always how I understood it. And I remember that if you tried to wrap your mind around the place it would start to fade away, like my concentration was broken.
Current Interaction with the Gods
Intoxication no longer plays a role in my practices, and I would not really describe what I do as yoga anymore. One of the main acts I engage in is utilizing the magic of ancient Egyptian homes and temples. For example keeping a small altar for your patron sheltered away from outside eyes, in my case I have this altar behind the bedroom door. Having altars to the dead is also important throughout the house, as well as invoking basic household gods such as Bes, and we even have a small false door as well for spirits and gods to come and go more easily.
Rather than yoga I would say I practice visualization and what some call “astral projection,” though I never liked that term. Rather than the garden of the gods I have my own place I bring the gods to dwell in. I will not describe this in full, but for instance it consists of a great temple on a forested cliff overlooking a vast desert, the desert being filled with all sorts of cultures and wonders. While I could (but will not) describe the location in detail, upon entering the temple I still experience that overwhelming pandemonium of beings beyond myself, free of this world. In other words I could not describe the inside of the temple, that space is not really mine. Another benefit of this is being able to do magic anywhere at any time. No actual acts or instruments are needed, it can all be done from this “astral” location which is both powerful and extremely useful. Something worth noting is that I am a terrible visualizer, I couldn't even picture the couch on the other side of the room, I cannot picture characters in books, etc, probably due to being on the spectrum. But this realm I could describe clear as day, could even vaguely sketch it. This, to me, lends validity to the objective existence of "astral" temples, it is a real place I observe and visit.
Another thing I will do is things like burning incense before the statues of each deity, not so much to “please them” but because the ancients believed the gods would come to dwell within the smoke, the smoke was itself the god. At our local renaissance festival I managed to find a 6 foot walking staff Was Scepter (unintentional, they had no idea what I was talking about which made it even cooler). Sometimes I will take this throughout the house and instill its energy into the altars and the home itself, almost in the way that some use sage.
My group and I have been formatting plans for a group ritual, and an example of a “formal ritual” I may use is my previously published “Rites of Meskhetyu.” I also recommend reading the Pyramid Texts from a first-person perspective. These more closely resemble classical/ceremonial ritual/magic, which is generally not my main focus.
I would describe actual interactions with the gods in the same way as above, the presence, the innate knowledge, the explicit lack of actual material interaction such as voices or a burning bush. One of the main changes in my years of polytheism is what I have come to think of as “divine hauntings.” In other words, like a friend or mentor would, the gods, ancestral spirits, etc simply come around sometimes. It took several moves for me to realize this, originally I thought I was just doomed to live in haunted houses! Yet with more experimentation it was directly related to the altar being set up and respected, or me engaging in magical acts or priestly duties. Note this is not something only I realized, but multiple friends, exes, and my wife. In my book I actually included this as a danger of stellar magic, for it can be quite spooky if one is unprepared or doesn’t realize the gods are objectively real independent entities.
Finally, studying the stars is a critical act of magic for me, to understand the divine through the maps they leave on our reality. I wrote extensively about this “High Stellar Magic” both on its own and as the final section of my free book.
I would add that in the tradition of ancestor worship, I utilized certain techniques and verses from the pyramid texts to help my best, four-legged friend ascend and stick around. Without getting into detail this included putting his ashes in a canopic jar and keeping them on my altar, as well as reciting verses for the dead in the PTs. Now one important thing to note about me is I only have nightmares when I remember my REM sleep, nobody knows why. The exception to this has been since he passed and these rituals were done, he will come in dreams when I am at my absolute lowest. He further engages in the aforementioned “hauntings,” to the point where our other dogs often react to and give away his presence. The most insane manifestation of this was my wife and I listening to a dog drink from the dog bowl, including his collar hitting the bowl, only to realize both our dogs were on the couch with us staring over to where the food was.
A Haunted House
As mentioned before, I grew up and have lived in a haunted house for the majority of my life. I am not speaking of some sort of family myth, dozens have experienced hauntings over the decades there, some are even afraid to be there alone. As with all paranormal experiences we will discuss, each event has had significant time and energy dedicated to “debunking it,” rarely with success.
