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AnEgregore (also spelledegregor; from French égrégore, from Ancient Greek ἐγρήγορος, egrēgoros 'wakeful') is a concept inWestern esotericism of anon-physical entity orthoughtform that arises from the collective thoughts and emotions of a distinct group of individuals.[1][2]
Inmagical and otheroccult traditions, it is typically seen as having an independent existence, but in other kinds ofesotericism, it is merely the collective mind of a religious community, either esoteric orexoteric. In the latter sense, as a collective mind, the termcollective entity, preferred byRené Guénon, is synonymous with egregore.[1] See the usage overview below.
In theapocryphalBook of Enoch, the term referred to angelic beings known aswatchers.[3][4] Some other literary and religious works, such asThe Manuscript Found in Saragossa, have also made references to these angelic beings.[5]
Egregores are quite independent entities in theBook of Enoch, and there was then no notion that they arose from a collective. In literature, especially older literature, "egregores" have often been straightforward references to these Enochian entities. This is the case in Jan Potocki's novelThe Manuscript Found in Saragossa, which calls egregores "the most illustrious of fallen angels".[5] The French authorVictor Hugo, inLa Légende des siècles (1859) ("The Legend of the Ages"), also uses the wordégrégore, first as an adjective, then as a noun, while leaving the meaning obscure.[6]
TheTraditionalist School philosopherJulius Evola, in hisRevolt Against the Modern World, referred to an elite of spiritually aware people, who keep Tradition alive,[6][7] as "those who are awake, whom in Greek are called the εγρῄγοροι",[7] apparently alluding to the Watchers,[6] and the most literal sense of their name, which is "wakeful" or "awake".
In esotericism, "egregore" has been used to denote a "group mind"[2] or "collective consciousness" of a religious community.René Guénon said, "the collective, in its psychic as well as its corporeal aspects, is nothing but a simple extension of the individual, and thus has absolutely nothing transcendent with respect to it, as opposed to spiritual influences, which are of a wholly different order".[1] This usage was followed byGnosis magazine[2] and byOlavo de Carvalho,[8] and, according to Guénon, began withÉliphas Lévi.[1]
The concept of atulpa is similar.[6]
TheMeditations on the Tarot describe theAntichrist as "anegregore, an artificial being who owes his existence to collective generationfrom below". Elsewhere, the book calls egregores "demons engendered by the collective will and imagination of nations".[9] The book cites, but does not completely agree with, the usage of Robert Ambelain in hisLa Kabbale pratique. Ambelain defined the egregore as "aforce generated by a powerful spiritual current and then nourished at regular intervals, according to a rhythm in harmony with the universal life of the cosmos, or to a union of entities united by a common characteristic nature". The author of theMeditations on the Tarot calls this passage from Ambelain "a definition which leaves nothing more to be desired", but disagrees with Ambelain's description ofCatholicism,Freemasonry, andProtestantism as egregores.[9]
Gary Lachman follows the usage of theMeditations on the Tarot in his bookDark Star Rising, which also suggests thatPepe the Frog may be an egregore in this sense—or atulpa, which Lachman sees as a similar phenomenon.[10] In the usage of Lachman and of theMeditations on the Tarot, "there are no 'good' egregores, only 'negative' ones".[10] Lachman cited Joscelyn Godwin'sThe Golden Thread, which itself cited theMeditations on the Tarot,[11] as a source for the idea that, while a religious (or other) group who creates an egregore can "rely" on it as "an efficacious magical ally", "the egregore's help comes at a price",[10] since, as Godwin put it, its creators must thenceforth meet the egregore's "unlimited appetite for their future devotion".[11][10]
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Liber Null & Psychonaut, by theBritishchaos magicianPeter J. Carroll, uses the wordegregore for the first time at the end of the following passage:
Religion takes the view that consciousness preceded organic life. Supposedly there were gods, angelic forces, titans, and demons setting the scene before material life developed. Science takes the opposite view and considers that much organic evolution occurred before the phenomenon of consciousness appeared. Magic, which has given more attention to the quality of consciousness itself, takes an alternative view and concludes that organic and psychic forms evolve synchronously. As organic development occurs, a psychic field is generated which feeds back into the organic forms. Thus each species of living being has its own type of psychic form or magical essence. These egregores may occasionally be felt as a presence or even glimpsed in the form of the species they watch over.[12]
The book goes on to say that "those who have perceived the human egregore usually describe it as God", and that "magicians consider that all life on this world contributes to, and depends on, a vast composite egregore which has variously been known as the Great Mother, theAnima Mundi, the Great Archon, the Devil, Pan, andBaphomet."[12]
Following this usage, though giving no citations, the glossary in Frater Tenebris's 2022 bookThe Philosophy of Dark Paganism[13] defines "egregore" as "an occult term for an independently functioning spiritual entity created by one or more magick practitioners. Many egregores begin as thought-forms but then become capable of operating independently of the practitioners."[13] It defines "thought-form" as "an esoteric entity created bymagick", and "magick" as "a spiritual practice and process to influence the probability of events."[13]
The book mentions egregores in the context of "archetypism", a view that understands "the different gods and goddesses" as "either psychological structures, similar toCarl Jung's archetypes, or different currents of arcane energy found in the Cosmos that are anthropomorphized."[13] Noting that "some archetypists consider the gods to be thought-forms created from worship and prayer by generations of believers", it says that "over time these thought-forms may become egregores that exhibit some autonomy apart from their worshipers", and that "one might imagine these gods along the line ofNeil Gaiman's deities in the novelAmerican Gods."[13]
TheBook of Enoch, 1:5, refers to "ἐγρήγοροι",[4] which is usually translated as "watchers".[3] AsRené Guénon says, these are "entities of a rather enigmatic character that, whatever they may be, seem to belong to the 'intermediary world'; this is all that they have in common with the collective entities to which the same name has been applied" in esoteric literature.[1]
While Guénon notes that he had "never used the word 'egregore' to designate" what he preferred to call a "collective entity", he notes[1] that he had described these same entities in hisPerspectives on Initiation (1946), in the following passage:
Each collectivity can thus be regarded as possessing a subtle force made up in a way of the contributions of all its members past and present, and which is consequently all the more considerable and able to produce greater effects as the collectivity is older and is composed of a greater number of members. It is evident, moreover, that this 'quantitative' consideration essentially indicates that it is a question of the individual domain, beyond which this force could not in any way intervene.[14][1]
Guénon believed that prayer is not directly addressed to spiritual entities (such as gods or angels), but rather it, "consciously or not, addresses itself most immediately to the collective entity, and it is only by the intermediary of this latter that it also addresses the spiritual influence that works through it".[1]
According to Guénon, the term was first used to designate these collective entities byÉliphas Lévi, "who, to justify this meaning, gave it an improbable Latin etymology, deriving it fromgrex, 'flock,' whereas the word is purely Greek and has never signified anything but 'watcher.'"[1] But according to Mark Stavish's 2018 bookEgregores, Lévi'sLe Grand Arcane ("The Great Secret", 1868) "clearly identifies the wordegregore with theKabbalistic lore of those beings who were said to be the fathers of the Nephilim",[6] i.e., theWatchers.[6] Lévi described them as "terrible beings" that "crush us without pity because they are unaware of our existence."[15]
Following the usage of "egregore" as a "collective entity", a 1987 article byGaetan Delaforge inGnosis magazine defines an egregore as "a kind of group mind which is created when people consciously come together for a common purpose".[2]
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The dictionary definition ofegregore at Wiktionary