Egregore Of The Band, Could it be dangerous? Options

I've been aiding my band (a musical one) with a bit of magick. I've used magick to influence people to work better before but those techniques were much simpler, and safer, then what I want to accomplish now.
I made a sigil for my band some while ago, a simple little symbol that my band accepted as our "Band logo", so they do support having it represent our band. Well, after while, no doubt, it "grew" into a servitor that basically fed off the energy at our sessions and gigs.
I can feel it growing more and more powerful as the band continues to evolve but I'm afraid it might grow too strong.
Now I don't know much about egregores but I've heard it simply needs a group of people with a common goal to create one.
What I'm really trying to ask, is, if the servitor I created does, in fact, change into an egregore, will I still be able to control it? I've treated it very well, I've gone as far as to create songs for it so I know it won't be hostile (I heard egregores have free will).
Will it still serve the same purpose, could I use it for other purposes as well? Say; Controlling a crowd from getting too wild or keeping my band mates from fighting (things the servitor isn't too experienced on doing at the moment.).
Or will it be malicious? The band sometimes plays negative songs, not a majority, but clearly a large portion of our song bank is based on anger or sadness or some kind of negative emotion.

welll................ it all depends on the length of time it is going to exist and also its function and purpose.

just so you know i dont really have experience here but i do have info
i know that you need to have a set time limit for its life otherwise things could get interesting or at least some way to stop it from running amok, like lets say have it only exist in the astral house/ physical house that you guys play in. kinda like a lodge egreggor.
another thing what were the emotions and thoughts that were running through your head at the time of creation b/c that is probobly the spirits main Modus operendi or core "personality" right now. those feelings that were embedded into this entity whether they be ones of malice or success will be what it intends to achieve, if no limits were set on the creature then it would more than likely achieve these results BY ANY MEANS NECCESARRY, so you kinda want to be specific.

also you dont want that sigil aka, its physical Link to this world to be spread around because eventually you're going to need to destroy it in some ritualistic manner that destroys the egreggor. or reabsorb (painfull (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sweatdrop.gif) ) that energy back into you, and by now it has probobly grown alot.
that sigil is what is housing it, and ive read on the boards about goetic spirits and theories as to why they help, one reason was that they gain more lifeforce through the spread of this physical link...

nothing harsh and even i have qualms about it but once it achieves its goal, what does it do? it will explore and that could potentially cause alot of trouble, trouble that you are accountable for, while it opens up more avenues of "success" by any means necessary.

i hope ive helped more than harmed but the only reason why i "kinda" have't done this is because they are so unpredictable if not properly planned out.

well goodluck in what ever it is you decide to do

a book you may want to read is Dion Fortunes "Psychic attack and Defense"
and Also the end chapter of konstantinos's Summoning Spirits

whoa lucky duck i have the book with me (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
"the process of creating and eventually destroying an egreegor consists of eight steps : 1) deciding what task you want it to accomplish; 2) deciding on its appearance; 3) naming it; 4) creating it's sigil; 5) sculpting a representation of it where it resides when not active; 6) performing a ritual to give it life for a predetermined amount of time; 7)performing a ritual to destroy it when the time comes:
8) disposing of the physical representation. ( this was just the introduction)

the method presented in the book by konstantinos is very ritualistic, very Lengthy and very enochian ( forgive me if im wrong) and i dont know how experienced you are with that sort of thing,so then this may or may not be the right method for you. i dont know my first bet would be to ask how you might liberate some of the energies it has accumulated, how you might command it to assume a shape a form something to get it back under your control , or maybe even asking others in the ceremonial magick section for advice / goetic section./ necronomicon/ any thing spirit related.

the dion fortune book on psychic attack
there is a bout 3 pages worth of a story of how she had to diassemble her eggregor ( for revenge) she was taking it back b-4 it could cause any harm to any one, she had created it unintentionally and there was a psychic link that had established btwn her and the wolflike egreggor. so she commanded the entity letting it know who was boss and then she reabsorbed the entity back into her.

this is just a short summary of what really happened. i feel that dion fortunes' account read in full should help you alot.
so um .... goodluck? and any more Q's just ask
- wanabeee

Wanabee is not entirely incorrect, however, I have a slightly different view on sigils, servitors, and egregores that has served me fairly well in the past...