Far and away the most common haunting in the house is whoever is in the hallway. Even as a kid I remember being really scared by seeing/hearing someone walking in the hallway at night when everyone was asleep. This has been reported by almost every single childhood friend of mine. Even my most skeptical friend has a memory of being scared by the hallway in the middle of the night. You ask my family or friends and it is unbelievably casual, “yeah there is a ghost in the hallway there.” Simply seeing a shadow or hearing a footstep may not be that interesting of a ghost story, but the consistency of it, plus how many independently have reported it, is what I find really interesting.
Much more convincing and interesting, apparitions are known in the house, and I mean full body solid apparitions scaring the shit out of many different people. The first I remember was a shadow on the living room window of a man wearing an old-school looking detective’s hat. This shadow was there over and over again, seen by family and friends. It was really creepy because we spent hours in the end turning lights off and on, moving things around inside and out, trimming the trees, literally not one thing affected the shadow. Worse was that even when it was not there the living room had this awful energy at night, both myself and friends would not sleep out there alone, and it was during this time a friend and I awoke in terror at what we later found to be identical nightmares. It was well over a decade later that we learned “the hat man” is some sort of widely reported haunting across the world. After the shadow was gone a while the living room no longer felt sketchy.
The most common apparition is that of a little girl, and we have no idea what that is all about. Again this has been seen by numerous people, it especially harassed a specific friend of mine, and he would always freak out reporting that he saw her looking out the dog door at him when in the backyard. We only told him about the ghost after he had seen it several times. She is also known to whisper people’s names when in a room by themselves. The girl became the most interesting of the ghosts because a friend and I actually ran a classic “knock once for yes” experiment with her, to surprising success. Not only did we receive knocks to our questions, but consistent ones. For instance asking if you are a girl got one, asking if you are a boy got two, and both several times over. It was easily one of the most convincing experiences of my life and we still talk about it to this day.
In the miscellaneous category there is too much to even cover. A printer destroying itself when a ghost was asked a question, apparitions walking by doorways, most recently not a month ago my wife saw a full person walk by the back door when nobody was outside, and now will not stay in the house on her own. While there are friends and family who have not experienced anything they are by far in the minority. That said, as my relationship to the gods has deepened and their presence is more known, random hauntings are much lower. Also note that I have left out some of the most personal examples, my father having passed away when I was a child and his presence making itself known quite often, along with my grandfather now.
The Projection Booth
The movie theater I worked at was on one of the only non-native-owned developments on tribal land here. The local reason for this is that the enemies of the tribe had a burial ground underneath the development, and so the natives were never going to use the land anyways. That said everything that opened still had to be blessed by the tribe’s shaman and the whole nine yards. I previously wrote my first weird fiction story based on the booth while in it, "My Time as a Movie Theater Projectionist." There were tons of reports from that place when I got there: tech issues, hearing people running on the roof of the building, and the projection booth was notoriously haunted with the general manager even refusing to leave the lights off when up there. There were dozens of different hauntings so I will just touch on the most widely reported and influential for me.
First is the ghost keys of the booth, a phenomenon everyone who spent any time up there heard and tried to explain away. Essentially in one spot people would always think a projectionist or manager was coming up right behind them because they would hear footsteps and keys right behind them suddenly. Of course they would turn around to find themselves alone. The place was open for at least 5 years under those owners, and both before my time and with me there we tore the place apart trying to explain the sound but never could.
A much more creepy, but equally common experience up there, is what I call the shadow man, and it is also something many people witnessed (or I would not share it here). Basically the booth was a long dark hallway with projectors on either side. Often when on a specific end of the booth one would look down the hallway and see a shadow being peaking around projector #10 watching them, darting back behind it when you saw it. Not only could cameras confirm nobody had gone up to the booth, you could literally keep your eyes right on the projector and walk over there to find nothing. People were also freaked out about the far, back corner of theater 10 (closest to the booth) and ushers would not want to clean in there by themselves. Perhaps weirdest of all, the theater later ended up developing black mold, and the connected theater next door ended up legitimately inhabited by a bat.
