Religion and Egregors

[causticus]

I guess this is somewhat of an addendum to my previous post on Neopagan groups serving as fronts for various political activist causes.

On yesterday's Magic Monday post, jprussell posted a follow-up question on a comment thread; there he asked JMG, "Can egregores ever act as vehicles for actual divine powers?"

JMG responded affirmatively, "Yes, and in fact that's how religion works -- the egregor of a deity becomes a vehicle for the divine power. What sets a real religion apart from the kind of thing we're discussing is that real religions are born out of religious experience: people have personal encounters with a divine power, their experiences become the template for an egregor, and the egregor becomes a meeting ground through which the divine and the human interact. In a fake religion, the egregor is created by human beings for human purposes, and the divine never comes into the picture at all."

Then tamanous2020 added, "Interesting! That explains why movements who utilize religion as the vehicle of a political cause (whether it's neo-conservative/woke christianity or say white nationalist who take to Norse drag) end up having such a poor record of producing either mystics or even spiritually changed laypeople. They're not even trying to dial up the right god(s)."

JMG responded, "Ding! We have a winner. Exactly; if all you've got at the top of your system is a human-made egregor, that's as far as you can go."

I think this is a very important point that can add some extra depth to what I have been investigating. Namely, that in trying to discern a spiritual/religious endeavor from mere pageantry or political activism, it might be helpful to look at the overall character of a given group's participants. A good litmus test might be, "is this group a place where any of its members have experienced at least some degree of spiritual change for the better?"

Comments

[jprussell]

Funny how much of evaluating spiritual people/groups/movements seems to come down to "take a good hard look at the folks involved and ask yourself 'does that look good to me? is that what I want?'" I think the fact that that doesn't seem immediately obvious is a pretty good clue to how focused on abstractions most of us are (I am very firmly aiming this at myself, as your point only seemed obvious once you said it out loud).

[causticus]

Very good point. Maybe people caught up in their own abstractions tend to gravitate toward groups that help amplify their escapist fantasies, as opposed to challenging their ingrained worldview and thought habits.

So maybe then the first question to ask oneself is a twist on a famous Groucho Marx quote: "Would I want to be a part of any group that would have me as a member?"

[jprussell]

Yeah, I thought that was another excellent point JMG made in response to another comment by an anonymous user on the same thread, who asked:

Do you have advice for how to tell if you're working with a divine energy or merely an empty egregor?

To which JMG replied:
Does it challenge you, or simply pander to your emotions? That's usually a good test.

[causticus]

Oh yeah I remember that comment and response.

If I hadn't been so mentally-drained at the time I would have likely responded with a tl;dr post talking about Garman Lord's self-reported experiences on how he transitioned out of Wicca and into Heathenry.

In that story he says he learned the Wiccan "goddess" is just a thought-form; he gleaned this from his first experiences invoking Woden as a desperate, "Hail Mary" plea to get the "goddess" to stop harassing him after he left the Wiccan coven he was involved with. Woden says something like, (I'm paraphrasing here) "Oh, it won't be bothering you anymore! I kicked its ass real good. BTW, she's just a thought-form; dealing with it was very little trouble for me."

According to the story, this favor did not come for free though. Woden reportedly put Lord up to a series of very challenging tasks ahead of him, with full acknowledgment that he might indeed fail and not be up to the task at all. Lord describes Woden as being both a ballbuster and a loving guide. This sounds rather consistent with other people's reported experiences with Odin/Woden I've read about. Anyway, I think this well confirms JMG's response you highlight above.

[jprussell]

Hah, yeah, that sounds about right on all counts.

[tamanous2020]

A very good call out! "By their fruits, you shall know them." I used to spend a lot of time reading politics/news and keeping track of what different fringe political groups were up to. The number of people I observed in those scenes who became better people from their involvement was pretty minimal and JMG'S point is a very nice way of putting that into an occult PoV.

[causticus]

Exactly. Perhaps as a guilty pleasure, I still keep track of some fringe groups. And I broadly agree that more than anything, these groups tend to be places where people can nurse their pet grievances in unison, and engage in collective escapism, as opposed to being a venue for doing any sort of serious inner work. As always, it seems that the latter (inner work) is best done as a solitary activity, at least until more traditional ways of running/conducting organizations are once again en vogue.