The way I see it a sigil is a pattern of personal intention, created to cause a relatively instant effect and then disappate. A sigil can't really become a servitor unless it has a complex set of instructions that could border on a rudimentary intelligence. A servitor, however, is intended to not just do a task, but actually take variables into account and act on them accordingly. So they are intentionally granted very basic intelligence.

And egregore is a created entity that is a step above a servitor, but more along the lines of a spirit like those found in the various entity grimoires - KOS, Arbatel, etc - which is to say that they not only have a particular task, but a connection to a particular field of knowledge which they use to fulfill their tasks.

A lot of people talk about servitors and egregores that get out of control, but I've personally had servitors and egregores who have existed for nearly a decade now, who have never 'gone rogue' as it were. They don't grow in intelligence, just power - they'll never act outside of their particular purpose. If you have made a sigil for your band, and never intended it to be a servitor, it won't become a servitor. It will act exactly as the intention your encoded into it causes it to act. It may continue to work because you continue to expose it to energy aligned with it's purpose - that is, your music is intended to make your band successful, so because it has compatible energy with the sigil, the sigil will naturally channel that energy towards it's original intention. However, even if you don't determine a time limit for a sigil, they will often simply disappate naturally, and become a sort of psychic subroutine that will typically only become active when you are engaged in pursuing that intention. Remember that a sigil is focused primarily inwards, utilizing your own un- and sub-conscious mind to achieve a goal.

A sigil can't become a servitor spontaneously because it's too basic a pattern of energy, and it is internalized. You may be able to communicate with that pattern as a part of a personification of the internal self, but it's not going to jump out into the world and become a servitor on it's own, you'd have to project it out of yourself - and this is a very safe and powerful method of servitor creation if you don't mind the long-run approach, as it takes a lot of time, but is more like incubating a servitor than just constructing one.

Servitors don't become egregores spontaneously, because they are created with the intention of simply performing some task or series of tasks. Egregores have a different connection to the astral plane, they can amass or tap into the knowledge they are created in conjunction with in order to have a broad influence and communicate with multiple individuals. Think of a sigil as a single string of code, a servitor as a script, and an egregore as AI software.

What is more likely is that several servitors that have existed within one cabal, for instance, might be aligned in just such a way that they blend together, and become an egregore. This will happen if you have a series of servitors all for related purposes, and use them regularly in tandem with one another. This is also a bit like the previously mentioned long-run method of servitor incubation.

I'm not going to say that Dion Fortune, Konstantinos or the others are necessarily wrong in their interpretation of this phenomenon, but there are specific conditions under which things like rogue servitors or evolving egregores will happen, and most of them take place when we secretly wish for them to happen, or when we combine a series of intentions and created entities by accident, i.e., by not paying attention to what we're doing. They don't just happen spontaneously because you forgot to clean up your astral kitchen.

I would say that given the basic stated intention of your sigil, there's very little chance of it becoming a servitor, unless you wanted it to become one - and even then, it may not be a terrible thing. There's no saying that you can't simply restrict it and focus it's purpose as it grows. It helps to keep a journal or - how I hate the term - a book of shadows, in which you simply lay out the terms of it's existence, what it can and can't do, and under what conditions it must operate. I write the specifics of my servitors and egregores like a legal document. It helps to lay out the primary intention first, and then describe the manner by which it must achieve that intention, and grant it any powers or access to knowledge from the akashic records which will help towards those ends. It will never violate that contract, under any conditions, and in a way the contract itself becomes a kind of hypersigil which serves as the material 'house' for the spirit. Having something like this as an 'origination point' also protects the entity from modification by others, because ultimately you retain your connection to it, and solidify the terms of its existence.

peace

And Vagrent Dreamer isn't entirely incorrect either (I wonder if we're going to end up making a chain of posts consisting entirely of percieved half-truths). There are two prevailing views on magick in general among occultists:

1. All magick is is making internal contact with yourself and the single subconscious mind of which we are all a part of to achieve desired effects in the world around us, and spirits are little more than thoughtforms given permanency within this subconscious mind that links us together.

2. We are all independent of each other and there are different planes of existence in which energy and spirits (also independent creatures) reside that can be invoked or evoked (or manipulated in the case of one's aura and self-made energy) to achieve the desired effects, and the process of acquiring otherwise unattainable ends is called magick.

Most, including myself, believe the latter, but some believe in the former explination. Personally, I think the first one is a little too existentalist to be true, at least for me. I do agree with Vagrant Dreamer in that most servitors and egregores cannot be made haphazardly, but I disagree with him on the sub- and un-conscious aspects of his statement.

