Tuesday, April 1, 2014

What is an egregore?

One of the terms that you hear tossed around in esoteric circles, especially those circles manned by the lodge system, is the term "egregore."

But what is an egregore?

Quite simply, an egregore is a "group mind" of a group of people. Well, perhaps calling it a group mind is being too generous. In all honesty, an egregore is like a hotbed of neurosises that is transmitted from one member to another--well, at least, it is when the egregore has taken ill from taking in an excess of unsuitable members.

So why use such a dangerous tool? In part, because we have no choice in the matter. No esoteric system that wants to escape the one-on-one single master teaching a single student method can avoid the effect of egregores.

Egregores are a natural occurring phenomenon. Every human being has encountered an egregore, and is part of at least one egregore. The only way to escape the effect of egregores on humanity is to grow a single human being in a test tube and raise them with only the aid of machines on a planet far, far away from the rest of humanity. Only a human completely isolated from the rest of humanity would be able to escape the effects of egregores.

(At this point, a student might ask, "What about sociopaths and psychopaths?" No, even those types are affected by egregores, even if they themselves are not as deeply connected to them though the recesses of their own minds as the rest of humanity, as long as they live among other human beings.)

Egregores occur naturally; they do not need to be created. For instance, sport fans at a bar will create a low level egregore. As the moods of the fans gathered wax and wane, the emotions felt by each fan in the room affect the other people in the room. Given the right input, the fans can spill out of a bar and turn into a mob looting and pillaging.

It is the ease that an ordinary crowd can turn into a mob that makes Adepts avoid crowds when they can.

And egregores form from all types of human gatherings: families, Amway conventions, crowds of shoppers, protestors, churches--all generate an egregore. Many of these egregores are short-lived, breaking apart quickly when the gathering is over. We have all experienced the high from a conference, feeling like we could take on the world, only to have our confidence rapidly fall apart as soon as we got home.

Now, the quick esoteric student will point out that they are not in lodge that much, therefore if egregores exist (and we have not proven that they do), then they would only affect the student for the duration of the ceremonies and meetings which they attend. And that would be true if the egregores of the esoteric traditions were ordinary egregores. Unfortunately, the egregores of the esoteric traditions, due to the rituals of their systems, are bigger, stronger, and longer lasting than most egregores that spontaneously arise in society. Only the egregores that influence the natives of nations, the steadfast members of religion, and of ethnic cultures can rival the egregores of the esoteric traditions.

And that is because they all share something in common--the use of ritual.  

(Some students will say that no amount of evidence will prove that the egregores exist--after all, it is not like you can weigh an egregore on a scale. The student might also argue that the occult theory of egregores can be replaced by social theories or psychology models instead. And they are right. No one can prove that the egregores exist. And other models of reality provide models that can account for the same behavior that the occultists credit the egregores for. But egregores are how the members of the esoteric traditions are taught to think about the behavior of groups of human beings, and therefore it is what I chose to use here in this series of posts--a gold star for such a student, who will probably leave the esoteric traditions in a blaze of intense pride that they are smarter than the assembled Adepts and Masters of the esoteric traditions...while the esoteric traditions breathe a deep sigh of relief that another know-it-all decided that the halls of knowledge were beneath their notice.)

Structure of esoteric egregores. 



3 comments:

La Coccinelle said...

Really wish that image was of a higher resolution so I could read the words on it!

Morgan Drake Eckstein said...

I am still looking for the original--it has been misplaced on one drive or another.

Deterministic.Entropy said...

anyone noticed the obvious similarity in this image and the kabbala tree of life/knowledge - or - Saphirot...furthermore I'd like to point the same similarity between the sigil of satan and the egregore of 7 sigil, as well as the famous mathematician/father of mathematics n geometry Pascal's Hexagrammum Mysticum and the chaos sigil? Seriously, there seems to be a alchemical based on rudimentary level but far more significant and real mathematical n geometrical relation in these images.It becames more serious once you start studying Quantum Field Theory in Bohmian/Hydrodynamic and Entropic/Thermal Interpretation and the sacred geometry similarities in the E8 Lie Theory or Group Theory of QM.There seems to be a group of academics especially since the days of the foundations of quantum mechanics(also around the beginning of the WWII, therefore indicating a military secret cover for the atomic secrets during the days when everyone was looking to find a way to produce atmic bomb) who are trying to, why-ever still? - hide the obviously correct interpretation of quantum mechanics and covering the most serious branch of science that is Physics with literally fairy-tale like explanations and metaphysical interpretations. Look for the number 67 n77 and the combinations of these numbers in the correct interpretation of quantum mechanics...it is like a sigil in publication(I guess) to inform masonic and kabbalistic/hermetic n pythagorianistic teaching followers....the topic becomes almost alice in wonderland crayz once you delve in to the cosmology where we're still trying to figure out the hubble constant value and the cosmological constatn, which fluctuates between 67.77 and 77.6 in every successive academic observation, never settling down to an agreement...follow bohm