Meet our Egregors

There is a tragically sad part of P.L. Travers’ Mary Poppins where the infant twins are conversing with the wind and a sassy starling. They realize the older children don't understand the voice of the wind, or the birds, or even their own infant siblings. Mary explains that the older children did understand these languages when they were babies and that the twins would also forget in time. The twins rebuff Mary’s proclamation, but the Starling affirms "'I say you will,' he insisted. 'It isn’t your fault, of course,' he added more kindly. 'You’ll forget because you just can’t help it. There never was a human being that remembered after the age of one — at the very latest.’”

We become habituated out of our natural animistic understanding of the world, with societal and familial conditioning. Our minds cloud with the beliefs of others. But as young children, we were fluent in the language of the wind and the birds and the stones. We intrinsically knew the world around us to be as alive and conscious as we are. That pre-adult part of us still remembers how we animated our imaginations on the template of our toys. We created egregors from our playthings and fed them with love and friendship and stories.

I didn’t have the word egregor at age nine, but I knew my stuffed animals were alive in a sense most people refused to recognize. I wasn’t confused or stunted. I was living in an animistic world that is conscious and communicating. Consciousness is intimately woven into the fabric of life and, in the cloudless eyes of a child, it can be woven into the fabric of a teddy bear as well.

The Egregor has had a long and complicated past—too entangled to unravel in one article. It is an ancient concept that has become obscured and distorted in most modern vernaculars. The internet has reacquainted us with the idea of egregors, but we never lost touch with the thought-forms themselves. We just began calling them by other names.

An egregor can manifest as:

1. any thought-form that becomes animated on a physical medium
2. the character that emerges from the collective mood of a group

Easy now, voice-of-reason, stay with me.

When you think of the virtuous intentions the United States initially espoused, what image comes to mind?

What symbol is instantly recognized by millions around the world as an embodiment of compassion, integrity, freedom from oppression, and everything that America once aspired to be?

Can you see her?

She is the Mother of Exiles. So named by Emma Lazarus in the sonnet "The New Colossus" from which the famous inscription "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..." is quoted.

Her official name, Liberty Enlightening the World speaks directly to her mission. She has been fed with the faith, hopes, and burdens of the millions of immigrants she has greeted in Upper New York Bay.

The sight of her has soothed multitudes of exhausted, overburdened souls.

Sadly, the United States has not yet realized its original aspiration to be the land of liberty for all, but the memory of what it once stood for still lives in the minds of millions, and it wants to be rekindled.

Lady Liberty is a powerful egregor, and she awaits our direction.

The concept of the egregor may seem new, but we bump into thought-forms daily, whether we know it or not.

How many times have you found yourself caught in the collective heat of a traffic jam?

That familiar feeling is a type of group thought-form. It is a collective feeling or mood, that takes on a life of its own. We encounter this particular egregor so much we call it by name: Road-rage.

Each driver either joins in the collective feeding of Road-rage with his or her feelings of frustration (and may even feel compelled to act on those feelings) or they keep their cool and witness the collective writhing of the traffic egregor from the comfort of their own auto-nomy (please excuse the punny-ness).

From the etymology of the word Egregor, we find other species of thought-forms.

1. from the ancient Greek word egrḗgoros meaning awakened, wakefulness, or watchfulness
2. from the Latin root egeiro: to be awake, to keep vigil, to rouse, to stir up, to raise from the dead
3. from the French word, egregore meaning  group-mind, or the spirit of a group
4. and most recently, the meme, a self-replicating idea, a self-modifying program

The egregor has evolved into in a very modern cultural and societal norm—the meme. It's also the trickiest egregor yet.

The meme egregor is self-modifying and more autonomous than the road-rage species of egregor. It can propagate within group-mind and is instantly recognized and understood by multitudes. It is transferred in the behavior of its host and can live on in perpetuity. Individuals and memories may fade, but ideas endure.

Think of egregors as a way to see the thoughts of group-mind. We overlap more with our world, and each other than most of us are comfortable admitting. Egregors are a way to see what we are feeding with our collective attention and focus. They also offer us a way to initiate change in the outside world.

"All along the watchtower, princes kept the view”  -Robert Zimmerman

Egregors feature widely in The Book of Enoch, the oldest known Hebraic text not to be canonized. They are Watchers, angelic beings that act as guards, keeping vigil over humankind, and ultimately imparting secret knowledge to their guardianship. Their stone likeness can be found atop temples and cathedrals today, still holding their tower posts.

Kevin and I both had different friends when we were kids. Our imaginations gave life to the things we loved. We didn't create them consciously, but there they were. Autonomous beings with their own quirks and devotions.