I would like to point out one more thing. MOST of the time, servitors and egregores must be consciously and willfully forged into existence, but there are a few rare exceptions. For example, a fairly advanced magician gets into a heated arguement with another just prior to performing a complex and powerful ritual. At the apex of the ritual, the said magician makes a "slip of the mind" and starts to think about how much he hates the person he just had an arguement with, but not just a passing thought, rather, he dwells on it so long it disrupts what he is doing.

Finally the magician catches himself and judges that he isn't in the right frame of mind to continue so he ends the session with banishing and grounding rituals before leaving. The problem is... this magician did complete a ritual, just not what was expected. In the coming days the person who the magician argued with starts having annoying nightmares and a subtle string of bad luck. Why? After gathering all that energy and pooling it in one location during the ritual session, the magician, by dwelling on his hatred for another, unintentionally channeled the bulk of his raised energy into a thoughtform, creating a servitor with animosity toward this individual. This kind of situation doesn't occur very often, but it does happen.

Magick is like a chemistry set. Experenced chemists know how to use more robust chemicals, and if you carelessly mix away, you could blow something up, usually yourself. Most of the time you'll end up with goo or slop, but it only takes that one time to make your life or someone else's life more difficult.

And Vagrent Dreamer isn't entirely incorrect either (I wonder if we're going to end up making a chain of posts consisting entirely of percieved half-truths). There are two prevailing views on magick in general among occultists:

1. All magick is is making internal contact with yourself and the single subconscious mind of which we are all a part of to achieve desired effects in the world around us, and spirits are little more than thoughtforms given permanency within this subconscious mind that links us together.

2. We are all independent of each other and there are different planes of existence in which energy and spirits (also independent creatures) reside that can be invoked or evoked (or manipulated in the case of one's aura and self-made energy) to achieve the desired effects, and the process of acquiring otherwise unattainable ends is called magick.

Speaking of percieved half-truths, both of those views are true, and they are not mutually exclusive - it's a question of the difference between the relative and the absolute. It is the relative that gives us the interaction and Law that makes magick possible. For that matter, it makes everything we know as individuals possible. It is the absolute that binds that all together, though, creating the continuity between 'planes' and 'individuals' etc. If you choose to accept only one view or the other, you'll inevitably limit yourself. From the Absolute point of view, everything is just thoughtforms - including yourself. From the relative view, thoughtforms that we call spirits, are completely separate. If you can get around the irrationality of the paradox in this, then you'll advance quite a bit magickally - magick itself is a paradox to our ingrained view that reality is solid and immutable - which it is, but not like we're taught it is.

Most, including myself, believe the latter, but some believe in the former explination. Personally, I think the first one is a little too existentalist to be true, at least for me. I do agree with Vagrant Dreamer in that most servitors and egregores cannot be made haphazardly, but I disagree with him on the sub- and un-conscious aspects of his statement.

That a sigil works within the bounds of the sub- and un-conscious minds? That's sigil magick 101 - the reason we charge sigils and forget about them, the reason that we attain a state of no-mind in order to slip them past the conscious mind.

I would like to point out one more thing. MOST of the time, servitors and egregores must be consciously and willfully forged into existence, but there are a few rare exceptions. For example, a fairly advanced magician gets into a heated arguement with another just prior to performing a complex and powerful ritual. At the apex of the ritual, the said magician makes a "slip of the mind" and starts to think about how much he hates the person he just had an arguement with, but not just a passing thought, rather, he dwells on it so long it disrupts what he is doing.

I would argue that's possible, but not with a fairly advanced magician. The more advanced you are, the less likely you are going to make a mistake like that in the first place. Not the argument, but doing the ritual after being in such a state of mind. This is the kind of thing that might happen with a beginner or someone who's been at it a while, but isn't quite 'advanced'.

After gathering all that energy and pooling it in one location during the ritual session, the magician, by dwelling on his hatred for another, unintentionally channeled the bulk of his raised energy into a thoughtform, creating a servitor with animosity toward this individual. This kind of situation doesn't occur very often, but it does happen.

Again, it happens with inexperienced magicians, but I would agree that it is possible.

