Do You Really Want A Break Today?

We're talking about egregores today. Egregores, and a satori moment I had while talking magical theory with my wife last week.

First, a little background. An egregore (which may also be called a thoughtform) can be thought of in a number of different ways. You can think of one as a gestalt entity, made up of the collective wills of a group of people come together to achieve a purpose. You can think of one as a truly elaborate sigil, allowing an individual or group to focus Will towards a specific purpose. It could be a separate and distinct spiritual entity, created by one or more individuals to aid in magical work, or nothing more than an arbitrary anthropomorphism of a meme.

Really, from a magical perspective, it can be all of the above simultaneously.

There's a lot more to the subject, obviously, and this barely scratches the surface. Eventually we'll get to information and some of my theories about what they are, but that's not the purpose of today's post. We're talking right now about how these entities interact with us in our daily lives.

We live in an amazingly religious age. Hymns of praise bombard us constantly. Icons and images and enactments of myth are everywhere we look and everywhere we go. The faith determines every aspect of our lives: when we eat, what we drink, what we wear, how we speak, the pursuits we follow, even what we think about. Every day sacrifices of time, of wealth, and of energy are poured into the object of devotion, sustaining and supporting it.

I'm lovin' it.

Save money. Live better.

Citi never sleeps.

These are some of the liturgies of the modern gods, egregores built up over millions of man-hours dedicated to developing and nurturing and growing the corporations. Legally, a corporation is an entity. Magically, a corporation is also an entity. An entity empowered by the blood and sweat and tears of thousands and thousands of employees. An entity with needs and desires separate from those of any single human being involved.

Don't believe me? Ask yourself this - particularly if you work for a corporation. How many times have you heard a phrase used like "this is in the best interests of [the company]" or "the direction [the company] is taking" or even "[the company] is laying off 5% of its workforce"? Contrast this with the number of times that you have heard a phrase like "this is in the best interests of the employees" or "the direction the senior vice president in charge of marketing is taking" or "the board of directors has unanimously voted to lay off 5% of the workforce".

These entities do not care about us. Individual humans are classified by them as either "headcount" or "customer" - which can be understood as "property" or "food", respectively. They aren't evil, precisely, they just do what they were created to do. It's just that what they were created to do is pursue the short-term best interests of (first) themselves, (second) the cabal of high priests that interprets their will, and (third) the shareholders. And that short-term interest doesn't care who or what gets trampled, exploited, or destroyed in the process. If they think about it at all, they decide it's a concern for the next quarter.

So where does that leave us? Well, that depends, to a degree, on your feelings about corporate America and the influence it has over our lives. But at bare minimum - whether you call yourself a priest, a witch, a magician, a neoshaman, a cunning man, or anything else - if you are practicing the art of magic you have taken a step into a wider world. A world where symbols are substance and the spiritual is as important as the material. These entities are out there. Deal with them or contest with them as you wish - but you need to recognize that they are there and you need to be aware of the influence they have on you before you start.

Oh, and the possibility of interpreting the current financial crisis as a Götterdämmerung? I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.