Egregores Options

Egregores
An egregore is essentially an artificially constructed spirit or entity in the astral plane, created by powerful individuals or the activities of collective groups. According to the Golden Dawn Glossary, egregores are: "A thought-form created by will and visualization. A group egregore is the distinctive energy of a specific group of magicians who are working together, creating and building the same thought-form or energy-form." A more complete definition comes from the occult society Aurum Solis, who define an egregore as: "An energized astral form produced consciously or unconsciously by human agency. In particular, (a) a strongly characterized form, usually an archetypal image, produced by the imaginative and emotional energies of a religious or magical group collectively, or (b) an astral shape of any kind, deliberately formulated by a magician to carry a specific force."

The statement "some ideas take on a life of their own" is the quintessential concept underlying the existence of egregores. Egregores are not restricted to magical societies (though these can be the most powerful sort), but political parties, environmental activist groups, churches, families, and even clubs and clique. An egregore grows by drawing energy from the members of the organization. Thus, the power of an egregore is entirely dependent on the will of the organization's members, and most are so week as to be negligible. Some, however, become exceedingly powerful (even dangerously so) and begin to psychically affect the members of the group, and sometimes even human events and history. The Ancient Greeks considered this to be the "art of Spirits and Entities, Cordey, pg. 7 creating gods", and indeed this may have been how many gods and demi-gods were created -- not by divine power, but by the mind of man. At such a point, an egregore is an egregore no more, and becomes a free entity in its own right. Even so, such beings still require the focus and attention of human followers, and will diminish (even die) otherwise. Needless to say, a great many egregores vanished with the rise of Christianity, though many of the egregoric deities were "converted" to saints and angels.

Individual egregores can also be created through magical ritual, or unconsciously by those of great will. Such personal egregores are weak compared to the egregoric deities, but can have considerable magical influence. The very act of casting a spell may create an egregore to carry out the action within the astral plane. Summoning spirits in magical ritual may also either create a new egregore, or link the magician to an older, preexisting egregore. For instance, the strange spirits cataloged in the Lemegeton (Goetia, etc.) may in fact be egregores -- they exist not because they have existed for all time, but because magicians in the Middle Ages began to use them in magical ritual. They still exist today because magicians continue to conjure them in the same way and for the same purposes as listed in the Lemegeton.

How long does a servitor created by a person need time before it evolve into egregore?

A servitor is an egregore. My experience with egregores/elementaries or servitors is that once you have actually constructed the thoughtform and set it on its way you have made an egregore. We are surrounded by things called 'larvae' which exist on the astral plane and represent obsessions, halfformed thoughts etc. These larva form a symbiotic relationship with the person. Usually larvae exist on a lower astral plane. Some are fairly hideous whilst some are very attractive. These things feed off emotions and bad habits. When your astral senses become more honed you will probably pick up on these things....they can be quite alarming. Have no fear...this is but one step in dealing with what is called 'the Dweller on the Threshold ', but this would be another thread... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wacko.gif)

Thanks Bym, interesting post on the larvae.
I am however under impression that an egregore evolved from a servitor?

'the Dweller on the Threshold '? I'd to know more about this but not quite sure what thread to start the question (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) explain please?

Tomato, tomatoe As I've said in my last post. Egregore can be simple or as complex as you wish to make...Don't try to make a super egregore because it may become totally independent.
'Dweller' really needs a thread all on its own. I was just using that as an example...
More on this soon...(i need to talk with admin/mods about this...I'm a newbie on this forum/computer program) Thanks for being patient! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I agree Bym, the "Dweller" may need a new thread on it's own unless it has got to do with egregore and if it does, go ahead to post it here.

On topic, I'm thinking that my servitor (link on my sig) I created the other day was a "super" egregore then? My way of creating it was purposefully complicated as my way to experiement with the creating process, and I was wondering if this is what made her quickly to become independent and if it is how do I know when she does?