The key within this whole issue is intention - if you're sure of your intentions, then you have no reason to fear a rogue spell of any kind. Always do magick with the right frame of mind, always dot your I's and cross your T's.

peace

Speaking of percieved half-truths, both of those views are true, and they are not mutually exclusive - it's a question of the difference between the relative and the absolute. It is the relative that gives us the interaction and Law that makes magick possible. For that matter, it makes everything we know as individuals possible. It is the absolute that binds that all together, though, creating the continuity between 'planes' and 'individuals' etc. If you choose to accept only one view or the other, you'll inevitably limit yourself. From the Absolute point of view, everything is just thoughtforms - including yourself. From the relative view, thoughtforms that we call spirits, are completely separate. If you can get around the irrationality of the paradox in this, then you'll advance quite a bit magickally - magick itself is a paradox to our ingrained view that reality is solid and immutable - which it is, but not like we're taught it is.

That a sigil works within the bounds of the sub- and un-conscious minds? That's sigil magick 101 - the reason we charge sigils and forget about them, the reason that we attain a state of no-mind in order to slip them past the conscious mind.

I believe that we have conscious, subconscious, and unconscious minds, but that we are independent from each other rather than extentions of one giant subconscious. Instead, we can link to each other like telephone lines, and likewise disconnect, on multiple levels. Well not really "levels" considering realities are more parallel than above or below us but you get the point.

This is also how I think sigil magick works. It's a known fact that the subconscious can think faster than the conscious mind. By slipping sigils into the sub- and un-conscious minds, it can work on it faster and more thoroughly than trying to stay focused on the sigil with the conscious mind, like the difference between a broadband internet connection vs. dialup. The conscious mind is like dialup in that it can pretty much only handle one issue at a time and all its resources are consumed, in the case of sigil magick, in "uploading" it, whereas the subconscious is like a broadband connection than can handle many things at once and can go 50x faster, so "uploading" something is a snap. Just because computers can connect to each other through the internet doesn't mean that there is a giant computer in the sky and that all silicone chips are a part of it. Same goes for our minds.

I would argue that's possible, but not with a fairly advanced magician. The more advanced you are, the less likely you are going to make a mistake like that in the first place. Not the argument, but doing the ritual after being in such a state of mind. This is the kind of thing that might happen with a beginner or someone who's been at it a while, but isn't quite 'advanced'.

I was thinking that as well when I was writing it, as 'advanced' magicians have very controlled minds, but the total novice typically doesn't have the knowledge or experience to raise that kind of power. Someone more intermediate in their magick would likely be a better example, because they're just powerful enough to raise power but are still in the process of controling their minds and are given to "slips."

The key within this whole issue is intention - if you're sure of your intentions, then you have no reason to fear a rogue spell of any kind. Always do magick with the right frame of mind, always dot your I's and cross your T's.

Definitely. I agree 100%.

Hmmm, I am stepping into this one simply because I read it and was not entirely happy with the end result.

As to the Sigil/servitor debate, I agree. Spells/sigils can seem to take on a life of their own, but it is not often the case really. It is more about the perception of it.

However the master practitioner discussion, I highly disliked the outcome of.
To assume a master practitioner will always be in the right state of mind, to know when and when not to do a ceremony is an assumption one cannot make. It is assuming that they will not take action in a chain of dramatic situations without acting while not being in the best frame of mind is not correct.

Katagiri Roshi was one of the most accomplished Zen masters to come to the US from Japan in the 60’s, could be said so far, with the exception of Suzuki-Roshi and excluding the contemporaries who’s contributions will be measured after their passing.

That said, Katagiri (and a few other noted of their noted contemporaries) had issues with alcoholism and on some levels betrayed a few of his students, and or exacted a level of revenge upon being approached on the betrayal. Ultimately, his contributions far outweigh the damage he did, even from the personal level point of view of many of betrayed.

However, damage was done, and not all repaired, in the function of his practice, by a person who essentially had one of the most disciplined minds and had arguably transcended the ego.

To say, a master mage will not make a lapse in judgment at a time when they are in some mini personal hell, is rising people up to godlike status, or at least putting them up to mythical proportions. Don’t, at the end of the day humans are fallible, always. As well they often need a little help from their friends when they feel they are not living up to their perceived image.

I am not saying it is not unlikely, but if you are ever blessed enough to be friends with a master mage or any other mental practice, remember to be an understanding friend, they need those more then they need adoring disciples or fans.
(Making them infallible does not make life easier)

Just my take on it, remember everyone is human.