The Headless God

The price of Seth as an emanation of the Good must not cause confusion in such a context. If it is a matter of winning over the evil god, a "white lie" original: "Notlüge" is permitted. After all, he is also called "Hater of the Bad" and "Seth, who has not grieved his brother"—this praise applies only to the specific purpose.

The actual Schüsselzauber bowl-divination/vessel-magic also involves a Typhonian Hymnos hymn. Seth is to send into the vessel any god the magician requests for prophecy, even Osiris or Sarapis. He must possess the power to do so, as the god of gods. Therefore, one recommends the spell to him with the hymnic prayer:

I call upon you, who supremely among the gods of the weapon¹

rule,

you, who hold the royal scepter over the heavenly ones,
you, who stand above in the midst of the stars,
you, the mighty Lord over the fortress,
you, the exciter of fear, of trembling, of shuddering,
you, the Unknown, Unconquerable, the Hater of the

Bad,

you I call in hours without law and measure,
you, who stride upon inextinguishable, penetrating fire,
you, who [are] above over snowstorms, below over dark ice,
(you), who have power over the Moirae fates, All-Ruler...

Again, one cannot find a solar-divine trait in Typhon's nature; again, he appears only as a fearful nature spirit who strides over fire. The hymnist may have seen the fire of the sun in this: Seth sets his foot upon the subjugated sun god, Osiris. Therefore, the magician also seeks him in proximity to the sun: he must look and speak toward the sun when he recites the hymns of recommendation to Typhon; yet he does not turn to the sun because he sees Seth within it.² This equation cannot be derived from the instruction to speak the prayers upward. Neither

1 ΟΡΓΙΛΟΝ διέποντα P; OPMON WÜNSCH; ΚΟΣΜΟΝ A. DIETERICH, De hymnis Orphicis (Minor Writings, 1911, 104). ὋΠΛΟΝ Pr. Typhon is designated as the "great fighter" in an astrological text from the Theban royal tombs; see FR. BOLL, Sphaera, 1903, p. 163. Also here regarding the meaning of Typhon in the starry sky, pp. 162–164.
2 Therefore, HOPFNER (Offenbarungszauber II, p. 243) also establishes the equation Seth ~ Sun. However, even he can find "not a single hint of the solar nature of Seth" in the hymn of recommendation; in the first hymn, the epithet "Shining one" originates only from a conjecture; see p. 19, note 1.