Eggregore, Servitor and Gods Options

Hey everyone,

Not to long ago I had a discussion about "The meaning of Life". Suddenly it went into a totally different direction concerning entities. We started talking about Eggregores, Servitors and Gods. I've gotten an interesting idea, but I feel on a shallow level that this is a flawed idea. Still I can't let go of it so I shall explain it and see what others think of it.

First my definitions.
An Eggregore gains conciounce and "life" through a group of people. This group will focus their ideas and energies onto one concept. They will give it personality traits, behaviour, morals but not a physical appearance to relate to it.

A Servitor is created by one individual or group. The servitor is a being with a set amount of traits and morals granted by the creator(s). It also has a defined shape and appearance to which everyone can relate to it.


When starting about gods I made the difference between the Christian God/Satan as well as ancient mythological Gods/Godesses. As I see it there is the Source (the All) and from this all came to be, including us. We however created the Gods that we worship, both the positive as the negative ones. Most mythological gods were created in order to express our lack of knowledge towards nature and life itself.

In another thread on these boards I also read the question "what if i use a selfmade being as a powersource, would it work just as well as worshipping a god?".

I see it that most religious icons are eggregores. Many people over the world having the same idea of what God, Satan or the prophet Mohammed stand for and their personality traits are so the speak. But no one has an idea what they look like. People focussing on the ideals on these beings, for so many generations, would generate quite a large pool of energy and thus the Eggregore (Gods) grow over time in power. This is why a self made entity would be weaker in power and aid because it has a lot less time and energy put into it.

People, for so many centuries and with so many at once, could cause great changes in the world. What if we stopped worshipping gods and such and would focus together on the world problems instead?

Just some non-worked out ramblings...

Interesting discussion. I think that a servitor would probably be drained quickly if you used it as a power source. But using deities as a power source (ie. asking for aid) is a well established method.
Egregores are useful. In covens we try to maintain a stable membership so that by practicing and working together for a long time we can develop a well woven group energy. The trouble is that often someone is missing for ritual night and the weave of the egregore/group energy has to be adjusted.
I've had some fascinating discussion about the nature of deities. Some people feel that they are giant thought forms that have been fed by their worshippers and have become strong. One of my friends called it the Tinkerbell effect as in "Do you believe in fairies?" Others find this sacreligious. But deities seem to share characteristics with thought forms, but ther are also differences. Deities have definite personalities and don't obey orders for instance.
The idea that deities are dependant and created by mankind has been played with by some. I know that some of the faery trads worship the elves from Tolkien's Lord of the Ring, for instance. Another of my friends made conjecture that fictional characters such as Sherlock Holmes, Frodo Baggins, King Arthur etc., have taken on a life of their own through being read and their characters enjoyed over time. In the same discussion someone made the remark that we could create our own religion by deifying one of those famous fictional characters. Disney characters were mentioned as possibilities. We weren't very serious about the Disney thing though--- although Disneyland and Disneyworld hold possibilities as religious centres.
Later in these discusiions we hypothesized that deities probably have different origins and could be categorized. Some deities probably originated as historical personalities. Perhaps Wotan actually existed as a man, a cultural hero whose was remembered and eventually deified. Another category would be the personification, or deification of natural forces or phenomenom. The moon, sun, spring, death, birth gods and goddesses would fit this. Deities for human activities also are common. Goibniu, for instance is a smith god. There are deities of shepherds, merchants, sorcery, and many more. I'm sure that there are other categories or origns for deities, but its late at night.