Egregores: The Occult Entities That Watch Over Human Destiny - Mark Stavish 2018

Introduction. Angels, Women, and War in the Heavens

The gods do not like it when one of their cattle should be free!

INDIAN PROVERB

For those interested in the academic study of esotericism, the concept of egregores may simply be seen as a quaint relic of an earlier time, a holdover from our ancient past and therefore of little practical consequence. For those on the spiritual path, any spiritual path, being introduced to the concept of egregores is often a life-changing encounter. Instantly many old ideas—and experiences—are made clear, and a field of questions opens up before them. They reexamine their path in a new light and find that regardless of their being part of an organized group or a solo practitioner, large areas of their practice were under the indirect or direct influence of one or more psychic entities of which they were completely unaware.

For those engaged in practical occultism; that is, the manipulation of energies for some kind of spiritual or material result, egregores are often nothing new, but rarely understood—as too often they are given the status of a priori goodness. Many groups speak in veiled but confident and positive terms about their leader or group (and by extension its members) being connected to a powerful egregore, an inner contact, or some similar term. When examined in the light of this monograph and more traditional ideas associated with egregores, these students can reevaluate their connections to these invisible forces and decide for themselves if these contacts have been beneficial or detrimental to their personal awakening.

WHAT IS AN EGREGORE?

The word egregore is Greek in origin and is derived from égrégoros, meaning “wakeful” or “watcher.” The word is found in the Book of Enoch wherein it is described as an angelic being. The Book of Enoch is ascribed to Enoch, the grandfather of Noah, and, while noncanonical, it has attracted some theological and historical interest by the major Jewish and Christian denominations for a section of it known as the Book of the Watchers. This section is thought to have been written around 300 BCE. The only extant version that exists is in the South Semitic language of Ge’ez, originating around the Horn of Africa. While the original text may have been in Hebrew or Aramaic, no complete early text in either language survives. The main themes of this book—held in common by many mystics, practitioners of the occult, and even Christian fundamentalists—concern two hundred “fallen” angels, their interbreeding with human women, the subsequent creation of a race of giants (Nephilim) whose destruction in the biblical Flood receives mention in Genesis, and a coming apocalyptic battle between good and evil. A mention of the Nephilim from the Book of Enoch is as follows:

And they became pregnant, and they bare great giants, whose height was three hundred ells: Who consumed all the acquisitions of men. And when men could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against them and devoured mankind. And they began to sin against birds, and beasts, and reptiles, and fish, and to devour one another’s flesh, and drink the blood.¹

And:

And Azâzêl taught men to make swords, and knives, and shields, and breastplates, and made known to them the metals of the earth and the art of working them, and bracelets, and ornaments, and the use of antimony, and the beautifying of the eyelids, and all kinds of costly stones, and all colouring tinctures. And there arose much godlessness, and they committed fornication, and they were led astray, and became corrupt in all their ways. Semjâzâ taught enchantments, and root-cuttings, Armârôs the resolving of enchantments, Barâqîjâl, taught astrology, Kôkabêl the constellations, Ezêqêêl the knowledge of the clouds, Araqiêl the signs of the earth, Shamsiêl the signs of the sun, and Sariêl the course of the moon.²

The most commonly used definition (taken from Wiktionary.org) is as follows: “(occult) autonomous psychic entity composed of and influencing the thoughts of a group of people.” However, there is a second definition, an older, more significant, and perhaps frightening one. Here, an egregore is more than an “autonomous entity composed of and influencing the thoughts of a group of people”; it is also the home or conduit for a specific psychic intelligence of a nonhuman nature connecting the invisible dimensions with the material world in which we live. This, in fact, is the true source of power of the ancient cults and their religious-magical practices.

Mouni Sadhu, a Polish occultist of the French-Russian Martinist lineages,¹ defines an egregore in his seminal work, The Tarot, as “a collective entity, such as a nation, state, religions and sects and their adherents, and even minor human organizations. The structure of Egregors is similar to that of human beings. They have physical bodies (that is, collectively all the bodies of those who belong to the particular Egregor) and also astral and mental ones; the Egregor being the sum total of all these elements.”³

To my knowledge, the only modern scholar of esoteric philosophy who has written about the importance of the egregore is Joscelyn Godwin, of Colgate University in New York State, who dedicates a chapter, aptly titled “The Power of the Egregore,” to it in his book The Golden Thread.⁴

Godwin traces the origin of egregores, at least in the West, to the semi-animistic beliefs of ancient Greece and Rome and the intimate relationship that the ancient cult practices had on daily life as well as foreign affairs. This is critical, because here we see that every aspect of life has a sacred component to it, and, that in the proper execution of one’s duties, the visible and invisible worlds are kept in harmony from the perspective of classical religion (and, with it, politics).

The study of these relationships and their method of implementation became a specialized focus of the priestly class. These rituals and their attendant sacrifices were considered vital to the health of the family, community, city—even the empire (or later the nation). Within this larger collective body the individual lived their life and performed their duty and experienced their destiny as the gods dictated. The work of the various cults (in a world in which the average life span was thirty-five years of age) was primarily to aid in gaining the favor of the gods in an environment where material well-being and health were essential and in which little medical science existed for the preservation of life and limb. When this fact is combined with a dominant notion of little or no hope of an afterlife—the general belief in the ancient world, with Egypt being the exception—making the most of what life span one had was critical.

As Godwin points out, given the relationship of the visible and invisible in which the grave was seen as one’s final destination, the ancient gods to whom cults were dedicated and offerings made in some ways may have needed human religion more than humans did.

