Still pretty tentative, and information appreciated. I don't
have much idea how the term acquired its current meaning.

egregore, egregor, egrigor, n. [< Gr, "watcher"] In ancient
religious texts such as the Book of Enoch, one of the Angels
appointed to watch over the earth. In modern occultism and
Chaos Magick, a thought-form similar to a tulpa (q.v.); a
purposefully-created magical entity, generally by a group.
[Not in OED.]

The Astral Light warms, illuminates, magnetises, attracts,
repels, vivifies, destroys, coagulates, separates, breaks
and conjoins everything, under the impetus of power wills.
God created it on the first day when He said "Let there be
light." This force of itself is blind but is directed by
Egregores -- that is, by chiefs of souls, or, in other
words, by energetic and active spirits.
Éliphas Lévi (trans. A.E. Waite), intro to The History of Magic

If the word is of Greek origin it seems to connect with the
idea of watchers rather than leaders. Cf. [ho egre^'goros] =
Vigil, in the Septuagint.
A.E. Waite, note to Éliphas Lévi, The History of Magic

Speaking of it in his Preface to the "History of Magic"
Eliphas Lévi says: "It is through this Force that all the
nervous centres secretly communicate with each other; from
it -- that sympathy and antipathy are born; from it—that we
have our dreams; and that the phenomena of second sight and
extra-natural visions take place. . . . Astral Light, acting
under the impulsion of powerful wills, destroys, coagulates,
separates, breaks, gathers in all things. . . . God created
it on that day when he said: Fiat Lux, and it is directed by
the Egregores, i.e., the chiefs of the souls who are the
spirits of energy and action."
H.P. Blavatsky, note to The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis
of Science, Religion, and Philosophy (ellipses in original)

Egrigors are created by human thoughts. As we know, our
thoughts consist of electric energy plus vital fluid or
pranah, possessed by every living body.
Nicholas Mamontoff, "Can Thoughts Have Forms?" (Fate, June
1960), as quoted in Hilary Evans, Visions * Apparitions *
Alien Visitors: A Comparative Study of the Entity Enigma

Within a few minutes the features of the cat stabilized and
on his hind feet was a pair of Russian boots. The egrigor
was motionless and looked like a poorly developed
photograph. "Do not think about the cat any more and watch
what happens to it," ordered the guru. Sitting in the
darkness the audience saw the form of the cat gradually melt
and at last disappear completely.
Nicholas Mamontoff, "Can Thoughts Have Forms?" (Fate, June
1960), as quoted in Hilary Evans, Visions * Apparitions *
Alien Visitors: A Comparative Study of the Entity Enigma

The "Conjuration of the Watcher" follows the Fire God
conjuration. The word "watcher" is sometimes used
synonymously with "angel", and sometimes as a distinct Race,
apart from angelos: egregori. The Race of Watchers are said
not to care what they Watch, save that they follow orders.
They are somewhat mindless creatures, but quite effective.
Perhaps they correspond to Lovecraft's shuggoths [sic], save
that the latter became unwieldy and difficult to manage.
"Simon", Prefatory Notes to Necronomicon

Azathoth is an egregore associated with the emergence of
sentience from the primeval slime and the quest of sentience
to reach for the stars. It is associated with these
activities in star systems other than our own; the next
nearest being apparently Deneb in Cygnus.
Peter J. Carroll, Liber Kaos

Konstantinos, in his book Summoning Spirits, is equally
frank. He warns his readers that, in order to evoke entities
from the Necronomicon, they will probably have to create
them themselves, as they would any egregore. (An egregore is
a thought-form created by the magician by means of his/her
will and visualization. It is a mental image solidified into
astral substance. According to Konstantinos -- and to Isaac
Bonewits -- it is much easier to use a preexisting egregore
than one that the magician has to create.)
John Wisdom Gonce III, "A Plague of Necronomicons" in Daniel
Harms & John Wisdom Gonce III, The Necronomicon Files: The
Truth Behind Lovecraft's Legend

--
Dan Clore

My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1587154838/thedancloren...
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"

I think the original Greek word has more to do with wakefulness, e.g.
of a vigil, than watching as such. Its root is the verb _egeírO_, to
awaken or rouse.

An English word with the 'group' etymology is "egregious", from Latin
_ex-_ + _grex_ (+ _ius_), meaning more or less literally "standing
out from the herd" -- it's almost always used in a negative sense,
for something exceptionally bad.

--
Odysseus

minus what the word officially/etymologically means, egregore sounds
like something eating something

93

One form of modern usage is somewhere between the tulpa and group mind
ideas. It is an entity (god, demon, tulpa) that is supported by the
attention and/or energy of a group.

