Growing up Setian was rough because Western culture conditions us all to think Pagan gods are just “false idols” or even “the devil in disguise.” In my case, even other Pagans (usually self-proclaimed “white witches”) found me too “satanic” for their liking. But while our current culture is quick to conflate Set with Lucifer, things were very different 2,000 years ago, long before “Satanism” was even a daydream. Back then, Set was conflated by Greeks and Egyptians with the Hebrew god, Yahweh; and there are even certain areas where He seems to overlap with Jesus Christ.
About 20 years ago I witnessed a performance of the 3 plays of the Oresteia (the Orestes plays) by Aeschylus. I was stunned. Watching them in sequence, I understood that the plays were one of patriarchy’s “just so stories” and that their continuing performance was part and parcel of patriarchy’s perpetuation and legitimation.
A few days ago, a friend told me she had just learned that she had a 2x great-aunt who was a beloved and honored single white teacher in the US south in the first half of the twentieth century. The beloved teacher had a school named after her. My friend never heard anything about her distinguished relative while growing up. As a woman without children herself and a teacher, she wished she had. “There are many of us,” she commented.