Descriptions:
Video Description
A group can carry a kind of shared mind, and this video asks a sharp question about it: are you hiding inside that mind, or are you using it? Lyam Christopher opens with a memory from a Golden Dawn retreat, where an adept created the god form of Anubis and each student sat inside it. Several reported a rush of energy, but when his turn came he felt nothing, and saying so out loud taught him something about the quiet spell that can exist in a room full of people.
That shared spell is the egregore. In one form, it works like a cloak, a place to crouch and hide so the group can do the thinking and supply the identity. In the other, it becomes a canvas, a medium through which a person expresses their own genuine self. The same image that shelters can become the board on which something true is painted. The difference is not the group but what the individual brings to it.
Then he names the warning clearly. A toxic group mind feeds on the horizontal plane, one person rising by another’s fall, seeking power through approval and pleasure through belittling. A helpful one leans upward, helping each member turn the shared energy toward their real expression. Learning to tell the two apart is part of maturing as a magician, and the test is simple: does the circle help you become more yourself, or less?
Full Video Transcript
Have I made a video about this in the past? I’m not exactly sure. I know I’ve mentioned the word
egregor in the past as somewhat of a pet peeve of mine, mainly because new students of magic
tend to mention it a lot, and chaos magicians seem to use it an awful lot too. There’s a great
deal of focus on artificial elementals and group minds and things like that, and what I see
primarily in that word is an attempt to assemble a spirit or assemble a psyche. So I wanted to talk
about this concept of the egregore and to mention why it’s both a skillful concept and a not so
skillful concept. Usually when we aspire to be part of an egregore it’s not so skillful at first
but that doesn’t mean it’s not it doesn’t serve its function okay so let’s take a look here so
within the temple and the lodge i can tell a story about that when i was at a retreat for the golden
dawn temple we got to experience the assumption of god forms so one of the adepts created a god
form and then we were each invited to sit within it and so various people there must have been
maybe six or seven students at the retreat, something like that. And so people would sit
up there in the chair. I think it was a god form of Anubis. And each person reported feeling
something like energy or some kind of change to the senses. When I sat in the chair, I felt nothing.
And I was forthcoming with that too. I basically said, I don’t notice anything.
and um one of the things perhaps that i didn’t realize at the time was that the the group mind
was an important part of that magical experience and in other words the the group hypnosis or the
the um the mass hypnosis that sort of forms as a group believes in certain concepts and promotes
certain concepts that creates a reality bubble that then determines what we experience in that
bubble in terms of very real manifestations of energy and alterations to our senses and things
like that and i’m one of those people who came into magic with a very sharp let’s say critical
thinking mindset that was highly critical of the group mind probably due to some past trauma like
in other words, I don’t really like watching, you know, dramatizations of public executions
or public humiliations or things like that. And so I associate group minds with that kind of
mob mentality behavior. And the funny thing is then to create a sort of atmosphere in which,
you know, the God form, it does this and that, it does this, you can then tune into that atmosphere
and then experience like these placebo results from that, okay? But that doesn’t mean that the
magic isn’t real. It just means that the, let’s say, the placebo effect or that group hypnosis
effect is actually part of the invocation slash evocation process, all right? So that’s just one
example of how, let’s say, if I go into some situation like that with a very critical mind
to the groupthink, not realizing that the groupthink itself is part of the whole magical
phenomenon that’s being manifested. Yeah, so maybe we can go more into that, into depth there.
This kind of goes into the concept of the placebo effect. And so many scientists disregard the
placebo effect as unreal, when obviously there’s something to it. And the placebo effect does seem
to involve, you know, suggestion and self-hypnosis or even group hypnosis. And this is a very common
thing, actually. All right, so let’s go to other types of settings where this egregore exists.
So let’s go to like a martial arts type setting. I once saw a video of, I guess it was a Taoist,
I don’t know, Tai Chi master or something like that, probably a Kung Fu master,
who was demonstrating rootedness. In other words, he basically assumed a stance that was not rooted,
and then students came and pushed him, and he rocked back and forth. They could push him over
if they wanted to. And then he assumed a rooted stance, and they tried to push on his hand,
and they couldn’t move him. And they’re like, oh my God, this is amazing. I was watching that
video. It’s like, wait a second. Now he’s in the rooted stance. They’re not even trying. I was
watching the the way they were leaning it’s like they’re not even leaning against him anymore
they’re actually holding themselves up not leaning into him as though they’re trying
as though they’re participating in some kind of group of collusion and it almost seemed as if oh
it was staged because you could tell they weren’t leaning as hard anymore but they seemed legitimately
convinced that he was in a rooted stance and they weren’t able to move him i thought that was really
interesting and it was later that i realized that well yeah it’s a group hypnosis effect
but that could actually work in a fight you know the the hypnotic effect that these things have
can be quite real even beyond that staged sort of dojo experience okay oh i do realize that a dojo
is japanese and that kung fu is chinese but don’t worry so i just a dojo is something that people
understand maybe better i guess i would have to say a kung fu temple but um that uh that the it’s
almost like ninjutsu in other words the hypnosis and the illusion aspect of the fighting are an
important part of the fighting even coming down to the idea of being able to stand unmoved okay
i do know there are some mechanics to that they’re very real like you can sort of transfer the force
of the movement into the ground as though you’re a human buttress okay i know that some of that is
real or um you know actual but um what i was noticing in that video was that it was largely
a group hypnosis effect and but very real in in that sense that the psychic aspect of it was
important to the whole effect of it and that is how the interesting you know implication here is
that you can walk around in public aware of these various uh egregores egregores right and notice
how people are playing along with them not realizing that they are subconsciously limiting