The last and most significant example I will share was the port window. Next to each projector is a large, heavy window you lift up and open into the booth. This allows you to poke your head in, check the sound in the theater, etc. These were heavy to the point where the strong air draft could not open them at all, otherwise any time the air came on or off you’d hear the booth in the theater during quiet scenes, which is very annoying. Our theater held a special needs event once a month, and cleanup always required the entire staff, including myself and the available managers. This means that while cleaning the theater the booth was entirely empty, as later confirmed by camera, and there were at least 10 people in the auditorium with all the sound off, lights on, etc. Every single one of us in there was shocked when suddenly the port window slammed down as if someone had opened it all the way and furiously slammed it closed. It was absolutely crazy because at first they thought it was me, but there I was as shocked as the rest. It definitely caused a buzz that only increased throughout the day as we checked cameras, asked around, and realized there was no explanation for what had happened other than the booth ghost(s).
The Forests and Deserts
My friends and I have spent a wealth of time in the forests around us, and have encountered several mysterious things. One of the most significant I remember was going to a cabin in the forest and just doing what I would call some casual ritual in the woods. Jumping around, wooping, singing, etc and so on. It was only then that a trip would truly kick off, and we would often see things moving through the forest from the cabin at night. What I find really interesting is that everyone would report feeling there were “extra people” in the cabin after the events. For instance we would all be at the table waiting to start a board game, and realize we were waiting on nobody. This has periodically cropped up at other times as well, such as a house party in the city.
Once while camping I found myself inclined to build a giant altar, including chopping a few logs, tying things together, seeking out unique branches, drawing in the dirt, and so forth. This was surprising as I am more the “sit around the campfire and eat” type of camper, and I decided to take a few pictures of it. For no real reason, one of the middle pictures was extremely glitched and filled with artifacts, the only time my phone ever did this in the time I had it. These were the pics I previously shared on the blog and sub.
Likewise we have all spent a great amount of time in the deserts, and seen an equal strange number of things. There is one specific area I personally have not gone back to, and would actively recommend people away for it. On my first trip out there we had 4 or 5 people in the car, all of us familiar with being out in the desert, off roading, etc. It had gotten dark and we stopped to smoke, gathered near the jeep just enjoying the quiet of the night, the desert is sometimes absolutely silent. It was then that I heard a bizarre noise, almost like a clicking sound extremely far off. I am familiar with the animal sounds here, and remember trying in vain to place it. Looking around I noticed nobody else seemed to react so said nothing, though later learned one of the other people heard it as well. Not a moment passed and I heard the sound again, extremely loud and right behind us as if it had sped across the massive distance and closed in on us. Everyone reacted to it this time, and instinctually, without one word, we all bolted for the car, jumped in, and sped off. None of us had heard anything like it, and we could not explain our fear considering we were very used to our deserts.
I was stupid enough to go back at a later date, I had told others the story and some were interested to see for themselves. We decided to go camping out there, arriving rather late in the evening and trying to quickly set up before we lost the light. While setting up camp all members of the group felt extremely uncomfortable, reporting the feeling of something watching us. The feeling of paranoia and fear grew so rapidly that not long after sunset we decided to pack up and leave, that hour or two was convincing enough, and we were now hearing weird sounds. Upon trying to start up the car, however, it was dead, and we are not the type of people to go out in the desert expecting car trouble, so the paranoia increased. Despite not being too far out of the city we could not reach anyone on our phones, and were generally beginning to freak out. By sheer luck we saw the lights of another car and flagged them down. They were happy to help us, but would have to return as they were giving a ride to the people in the back of their car, since within a past hour their vehicle had randomly died further in. Suffice to say we were well packed when they came back and helped us out of there, and I have not been back.
Synchronicities
I have touched on these 3 big ones before so will only briefly recap them. If you are unfamiliar with the term, it is when two events gain significance only through subjective meaning. For instance, if your partner’s favorite animal was a roadrunner, and at their funeral there was a roadrunner, this would only gain significance through you. We will look at three more examples as well.