This resolves, somewhat, the ideas presented in Dan's post... Each
individual in a group "creating" an egregore supports the existence of
the entity. Individual and group creation are not mutually exclusive.
In the Peter Carroll example given, for instance, individuals over time
and space would each create their own personal conception of
Azathoth... but it is the collection of these creations that
constitutes the egregore.

Just one example of usage of a generally vague term.

93 93/93
Phil
http://hawkridgeproductions.com/

e.g re: gore

On Sat, 20 Aug 2005 22:35:47 -0700, Dan Clore

Bravo,  enjoyed the post.   Finally true magian thought.

Mage Baragund, Melkor

you really are old. No one has used the term "magian" since Oswald
Spengler (1900's). Get with the times. It's called magick today.
If you are going to live forever you're supposed to always the current
parlance. Case tells us not to stand out. Now we know you're at least
100 years old!!!

50050922 ix om happy equinox!

hey Dan!

Dan Clore <cl...@columbia-center.org>:

<snip, excellent!>

other terms used by occultists that I've noticed had
effectively the same meaning as 'egregores' are:

        thoughtforms
        telesmic images
        telesmetic images
        servitors              

corrections welcomed.

nagasiva <luckymojo.com*nagasiva>

news:vPFYe.56$3o.234@typhoon.sonic.net...

Not corrections, but additions from outside occultism

karasses
granfalloons

news:vPFYe.56$3o.234@typhoon.sonic.net...
| 50050922 ix om happy equinox!
|
| hey Dan!
|
| Dan Clore <cl...@columbia-center.org>:
| >Still pretty tentative, and information appreciated. I don't
| >have much idea how the term acquired its current meaning.
| >
| >egregore, egregor, egrigor, n. [< Gr, "watcher"] In ancient
| >religious texts such as the Book of Enoch, one of the Angels
| >appointed to watch over the earth. In modern occultism and
| >Chaos Magick, a thought-form similar to a tulpa (q.v.); a
| >purposefully-created magical entity, generally by a group.
| >[Not in OED.]

Tulpa is Tibetan. The Lama teaches his pupil to make a "real" entity
then destroys it to prove that nothing is real.   Only Nothing is real.

Comparable to "gestalt"

Wikipedia has a nice definition of egregore

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egregore

CHOYOFAQUE

The term "egregore" began to gain wide usage with the Fraternitas Saturni (a German mystical order, and the first to publically  embrace the Law of Thelema, although not kowtowing to Crowley per se). The egregore of the FS i.e. GOTOS, represented the astral body of the Order, the physical representation in the form of the GOTOS Head, and the Chief of the Order.

The word "egregore" may have derived itself from one of the following:
a) Derivation from the Greek "egrêgoroôn", which means "awake" or "watching over";
b) The Latin "gregarious", meaning "pertaining to a herd or flock";
C) The Greek "ageirein", which means "to collect."

"Egregore" reflects a tangible and living thought/astral/psychological mantle built by the group/order/lodge/coven etc. An egregore has a viable and changeable form that feeds off the energies of the membership and the nature of the work they perform. In certain groups, this egregore gets consciously built ...  in others it begins as a by-product. Other groups, particularly mundane groups, may not even recognise that a living energy exists as a signature of the work and activities that they do.

Su

news:3phi0iFaf847U1@individual.net...

if nothing is real, then even nothing is unreal.

A

news:4333a899$0$1892$6cceaf45@news.echoforum.com...

a good one. Except for the reference to a coven. A coven couldnt buiold a
rain shelter.

A

news:WDRYe.23476$in2.10405@fe04.news.easynews.com...
|
| "Spencer Spindrift" <q...@supahat.com> wrote in message
| news:3phi0iFaf847U1@individual.net...
| >
| > "nagasiva" <yronwode.com@nagasiva> wrote in message
| > news:vPFYe.56$3o.234@typhoon.sonic.net...
| > | 50050922 ix om happy equinox!
| > |
| > | hey Dan!
| > |
| > | Dan Clore <cl...@columbia-center.org>:
| > | >Still pretty tentative, and information appreciated. I don't
| > | >have much idea how the term acquired its current meaning.
| > | >
| > | >egregore, egregor, egrigor, n. [< Gr, "watcher"] In ancient
| > | >religious texts such as the Book of Enoch, one of the Angels
| > | >appointed to watch over the earth. In modern occultism and
| > | >Chaos Magick, a thought-form similar to a tulpa (q.v.); a
| > | >purposefully-created magical entity, generally by a group.
| > | >[Not in OED.]
| >
| > Tulpa is Tibetan. The Lama teaches his pupil to make a "real" entity
| > then destroys it to prove that nothing is real.   Only Nothing is
real.
| >
| >
|
| if nothing is real, then even nothing is unreal.