We recognized them and fed them with stories and adventures; with connection and a willingness to believe. That focused energy and emotion coalesced and fused into a type of vitality.  We all did this as kids. Rember how you couldn't catch the little rascals in the act, but you knew they were monkeying around in the periphery? How about that sense that they were keeping watch over you?

We aspire to use the same animistic knowledge we had as children to animate our desires today.

Our egregors are companions and guides. We feed them with appreciation and adventure, and they reciprocate with inexhaustible enthusiasm, and self-admiration. The more we feed them, the more they beam self-recognition and pride. The way we all intended to self-actualize.

Bear is our adventure-mobile. Our magical road-beast with keen eyes, broad perspective, a steady resting heartbeat, and a smooth, gentle gait.

He has been a home, a solace, a supporter and a friend. He's part of the family. He takes us to places isolated and wild. Places remote and distant. Places beautiful and otherwise inaccessible.

He’s an adventurer, and he LOVES to get his paws dirty on backroads!

Roam-e came to us through Kevin’s adorable and highly talented sister, Shelby. He is one of her luv-bots, and his kin are available for adoption to loving homes. Roam-e instantly captured our hearts (it’s one of his specialties).

He’s a wanderer, with a jaunty spirit and a sweet smile, who wears his heart on his sleeve. When he caught the drift of our adventures—he wanted in. He’s exhilarated to be part of this joyous assignment to help save the world. When he’s not stealing hearts, he keeps the Bear-fort with the love of his life, Lady Love-Bug.

Lady Love-Bug has been in the family for over a decade. She was a Valentine I gave Kevin when we were dating, ages ago. She helps him debug software. A sort of bug-whisperer. She has happily sat on many a desk over the years and kept him company. She wanted to come along for this adventure, and we soon found out why. She and Roam-e have been inseparable from the day they met. At last, her love has come beep, beep, beeping along. They have made a home in Bear, and keep him company. They are our cohorts and companions, and most recently we asked them to alert us to any mice or other stowaways also looking to make a home in Bear.

The Kitsune babies are magical healers and benevolent tricksters. Kitsy and Une, They have been with us for a few years now. When activated they have healing thermal energy that soothes achy joints and muscle spasms.

They like to secret away into the night when we are sleeping. We’re still not sure what they get up to. They like to hang out with the Whirly-birds: Gizmo and Sparky. That’s Gizmo giving them the butterfly ears!

Think of egregors as practical magic. Like sweeping the entranceway of your home before beginning a project, or the magic of making your bed each day. We live in a world of symbols. When we make a deliberate [ritualistic] change in the physical world, it sends a magnetizing message reverberating to the other multifaceted parts of us to engage. There is far too much processing going on in the prismatic contours of our minds for us to comprehend it all at once. Some of that information gets communicated through physical sensations or emotions.

Have you ever stood before a great work of art and felt its presence? Almost as if it had a life of its own? Commanding works of art are more energetic than they are physical. Some artists speak to their creations during their gestation. Play music to them as mothers do with their unborn children. They bless them and feed them with intense emotion and dedication. By the time the work of art is displayed, what the viewer sees is maybe twenty percent of what the artist conceptualized, but they can feel the full, vibrating, life-force of the piece.

Egregors give physical form to our thoughts and emotions. They are a powerful way to magnetize our desires on the template of our physical world. There are sleeping egregors all around you—ready to be brought into magical vitality. In your home, in your community. In the statues, symbols, toys and beloved objects you see every day. It could be your grandmother’s silver bell, or the painting your father gave you, or your mother’s emerald ring that calls to you. It could be the beloved boots that make you feel invincible when you slip into them. It could be the statue down the street or your favorite tree in town. Whatever you choose to imbue with love and attention can be brought to life as an ally and guide.

Our refusal to deny the animistic quality of things when we were children, was an acknowledgment that not all life is biological. As we travel across the country, we find evidence of that same pulsing vitality everywhere. There are egregors in every town, village, city, and home—and they’re eager to help.

Think of egregors as sympathetic magic. A way to speak to collective mind through our individual subconscious minds. It’s also a tricky way to sneak up on ourselves with good habits of thought.

This is serious play, initiated on the turf of our imaginations, and it’s a seriously fun experiment in co-creation.

But don’t take our word for it. If your ears are perked, and you want to play, here's an experiment to try: think of conditions that you'd like to change or bring about in your life or the outside world. Is there an object that represents those qualities to you? Maybe in your home, or somewhere nearby? There's your egregor. It may have been tugging at your sleeve for a while.

Cultivate your egregor with blessings and stories. Speak to it with affection, as you would a friend. Imbue it in any way with focus and intention, and watch what happens.