When you create these things one should bear in mind that most 'servitors' are made with simple elemental matrix. When you use 5 elements you are attempting to create something closely resembling real life...Artificial Intelligence. We are made up of 5 elements and we tend toward independence. The proposed theory(ies) involving the 'gods' as being egregores illustrates this. Chicken or egg?
This was the reason I got all over the subject of Mogget. Imbue a servitor with psi-vampiric qualities is just asking for trouble.... It's pretty exciting to be able to 'flesh'out a creation, quite another to enable it to become selfsustaining (independent and a predator). Not brilliant and not well conceived (in terms of its existance and why?) It's alot like holding a meeting with many people, then inciting a riot. The mob mind takes on its own life and suddenly you'll find that the 'hive' mind has motivated a lynching and people die. As seperate components, the mob members would never kill but as a whole quite it becomes something else and most of the time not something controlable. Bardon explains this thoroughly in his first book. We need to be responsible for our actions. (my cliches are running thin...) Just be sure of your purpose(s). Happy experimenting! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/tomato.gif)

Interesting. I was always taught that an egregore was the group energy, that is the energy raised by a particular ritual. It is woven together and as everyone knows the ritual purpose, it has a form. But it sounds as if in your concepts, it has more character or personality than a servitor. I always felt that the egregore disappeared between rituals. It might just be semantics or how the word is used by different groups, or it may be the difference between witches and chaos magicians.
I admit that chaos magic isn't something I have a lot of background in. I'm a witch and a healer type. I do enjoy very much being exposed to different concepts and ideas. It is also fascinating to hear examples of how different people put chaos magic to practical use in daily life. This is a forum with high quality posting. I hope to continue viewing and posting here for some time.

IMHO, an eregore and a servitor are seperated by their degrees of intelligence. A servitor is created to SERVE which makes it little more than a magickal robot, we can program it through are will to have emotions but in the end it is only doing what it's told to do. What makes a servitor comes to life is not how complicated or indepth your ritual is but the focus the chaos sorcerer has, the reason why such complicated rituals work seem to give the servitor more power is because the mind is forced to completely focus on the servitor giving it alot more energy to start out with. This does not however make it an eregore, it still is only going to focus on the task it is given it is just going to do it alot more proficiently because it is stronger.

Now an eregore on the otherhand is created by a group of people with the same goal in mind, when they all put energy toward creating the eregore a little bit of themselves are put into it as well which is the same as a servitor.however since everyone is different from one another and there thoughts are different when their energies combine they create a hybrid which in a sense is a "fusion" of the people who created the eregore. Now bear in mind that the eregore's purpose will be the same as the groups but because of the "fusion" it is able to decide on its own how to best help its creators to achieve this goal. This does not mean that an eregore can't turn on its creators, because it can decide on its own how to achieve the groups goal it can act in a way that is harmful to the group but works to achieve the goal.

(that last part may be a bit confusing so the only example I can give is the movie "I robot" where the main computer called "vicky" tried to turn the world into a police state using all the other robots, even though she was goverened by the 3 laws she warped them in a way where she could hurt the humans but at the same time reason that she was achieving her purpose)

I've never really liked this distinction between servitor and egregore, and the distinction between egregore and godform; To me, the construction of deities is a personal matter. Although deity construction is generally done by the act of several groups of people, this is not always the case. Many stories have yeilded strong archetypes that have attained godhood - both in past and present. To me, it isn't a matter of people giving power to an entity, but how well a person or people give life to archetypes and energies that are already there. So essentially, same gods, different faces.

I'm fairly new to all this stuff, so please excuse if my post is a bit ignorant. But the differences between servitors, egregroes, and godforms seem to remind me of the (sort of) joke "what's the difference between a cult and a religion" - "the number of members". (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

quick edit - Another thought I just had is based towards those that do not care for the idea too much at all. Servitors, Egregores, and Godforms are merely a modeled paradigm in and of themselves. Much in the same way that 500 years ago, the goetics were regarded as demons. What it truly is, is hard to say, but we can model it anyway we want to. But just a thought, I could be wrong.

This post has been edited by Valence: Apr 24 2006, 10:14 AM