The first starts with my early interest in scarab beetles, which I was discussing with some friends one night in the backyard. We were very into the symbolism of the rising sun and therefore the scarab, and while talking about it one of them noticed an actual scarab crawling on the ground, something we had never seen here before. I brought up how this was a synchronicity, something we had been talking about in psychology regarding the ideas of Carl Jung. Intrigued, we decided to look up the concept and investigate further. We found a story where Jung had an affluent patient and they were discussing his theories of synchronicity. The woman had dreamt of a golden insect brooch the previous night, and while discussing it the two heard a tapping on the window. Low and behold it was the same insect from her dream: a synchronicity. The truly crazy part was that the insect was a scarab, the very synchronicity which had driven us to the story. It may not be surprising to learn I have a scarab tattoo, and one of my magical names is Kheper Khemtu, Three Scarabs.
One day in high school, a friend of mine realized that he was always looking at the clock at 11:37, and started mentioning it every time he saw it. I started mentioning it back, and soon more and more in our group would notice and report it. The mechanism behind this was obvious, once you start noticing X, and get others to, it will be noticed more and more. The question we asked was, why “1137”? It would be over a decade before we stumbled upon the importance of 1/137 in physics, a constant which is fundamental to the material universe being what it is, known as the fine-structure constant. This constant has some sort of influence on photons and electrons that is far beyond me! It is a number physicists are apparently obsessed with, even joking that this is the first pin number you should try for a physicist. In more esoteric terms, 1137 turned out to be a demiurgic number, one could say. It is part of the blueprint for our little prison here, as if such forces were attempting to make themselves known. It makes sense, we were mostly atheists, physicalists, and determinists at the time, we would have been extremely tuned into that undercurrent. The number is still noticed on a weekly basis I’d say, at least, and has spread to even more people.
The smallest, but no less significant, synchronicity came at the start of 2023, when my esoteric group was considering a project to study a god we were not familiar with. This fell through in the end, but for the first month I held onto it and began studying our native god Coyote, even writing an essay about my findings on the blog/sub. The problem was there was no connection at all, no spark, no deeper interest like when I had started with the Egyptian gods or even others, such as Veles. I was very torn between not quitting on a goal but also not wasting my time and energy. That very day I had gone to Reddit’s popular sorting, something I almost never do, and on a random sub I saw a very interesting picture: a donkey holding a coyote it had killed by the throat. If you do not know, one of Setesh’s main animals is a donkey, and the message was clear as day.
Trusted Second-Hand Accounts
For this last section I will share only a few experiences I was not there for, but have no reason to distrust the sources. I already mentioned that everyone had experiences in the family house, and many did at the theater as well. There are only a few specific things I want to mention further. These are also only stories related to everything above, not any of the hundreds of random one offs we could gather from around here.
The clicking heard in the desert has been attributed to a native local myth I will not name here, a horselike being that harrasses outsiders or those doing wrong. This being was so commonly reported the reservation police supposedly have records dedicated to encounters. A manager I was close to at the theater, who also heard the port window slam and saw the booth ghost(s), had been chased by the being when younger and drinking on the reservation. Another member and now peer in the same esoteric group saw what he thinks to be the creature chasing horses who were drinking from a small pond. These stories are extremely common around here, and I would love to be able to document them better in some way one day.
Finally, skinwalkers are well known and feared in this area. One acquaintance of a friend reported some sort of fight with one, but I cannot remember the details and will have to follow up on that. Another story I vividly remember was that a friend had been riding in the backseat of a pickup truck. He had noticed a strange looking dog running along the highway with them, even though they would have been going at least 80mph. After looking away to tell his dad the kid looked back and saw a man casually sitting on the back of the truck, causing him to scream. The dad pulled over but neither a man nor dog could be found. But most convincingly, a trusted friend of one of our group member’s captured footage of something insane looking running through the forest. I would almost describe it like the tanks from Left for Dead, just this thing running through the trees with huge arms and small legs, very chilling and unnatural. A possible fake, but I have no reason to believe it was. Unfortunately they are unwilling to let anyone post the video, which is common with skinwalker stuff around here.