Here’s what chatgpt says when I asked it to explain the term to me on a high school level
An egregore is like a shared thought or feeling that a group of people create together. Imagine you and your friends start a club, and every time you meet, you all get really excited and motivated about the same things. Over time, this energy and focus can become something that feels almost real, even though it’s just in your minds. This shared energy or “group spirit” is what people call an egregore. It’s like a team spirit or vibe that you all contribute to and can feel when you’re together.
or a college level
To put it in a more academic context, consider it as a psychological and energetic phenomenon where a group’s shared beliefs, goals, and emotional states coalesce into an independent entity that can exert influence on the group’s members. This entity is sustained by the group’s ongoing interaction and focus. In sociology and psychology, this can be seen as an emergent property of collective human behavior, where the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts, influencing individual members’ attitudes and actions in ways that might not occur if the individuals were acting alone.
In all honestly, they’re actually both very similar but created in different ways. @Artemisia’s definition from ChatGPT is pretty spot-on for my understanding of the spirit.
So, an egregore is a thought-form given life through group energy. Like Devenne said, some people have said that Jesus (or even other deities or spirits) is an egregore. They are created by groups putting enough energy into certain subjects or beliefs. There are even coven egregores; spirits are created through the coven meetings and energy raised. This egregore can then work with the coven and help in the same way an individual’s servitor can. The only difference between the two, I believe, is that an egregore isn’t given a job or role. It can be a sentient spirit with wants, desires, and dislikes outside the group who created it (even if the creation was accidental).
Servitors are created individually, given specific purposes and jobs, and can be “decomissioned” or “retired” when their job is done.
Interesting. For me personally, if I understand this right, I don’t think I subscribe to this, as it would mean that the gods aren’t in their own right, as in they existed before humans, if they’re egregore, then they were created by humans, which would make them kind of mortal as in, if no human energy was given them, could be uncreated, or am I totally off base here
You’re not totally off base! Egregores need energy to sustain themselves. Those who believe deities are egregores may also believe that this is why the gods need our worship - without our belief and worship, they cease to exist.
If you think about egregores in other terms, the concept of money has an egregore around it. People do crazy things under this egregore’s influence - fame, riches, wealth, status, even poverty all have a huge affect on people (outside of the fact that we literally need money to supply our basic needs…). People have very strong opinions about money, too, whether good or bad – some people believe in the concept of money and capitalism, giving energy to the egregore every time money is spent. Others vehemently oppose the concept of money, wishing to go back to a simpler time before currency (if that ever completely existed at all) – either way, the egregore of money and currency gets energy from both groups.
The same can be applied to group spirits. For example, take our coven here – there have been so many times that many of us, even us moderators, have been on the same page. We’ve attributed this to the “coven mind”, but it may also be attributed to an egregore if one has manifested itself out of the energy we put into our coven!
That makes sense, like a group mind (star trek Borg , sorry it helps me understand things to see it ). I think for me, the gods are above this, as I feel they’re living beings and were here, before us. Just my worldview. I wonder why (back to the runes), she would bring that in, maybe it effects the runes if used in group magic. Curiouser and curiouser (Alice).
No you’re right. I was pondering why the Russian school would bring egregores into rune study, there must be a point to knowing this. I’m sure it’ll be clear as I go through the book. But yeah like when we have spell for the day, if we all did it together, that’s egregores ( my grammars awful ), would that make the spell more powerful?
And now my minds racing, chaos has taken over, if egregore created a being, what if it didn’t like it when people stopped given it energy, would it attack you? How would you get rid of it if you are the energy of it without attacking yourself? How alive is it? Lots of questions.
Oh for sure doing spells together can be more powerful. Our energy as a collective working towards the same goal. Me and starborn have done some stuff together and I feel the unity brought swiftness. I mean I feel like I generally have powerful actions resulting from my magick because I believe. For sure
Egregore only draw power from your beliefs in that being from what I remember. I don’t think they have harmful intentions necessarily unless u were putting energy into a bad being? I guess. If people made a bad egregore.
This itself isn’t an egregore, that’s just group magic. The egregore is created over time, gradually, the more a group works together.
haha it can get pretty complex! I’m no expert on egregores, but I imagine it would be just like banishing any other spirit. An egregore doesn’t draw on the energy of the people around it to exist. It exists because of the people around it, if that makes sense. Let me see if I can find some sources to explain this better - and move the egregore talk to its own thread so it doesn’t get lost
I would say whatever energy was put into it is kept by the egregore I don’t think that it would directly link u to it. Although I have heard that if ur following an egregore version unknowingly they start out strong to make u think they are the real thing. But after, their results are subpar. Like a watered down version of the real thing.
I’m not positive but I don’t think you have to banish it unless it was like a mutant version. I just don’t think it’s normally a thing from what I have read in the past. I think when u stop believing in it maybe it is gone. Like it works on the energy u give it at a given time. I am thinking
