“Xeper Xepera Xeperu. Խեպեր Խեպերա Խեպերու:”
Early in my journey with Lord Sutekh I learned of His mantra, Xeper Xepera Xeperu. Much like Sekhmet’s “Sa Sekhem Sahu”. But somehow it got filed away in the back of my mind in the face of a constant flow of new information, thanks to my ongoing addiction to books and term papers about Egyptian mythology. It was brought to my attention again when I read J.M. Dupree’s “Morning Hymn to Seth”.
“Xeper” is an Egyptian verb meaning “to come into being”, or even deeper, to become aware of your own existence, or to will one’s own self into existence, the way Sutekh did when He split open His mother Nut’s womb at His birth. The phrase consists of three conjugations of this verb. I suppose I have an advantage over other English-speakers in that I already know how to pronounce the hard H that the “x” in “xeper” makes, as it’s the same sound as the Armenian letter Խ, and in hieroglyphs is represented by a circle with four horizontal lines through it (𓐍). It’s not a “K” nor a normal “x” sound. It would be nice to see the word spelled in heiroglyphs so I could get an even better idea of how to pronounce it. The “p” may have been pronounced as an “f” according to some sources, although “p” just feels more right to me. I wonder if it was that sneaky little horned-viper glyph that looks like a slug and makes a “v/f” sound (𓆑). I have seem some spellings of the Netjer Khepri as 𓐍𓊪𓂋𓆣, who I will get to later, and the little square definitely makes a “p” sound. So it might be spelled “𓐍𓊪𓂋”.
Xeper, in a sense, is much like the concept of self-actualization, to come into the concept of one’s own self, or the concept of individuation, seen in Carl Jung’s Anatomy of the Self as the process by which one integrates various aspects of their personality, which will often involve confrontations with the “shadow self”. It will occur once you have stopped basing your identity on that which society has assigned you, and come into your own self. This will involve letting go of old biases, outdated ways of thought, questioning everything, and dispelling the lies you may have been raised believing. This is not an easy process, you will end up feeling very disillusioned, maybe even detached from not only those around you but from yourself, in fact you may need to undergo an ego death.
We can see Set’s killing of Osiris as a metaphor for this process. Here Osiris represents the established order, the status quo of a rigid, heirarchical society which values conformity and obedience over individual expressions of self. I don’t know if it would even be possible to truly reach Xeper while following Abrahamic monotheism, as it runs counter to what seems to be the core of their beliefs, at least in practice, if not as a rule in their holy books. I think most of those who come to Set and make Him their patron have either already started or completed the process of reaching Xeper, even if they don’t have a word for what they’ve been through and how they have had to transform their way of thinking to survive. Reaching Xeper is like when new saplings sprout in the spring after a forest fire the previous summer. It’s a painful, destructive process but it yeilds fruit in the end.
Another interesting aspect to Xeper, and this is kind of an unverified personal gnosis; it sounds like it has similar roots to the name of the Netjer Khepri, Ra’s scarab-headed form, symbolic of the sunrise. This is a divine state that Ra can only reach after being led through Duat by Set and fighting A𓌜p𓌜e𓌜p𓌜, along with a slew of other demons. Set leads all of His followers through the dark similarly, so that they can emerge in Xeper.
𓋹֍֎𓋹
~ Siamanto the Foreigner
𓋷𓅁𓈖𓏏𓍯𓀭𓈖𓐎𓏺𓈉𓏏𓅂𓌙𓀀
Սիամանթօ Օտարը
Further Reading:
https://xeper.info/pub/pub_dw_xeper.html
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