Yes, none of the above.
Emptiness, the Void.
This is the only truth the Buddha taught, all else is methods for
realising this.

When all else fails, read the manual.

Hmm. Doing that wouldn't prove what you say it is supposed to. Otherwise
those monks are using some pretty bad logic.

Everything is real, it's the way you look at it.

Is the tulpa real if it destroys the lama, I wonder?

No, because it hasn't destroyed anything real.

news:OgWYe.14023$zw1.13692@newsfe2-gui.ntli.net...
| > "nagasiva" <yronwode.com@nagasiva> wrote in message
| > news:vPFYe.56$3o.234@typhoon.sonic.net...
| > | 50050922 ix om happy equinox!
| > |
| > | hey Dan!
| > |
| > | Dan Clore <cl...@columbia-center.org>:
| > | >Still pretty tentative, and information appreciated. I don't
| > | >have much idea how the term acquired its current meaning.
| > | >
| > | >egregore, egregor, egrigor, n. [< Gr, "watcher"] In ancient
| > | >religious texts such as the Book of Enoch, one of the Angels
| > | >appointed to watch over the earth. In modern occultism and
| > | >Chaos Magick, a thought-form similar to a tulpa (q.v.); a
| > | >purposefully-created magical entity, generally by a group.
| > | >[Not in OED.]
| >
| > Tulpa is Tibetan. The Lama teaches his pupil to make a "real" entity
| > then destroys it to prove that nothing is real.
|
|
| Hmm. Doing that wouldn't prove what you say it is supposed to.
Otherwise
| those monks are using some pretty bad logic.
|
| >   Only Nothing is real.
|
| Everything is real, it's the way you look at it.

Buddhist logic:

1. Everything is real.
2. Nothing is real.
3. Both everything and nothing are real.
4. Neither everything nor nothing are real.
5. Non of the above.

This is true of any proposition.  Nagarjuna.

It's the old paradox: "This statement is not true".

The Neophyte begins with a belief system.
The Guru builds this up until it falls down under the weight of it's own
absurdity. Many get stuck at the absurd stage and post endless arguments
on Usenet. Before computers they used to form groups or Magical Orders
for their arguments.
Going beyond can be lonely and frightening.
Do we have a choice?
1. Yes.   2. No.   3. Both  4. Neither.
5. Non of the above.

Oh, but that's so easy, isn't it? Just say "nothing is real" and
away you go, content that your intellect has risen above the
mundane bluster of the crowd. Yet in saying this you've understood
nothing at all.

news:sUoZe.96443$Ph4.3031389@ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca...
|> Hmm. Doing that wouldn't prove what you say it is supposed to.
| > Otherwise
| > | those monks are using some pretty bad logic.
| > |
| > | >   Only Nothing is real.
| > |
| > | Everything is real, it's the way you look at it.
| >
| > Buddhist logic:
| >
| > 1. Everything is real.
| > 2. Nothing is real.
| > 3. Both everything and nothing are real.
| > 4. Neither everything nor nothing are real.
| > 5. Non of the above.
| >
| > This is true of any proposition.  Nagarjuna.
| >
| > It's the old paradox: "This statement is not true".
| >
| > The Neophyte begins with a belief system.
| > The Guru builds this up until it falls down under the weight of it's
own
| > absurdity. Many get stuck at the absurd stage and post endless
arguments
| > on Usenet. Before computers they used to form groups or Magical
Orders
| > for their arguments.
| > Going beyond can be lonely and frightening.
| > Do we have a choice?
| > 1. Yes.   2. No.   3. Both  4. Neither.
| > 5. Non of the above.
|
| Oh, but that's so easy, isn't it? Just say "nothing is real" and
| away you go, content that your intellect has risen above the
| mundane bluster of the crowd. Yet in saying this you've understood
| nothing at all.

I speak here of absolute truth.
There is also relative truth which is useful for getting by in the
mundane
world. But if one does really realise absolute truth then all mundane
actions become spontaneous. This is called pure Buddha Activity. The
present Dalai Lama seems to have attained this. He has said that he may
be the last. That is he is hinting that he has gone beyond belief in
re-incarnation.

news:3pmmp0FaobrhU1@individual.net...

Speaking of it and knowing it are two very, very different things.