There is an occult concept of the “egregore,” a term derived from the Greek word for “watcher.” It is used for an immaterial entity that “watches” or presides over some earthly affair or collectivity. The important point is that an egregore is augmented by human belief, ritual, and especially by sacrifice. If it is sufficiently nourished by such energies, the egregore can take on a life of its own and appear to be an independent, personal divinity, with a limited power on behalf of its devotees and an unlimited appetite for further devotion. It is then believed to be an immortal god or goddess, an angel, or a daimon.⁵

Egregores were formed to watch over city-states, the Republic, and the Empire itself. As long as offerings and devotion continued, the prosperity and well-being of the city or Empire was thought to be assured. However, if new cults came into being and the energies of worship were directed elsewhere, the agreement would be broken and the egregore would cease to support the land and its people. Esoterically, this can be seen as the reason for the collapse of the Roman Empire. When its old gods and goddesses were no longer sustained by the people, they in turn could no longer support Rome or its territories. In short, the spiritual death of the Roman Empire can be seen in what Godwin terms the natural tolerance of polytheism. By accepting new religious practices insofar as they did not challenge governmental authority, a slow draining-off of energy from traditional cults and their attendant egregores began. But it doesn’t end there. The real death stroke lay in the nature of these new religions. These mystery cults from Greece, Persia, Egypt, Palestine, and Syria offered something Roman religion did not—personal salvation or, rather, survival after physical death.

Based on these metaphysical premises, Godwin suggests—and we agree—that for a city, nation, or empire to exist, its devotees must be focused on life in the material world to some degree (we will say more about this later). When their direction is turned otherworldly, the cults of family and state, the cults of blood, become weakened and are simply a jumping-off point for the individual instead of an end in themselves. When combined with the demands of time and intellectual and emotional commitment that mystery religions demanded of their members—initiates of the secret way—little or no energy was left for the traditional egregore. As Godwin says:

I am suggesting that the rise and fall of nations is intimately bound up with their relations with their gods; and that these are real entities, even though they are not the eternal all-powerful beings they are reputed to be. This seems to be a theory worthy of consideration by anyone who can admit that the universe is a very strange place, and that there is plenty of room in it for beings bigger than mankind. If such beings exist, it is only prudent to take an account of them. Every civilization in the past has done so, after its fashion.⁶

We see in the above paragraph a notion well known to many, yet often ignored—the famous quote from the Emerald Tablet: “That which is above is like that which is below; and that which is below is like that which is above; to accomplish the work (or miracle) of the One thing.”⁷ The egregore exists at both ends of the spectrum as well as across it: from the dense material world to the subtle and intangible psychic domain.

We also hear this concept repeated in the Christian scriptures, although as we will see there is disagreement among authorities on whether this constitutes an egregore in either the classical or modern sense of the word (paraphrased from Matthew 18:20): “When two or more are gathered in my name, I will be in the midst of them.”

THREE QUESTIONS THIS BOOK WILL ADDRESS

All of the above-referenced points then give rise to three questions:

1. What is the impact of an egregore on the individual, his destiny, and free will?

2. Who or what manages the collective physical body of the group by way of the invisible?

3. How is the management performed and to what ends?

It is these questions that we will answer to some degree in the following pages. In addition, we will look at the critical process whereby one can free oneself from the influence of egregores, as well as the means of directly destroying them when the need arises.

We bring this information to your attention so that as a student of the esoteric path you may make a conscious and informed decision about your participation in various egregores. If your work is more academic than practical, then at least you will be aware of the critical role this concept has had and continues to play, not only in esoteric groups but in certain political and economic activities as well as in various forms of entertainment, and how they are easily supported by the mass media.

To this end, let us allow the words of the twentieth-century French alchemist Jean Dubuis to act as our friend and guide. The following excerpt is from the lessons of instruction he wrote for the Philosophers of Nature, an esoteric school in which no collective rituals were held so as to limit the formation of any egregore.

We have serious reasons in insisting that each student work on acquiring the greatest possible mental freedom for himself in the physical world. Genuine initiation is a complete liberation. How can your Higher Self help you liberate yourself if you don’t do it for yourself in the realm already accessible to you?

A second significant reason for insisting on this point is the subject of egregores. What is an egregore? It is the psychic and astral entity of a group. All members of a group, a family, a club, a political party, a religion, or even a country, psychically included in the egregore of the organization to which they belong. . . . Therefore, each individual who is involved in a group receives the influences of the egregores, that is the astral counterpart of the group, in his psyche. This process is unconscious. The resulting drawbacks are, first, some perturbing psychic influences in the majority of cases, and second, a restriction of inner freedom. It is impossible to free oneself from certain egregores. . . . However, we should free ourselves from all egregores that are not essential. . . . Be cautious . . . mental freedom should not transform us into dropouts or misfits. It should simply open the freedom of the inner path while liberating us from unnecessary obstacles.⁸

Previous publications in the IHS Monograph Series have addressed the existence and nature of egregores (Studies in Poltergeists, Obsession, and Possession, volume 6) and how to modify one’s relationship to them (Wisdom’s Bliss and Khamael’s Spear, volume 7) and even acknowledge the existence of a major beneficial egregore and its principal symbol (Rosicrucianism for the New Millennium, volume 9). However, this book is the only publication of which we are aware to date that is dedicated exclusively to examining the existence of egregores, our relationship to them, and how that relationship can be modified, severed, and—if need be—how the egregore may be destroyed. It is our sincere desire that you will find it of value on your journey on the Path of Return.