Set and Setting?

Brisbane storms leave 130,000 homes without power, one man injured after being electrocuted in the shower
In the world of psychedelic drug takers, you will often hear practitioners talking about "set and setting" to avoid having a bad trip.

Set (Seth)

Last night after spending an afternoon at 'The Bearded Dragon' tavern to celebrate my sister's birthday (which is actually on Valentine's Day, February 14th) I headed home and pulled out my copy of 'The Dark Lord' to pick up from where I had left off.

 'The Bearded Dragon' tavern 
outdoor area yesterday

Is that kid being eaten by a dragon
in the playground?!

As I sat down at my dining room table last night I heard the rumbling of thunder outside and thought I had better cook my dinner just in case the coming storm blew out the power, even though that's a pretty rare occurrence in my home during a storm.
But sure enough, as soon as I had cooked my diner the power went out and didn't come back on until around 2:15am Monday morning.

"More than 113,000 homes were left without power as storms swept through the region from 6:30pm Sunday.
Logan and Brisbane areas were most affected, with more than 55,000 homes in Logan and 32,000 homes in Brisbane losing power.
Forecaster at the Bureau of Meteorology Michael Paech said the storm had brought strong winds, but not much rainfall."

The freaky thing is that -

"Set was a storm god associated with strange and frightening events such as eclipses, thunderstorms and earthquakes.

He also represented the desert and, by extension, the foreign lands beyond the desert.

His glyph appears in the Egyptian words for "turmoil", "confusion", "illness", "storm" and "rage".

He was considered to be very strong but dangerous, and strange.

However, he was not always considered to be an evil being.

Set was a friend of the dead, helping them to ascend to heaven on his ladder, and he protected the life giving oases of the desert, and was at times a powerful ally to the pharaoh and even the sun god Ra."

I'm not suggesting that me sitting down to read this book caused the storm to brew up and out my power, as well as the power of another 130 000 homes around me, but it certainly was good timing to start reading the book with lights on and read about Set being a storm god and then having to dig out the candles and LED battery powered torch to keep reading the book.

"Set was most often depicted as a "Set animal" or a man with the head of a "Set animal".

The Set animal (sometimes known as a "Typhonian animal" because of the Greek identification with Typhon) is a dog or jackal like creature, but it is not clear whether it exactly represented an extinct species, or was a mythological beast uniquely associated with Set himself."

Interesting that Set is often thought to have a dog, or jackal head and this week is the last week of the Year of the Rooster, then the Year of the Dog begins on Friday.
In Chinese astrology the dog's conflict animals are dragons, roosters and sheep/goats.
I was born in the Year of the Dragon.
Gulp!

This is an old poster,
so, it's not this February

"Not only was Set infertile, but one of his testicles had been torn off by Horus when Set tore out Horus' eye. 

He only ate lettuce, which was sacred to the fertility god Min because it secreted a white, milky substance that the Egyptians linked to semen and he was considered to have odd sexual habits.

He was bisexual, and tried (and failed) to rape both Horus and Isis."

The story of the Devil

I found it interesting to read that Set only ate lettuce after listening the other day to Sarah Kanowski open the conversation with Philip Almond in 'The Story of the Devil' with a story about a nun who ate a lettuce leaf the devil was hiding in and let him in to possess her.
Hmm.
The Dark Lord?

Let us pray?-)

That's the Q1 building on Queensland's Gold Coast getting hit by lightning last night.
It's the tallest building in Oz and the Southern hemisphere right now.

Typhoon/Typhon?

Typhon Set

"The Greeks associated Set with Typhon, the largest monster ever born.

Typhon was the son of the Earth and Tartarus (the place of torture in Hades), and thoroughly evil. Both were storm gods associated with the colour red and with pigs (whose meat was considered to be unclean by many cultures including the Egyptians). 

However, unlike Typhon Set had a protective role and even in his negative aspects the Egyptians understood his place in the world.

He was dangerous and unpredictable, but could be a powerful friend.

During the Ptolemaic period a temple to both Horus and Sobek (who was often associated with Set as both took the form of a crocodile) was built south of Nubt and named Ombos (now known as Kom Ombos) after the god of the ancient city - Set."

"The term typhoon is the regional name in the northwest Pacific for a severe (or mature) tropical cyclone, whereas hurricane is the regional term in the northeast Pacific and northern Atlantic.

Elsewhere this is called a tropical cyclone, severe tropical cyclone, or severe cyclonic storm.

The Oxford English Dictionary cites Urdu ṭūfān and Chinese tai fung giving rise to several early forms in English.

The earliest forms -- "touffon", later "tufan", "tuffon", and others -- derive from Urdu ṭūfān, with citations as early as 1588.

From 1699 appears "tuffoon", later "tiffoon", derived from Chinese with spelling influenced by the older Urdu-derived forms.

The modern spelling "typhoon" dates to 1820, preceded by "tay-fun" in 1771 and "ty-foong", all derived from the Chinese tai fung.

The Urdu source word توفان ṭūfān ("violent storm"; cognate to Hindi तूफ़ान (tūfān)) comes via Persian from Arabic طوفان (ṭūfān), which may derive from the verb tūfīdan (Persian: توفیدن/طوفیدن‎, "to roar, to blow furiously") or Arabic ṭāfa, to turn round.

The Chinese source is the word tai fung or Taifeng (simplified Chinese: 台风; traditional Chinese: 颱風; pinyin: táifēng), cited as a common dialect form of Mandarin dà "big" and fēng "wind".

In Mandarin the word for the windstorm is 大风 (dàfēng, "big wind") and in Cantonese 大風 (daai6 fung1, "big wind").

The modern Japanese word, (台風 (たいふう, taifuu), is also derived from Chinese.

The first character is normally used to mean "pedestal" or "stand", but is actually a simplification of the older kanji 颱, which means "typhoon"; thus the word originally meant "typhoon wind".
The Ancient Greek Τυφῶν (Tuphôn, Typhon) is not unrelated and has secondarily contaminated the word.

The Persian and Chinese terms may originally have been derived from the Greek word."

Looks like I better get Set for more candlelight reading tonight, too.
But thankfully at least I'm not living in Tonga right now.

Winter Olympics For One Welcome Our Updated Vega Overlords

Looks like we better get Set to batten down the hatches?-)