I've heard the Dalai Lama say that. I suspect it may be vanity on
his part. He wants to be special, so he wants to be the last Dalai
Lama. I know, I know, he's a great guy, and I respect him also,
but he isn't perfect. He's not above ego. No one is. Those who
claim otherwise are either mistaken, or fools.

As for purely spontaneous activity, I am wary of that, because I
believe that is what the terrorists who blow themselves up engage
in. If a Buddhist takes it into his head to spontaneously murder
you with a steak knife, and justifies it in his own mind as an
intuitively enlightened act, no amount of reasoning will convince
him otherwise. Religious fanatics are impervious to reason, and
impervious to truth.

news:LYpZe.96460$Ph4.3032235@ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca...
|> The Neophyte begins with a belief system.
| > | > The Guru builds this up until it falls down under the weight of
it's
| > own
| > | > absurdity. Many get stuck at the absurd stage and post endless
| > arguments
| > | > on Usenet. Before computers they used to form groups or Magical
| > Orders
| > | > for their arguments.
| > | > Going beyond can be lonely and frightening.
| > | > Do we have a choice?
| > | > 1. Yes.   2. No.   3. Both  4. Neither.
| > | > 5. Non of the above.
| > |
| > | Oh, but that's so easy, isn't it? Just say "nothing is real" and
| > | away you go, content that your intellect has risen above the
| > | mundane bluster of the crowd. Yet in saying this you've understood
| > | nothing at all.
| >
| > I speak here of absolute truth.
| > There is also relative truth which is useful for getting by in the
| > mundane
| > world. But if one does really realise absolute truth then all
mundane
| > actions become spontaneous. This is called pure Buddha Activity. The
| > present Dalai Lama seems to have attained this. He has said that he
may
| > be the last. That is he is hinting that he has gone beyond belief in
| > re-incarnation.
|
| I've heard the Dalai Lama say that. I suspect it may be vanity on
| his part. He wants to be special, so he wants to be the last Dalai
| Lama. I know, I know, he's a great guy, and I respect him also,
| but he isn't perfect. He's not above ego. No one is. Those who
| claim otherwise are either mistaken, or fools.
|
| As for purely spontaneous activity, I am wary of that, because I
| believe that is what the terrorists who blow themselves up engage
| in. If a Buddhist takes it into his head to spontaneously murder
| you with a steak knife, and justifies it in his own mind as an
| intuitively enlightened act, no amount of reasoning will convince
| him otherwise. Religious fanatics are impervious to reason, and
| impervious to truth.

Islamic terrorists believe they are doing the Will of Allah, and that
paradise will be there reward. It is not spontaneous but the result of a
long period of indoctrination.
Buddhists do not kill but most eat meat. The killing is mostly done by a
sub-class of Muslims who feel excluded from power and thus become
radicalised. Not many tourists visit Southern Thailand, close to
Malaysia, as it is Muslim and there are killings from Government and
secret Islamic groups. In Bangkok the 1% Muslims are there but almost
invisible.
In this sense Buddhists are elitist in fact in Tibetan the word for
mentally defective and Muslim is the same, but Tibetan Buddhism is so
different from what the Buddha taught that Westerners who first
encountered it called it Lamaism. Many Western Buddhists have gone back
to basics. People like me went through a period of Occultism and found
it a very rough ride. Buddha simply said "Try this. It worked for me
after 30 years of trying everything. He had experimented on his own mind
until he found a method that worked.
Spencer.

I'm glad it worked out for you. I did some investigating of
Tibetan Buddhism in years past. Where I live, Nova Scotia, we had
the great-in-his-own-mind Chogyam Trungpa decide that he had to
make this place his new spiritual power center, so lots of
Buddhists arrived overnight from Colorado and Nepal. A few years
later he died of AIDS, along with his second in command, an
American, who dies of AIDS shortly after him. Trungpa left his
family here, and they run the family business -- Buddhism.

I attended some lectures, sat through some meditations, met lots
of Buddhists from Nepal, Canada and America. My overriding
impression was one of arrogance. They were absolutely convinced
beyond a shadow of doubt that they knew the spiritual truth, and
that anybody who questioned them or disagreed with them was at
best misinformed, or at worst a fool. They'd give me that smug
little smile that said, "we are soooo much more spiritually
advanced than you will ever be".

It somewhat soured me on Buddhists, particularly American
Buddhists, who practically bubbled over with intellectual elitism.
However, I've got nothing against Buddhism itself, and I'm sure
there must be a humble Buddhist on this planet somewhere, tucked
away in some dark corner.