The Historical Egregore | Miscellaneous | Forums

I'm writing an essay on thoughtforms, as the final piece in my four-part series on Energywork.  In my opinion, 99% of magic revolves around the use of thoughtforms, so this is at least potentially the longest and most complex essay in the series.  As such, I'm doing a lot of research into thoughtforms of different types: constructs, servitors, egregores, tulpas, etc.  And there's a lot of material out there, believe me.

The other day, though, I came across a very interesting essay on a form of egregore I don't believe I've heard about before:The Historical Egregore.  I think I can safely say this is the first source I've ever seen present a clear and well-reasoned argument for the use of false histories by the occult, new-age, and pagan communities.  Is anyone else aware of other sources which further develop this idea?  So far, the best I've been able to find was this, which really doesn't treat the concept as seriously.  It's a difficult subject to determine the correct keywords to search for effectively, though, and I probably haven't found much of what has been said on the subject.

All of this said, while I find the argument far more compelling than other's I've seen on this subject, I still don't necessarily agree with it.  There are at least two things I can think of which would make me very hesitant to employ this technique.

1) This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the only way to connect with and work with these thoughtforms.  As one concrete example, chaos magicians don't need to spread false histories of the world to connect with and work with egregores from the Lovecraft mythos.  They don't need to spread the idea that Lovecraft was secretly an occultist recording an accurate metaphysical history of the world and disguising it as fiction, or even that he somehow unknowingly channeled the truth about the Elder Gods.  They can enjoy the Mythos purely as fiction and still work very effectively with the entities therein.  That's not to say that there aren't individual chaos magicians and other occultists such as Kenneth Grant who have chosen to work with the Mythos as a literal or semi-literal history, but simply that one does not have to in order to connect with its egregores.  Nor with any of the other egregores in the field of Pop Culture magic.

2) One of the more universal rules of magic is the law of similarity: like affects like.  This law, in turn, is the basis for several other occult concepts.  Among them, the law of knowledge (understanding brings control) and the idea that the microcosm is capable of affecting the macrocosm.  If these concepts are true, then one's ability to control the real world (the macrocosm) is predicated on both one's ability to understand that aspect of it one wishes to control, and also on the similarity of one's microcosmic mental representation of it to external reality.  In an occult sense, the map IS the territory.  If you muddy your map with false information, if you dilute your understanding of the actual world, it becomes that much harder to work to make it the world you wish it to be.