In this episode, we step through the gates of perception into the painted Arizona desert, where the boundaries between the known and the unknown dissolve, where the gods of ancient Egypt are reborn not in the sands of the Nile but in the American Southwest, and where the most advanced magicians of the Temple of Set encounter a being that defies all their categories—a green-robed androgynous child, horned and innocent, who is both the Deceiver and the god who is unknown. We explore the Ritual of Xem—a working that brought into "positive Being" a new Word, a new god-form, and a new current in the history of the Left-Hand Path.

From the rejection of the Egyptian desert in favor of the Arizona landscape to the androgynous form of the youthful deity, from the constructive deception of the rainbow-robed trickster to Barrett's associations with Dr ...