# Michael Angelo Aquino

Michael Angelo Aquino (October 16, 1946 – September 1, 2019) was an American political scientist, military officer and Satanist. He was the founder and high priest of the Temple of Set. Aquino was also a specialist in psychological warfare for military intelligence and an officer in the U.S. Army.

## Career

Aquino was born and initially raised in San Francisco, California. Circa 1961, his family moved to Santa Barbara, California in the context of his father's work; his mother would return to San Francisco after their subsequent divorce, where she continued to live in the family's Richard Neutra-designed Telegraph Hill townhouse until her death in 1985, whereupon the house became the younger Aquino's residence.
He was an Eagle Scout graduate of Santa Barbara High School (later serving as a national commander of the Eagle Scout Honor Society) in 1964 before enrolling at the nearby University of California, Santa Barbara, where he received a bachelor's degree in political science as an ROTC United States Army Distinguished Military Graduate (conferring a then-elite Regular Army commission) in 1968. He returned to the institution after transitioning to United States Army Reserve service, earning an M.A. in political science in 1976 and a Ph.D. in the discipline (with a dissertation on policy considerations for the procurement and implementation of the then-au courant neutron bomb) in 1980. Throughout his studies at Santa Barbara, he was mentored in a convivially interlocutory friendship by political theorist Raghavan N. Iyer, who maintained a somewhat antipodean approach to the occult (vis-à-vis Aquino's adherence to the left-hand path) as a member of the United Lodge of Theosophists. Aquino later earned an M.P.A. in national resources management from George Washington University as part of his enrollment at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in 1987.
Following his commissioning in the Army, Aquino served as a psychological warfare specialist and was deployed in the Vietnam War. He served with the Green Berets and in the 1970s and early 1980s he was a part-time NATO liaison officer in several European countries. While off-duty on one of these tours, he visited Wewelsburg Castle, which was used by the SS and Heinrich Himmler, and is said to have performed a satanic ritual there. He is also said to have established contacts to right-wing extremists in Europe as the leader of a group called "Monarch", which may have been connected to Operation Gladio.
Upon receiving his doctorate in 1980, Aquino returned to his native San Francisco, where he served for the next six years as an Active Guard Reserve officer at the Presidio of San Francisco. He also taught at Golden Gate University until 1986. In 1981, Aquino was a reserve attaché at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and a year later he was a student at the Foreign Service Institute, sponsored by the United States Department of State. As an intelligence officer, he thus gained access to top-secret documents. He later worked as a program analyst at the US Army's Reserve Personnel Center in St. Louis, Missouri, where he was responsible for human resources issues. Prior to entering his doctoral program, he briefly worked at Merrill Lynch and obtained a license to trade securities on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1994, Aquino retired from active duty in the army, was honorably transferred to the reserves and awarded the Meritorious Service Medal.

### Mindwar

In 1980, in response to the Vietnam War, Aquino published a paper co-authored with Colonel Paul Vallely called From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory. In this paper, both authors propose a new type of psychological warfare to replace or supplement conventional warfare. The term "MindWar" suggests a broader, more pervasive form of psychological warfare that extends beyond traditional PSYOP. It may involve the use of media, information technology, and other forms of communication to influence both enemy forces and civilian populations. Measures such as altering electromagnetic waves, or ionizing the air are also proposed to influence or manipulate civilians.

## Establishment of the Temple of Set

In 1969, he joined the Church of Satan, led by Anton LaVey, and quickly rose through the ranks of the group. By 1971, Aquino had been appointed Magister Caverns of the IV degree within the church hierarchy, was the editor of the publication The Cloven Hoof and sat on the governing council of the nine. However, conflicts arose over time between LaVey and Aquino regarding the direction of the group. The latter rejected LaVey's atheism and materialism. When he started selling positions in the Church of Satan for money, Aquino finally left the group in 1975.
After he left the Church of Satan, he started a ritual in which he asked Satan for advice on what to do next. According to him, Satan appeared to him in the summer of 1975 and revealed to him that he wanted to be called Set, a name that his worshippers in ancient Egypt are said to have used. Aquino produced a religious text, The Book of Coming Forth by Night, which he claimed was revealed to him by Set in a process of automatic writing. The book proclaimed Aquino Magus of the new eon of Set, and heir to LaVey's “infernal mandate”. On this basis, he founded the Temple of Set, which is dedicated to the worship of Set. In contrast to LaVey's approach, this group has an occult and hermetic orientation. Aquino's orientation was strongly influenced by the work of the British occultist Aleister Crowley. The group's aim is self-deification, which it pursues by performing rituals and practicing black magic, among other things.
In 1975, the Temple of Set was registered as a non-profit church in California and received state and federal recognition and tax exemption that same year. Aquino remained the Temple's high priest until 1979, when he handed over the role to Ronald Keith Barrett, who, following disputes, also founded his own satanic sect, the Temple of Anubis, a few years later. Aquino was high priest again between 1982 and 1996 and between 2002 and 2004.

## Child molestation allegations

In November 1986, the San Francisco Police began investigating allegations of sexual abuse in connection with the Army's Child Development Center at the Presidio of San Francisco. A girl came forward in August 1987 and identified Aquino as the culprit. At least 58 out of 100 children who had attended the daycare center showed physical and mental signs of sexual abuse, leading to a lawsuit by the parents for $60 million in damages. An investigation against Aquino was launched, but it was closed after insufficient evidence was found.
John DeCamp, a Republican politician and former member of the Nebraska Legislature, linked Aquino to the Franklin child prostitution ring allegations. However, no charges were filed and a grand jury dismissed the entire case in 1990.
Writer and publisher Mitch Horowitz, in addition to correcting the date of Aquino's death, has noted that investigators found that in the weeks of the claimed incident the Aquinos were not residing in San Francisco but instead in Washington, D.C., where Aquino was enrolled in a graduate program under the auspices of the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. Although no charges were filed, a continuation board ended Aquino's full-time Active Guard Reserve contract in 1990; while Aquino said that he continued to serve as a decorated (by virtue of his Meritorious Service Medal) part-time space activities officer until running up against the Army's up-or-out statutes in 1994, this decision essentially forestalled any subsequent promotion or advancement of his military career. "The Aquinos," Horowitz wrote, "unsuccessfully attempted legal action against the girl's chaplain father and an Army psychiatrist who stoked the false claims. But the couple faced the barrier of gravitating between civilian and military law." Horowitz further wrote that Aquino and wife settled legal actions against two accusatory books out of court."

## Death

After a long illness, Aquino died at 6:08p.m. on September 1, 2019 at 72 years of age from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.