their own ability their own power let’s say and many of these things are fine in other words i
have a in my condominium community here we have one of those automatic gates there’s not a gate
man who opens the gate for you when you come in with your car there’s an automatic gate right
and supposedly that makes us feel much safer now because our community is gated um i walked up to
that gate it’s very easy to simply push it open with your hand it doesn’t really protect us at
all right so um i thought that was kind of funny i could just kind of push it open and of course
many of the things in our secure world are like that for instance the door to people’s houses
you can probably easily kick them open okay um but the and of course the windows are easy to
break there’s not much real security there if somebody really wants to break in they can
but somehow just the fact that the door is locked is a psychological barrier that says oh they’re
protected. They’re safe. You know, that’s, that’s a kind of hypnosis that we proceed under, you know,
where, oh, you know, the door’s locked. I’m safe now. Kind of funny, really. But it works. People
won’t break in because there’s a group mind at work. Okay. And there’s a group accountability
thing going on there too, you know? So if I push open the gate to my community, I could be caught
on camera doing that. And then, I don’t know, be fined or something like that. Hopefully they
didn’t catch me on camera doing that. At the gym, I remember in high school, this is about
certain athletes who exude a certain type of aura. I remember there was a young man, a boy
in my high school who was an exceptional athlete. But already at that time, I was kind of onto this
group mind thing. I didn’t know what I was on to, but I was sort of half awake. And you would look
at this guy, he’s like, he’s not really all that. He’s not that strong. He’s not that agile. He just
exudes an extreme confidence. And so I was able to see through it to some degree, but it still
had power over me. I came up against him while playing soccer, and he was able to psych me out
and scare me away from trying to challenge him to try to steal the ball from him i thought that
was really interesting i mean i do now i think it’s interesting that he was able to do that even
though i could kind of see through the aura you know of his athleticism and there was another
point where he jumped over a bar and everybody was booing and awing over it and i was like that bar
wasn’t very high half the guys here could also do it i thought that was interesting too but but we
didn’t believe we could because he was so awesome he had this amazing um presence to him it was
probably you know it was probably his parents who helped cultivate something like that i would like
to make a video about that too because that sort of demigod status that people can sort of take on
to themselves the status of the elite is kind of something that’s cultivated in high magic okay
and probably scares a lot of people we’re becoming elites right so but um that elitism uh even though
tends to be somewhat pretentious um in the in the elites of the wealthy class and things like that
it has its roots in principles of theurgy and high magic and things like that where
these divine attributes can be um adopted and channeled such that you your presence becomes
hypnotically powerful you become more powerful psychically so in in terms of some athletes who
have an amazing presence to them that convinces you that they’re more capable than they actually
are. They can psych you out. The ability to perform in a certain way in front of people
like that. Not that people aren’t legitimately strong and legitimately agile, but you might
have noticed yourself that some athletes don’t really have the raw power, and yet they command
a respect as though they do. They get results that way because people, when they come up against
them can’t seem they’ll actually reduce their own power because there’s a hypnotic agrigor effect
it’s sort of a cult of personality that’s built up around that particular person this can be so
powerful that they can walk into a group of strangers and still exude that cult of personality
because it’s already been cultivated enough this is something that is quite magical and it is
really something that is cultivated in high magic when it comes to the ability to invoke divine
forces as the adept you kind of walk around exuding these i don’t know hypnotic auras of
dignity and confidence and um sharpness and uh unperturbedness is that a word courage when a lot
of it is basically just psyching people out but that is part and parcel to power another example
when i went to when i was a teenager and in my 20s i went to ren fest total geek um was into
dungeons and dragons and all those you know things that that nerds are into and but i remember since
I was already aware of the sort of suffocating effect of the egregore or the sort of hypnotic
trance that people live in as they are subject to egregores. So walking around a Renfest was
troublesome to me because I was noticing that most of the people who play dress-up,
cosplay is what we call it cosplay right um these uh they were most of them were sort of hiding
inside that egregore okay so an egregore can be a place where you basically hide and you allow the
egregore to take you over and then sort of um induct you into it and sort of drag you along
in its mob mentality and so i was noticing that most of the people in the cosplay there were in
that sort of conformist egregore mindset and it was bothering me okay because i was you know
wrestling with that same thing myself i don’t like being subject to these group mind effects you know
cultural hypnosis and things like that and then towards the end of my experience at that rent the
last ren fest i went to which maybe i was like 28 or something like that uh there was this guy
who was engaged in the cosplay he was somewhat older than the rest of the these kids you know
who play dress up and he was on horseback and was playing the part of some kind of noble knight
not sure what he was exactly maybe a prince or something like that and he was doing it for real
and i couldn’t help but take my eyes off him because he he was completely backwards in other
words he was not hiding inside the egregore he was utilizing it to express something
about himself maybe his own inherent i don’t know noble traits and it was working so i noticed
something then that there are two aspects of to the to the egregore and one in which you hide
inside it sort of like a cloak and then there’s the other aspect of the egregore that then becomes
more like you take the cloak off and it becomes a canvas in which you upon which you express
yourself so he had achieved that transition so when he was walking around or riding his horse
around he was actually conveying something in the medium of that egregore he was somebody in
charge of the image that he had put on rather than hiding inside that image sort of crouching
and stooping inside that image saying, look, I’m a knight. I’m awesome. You know, so he wasn’t that
at all. He was basically now using it to express something truly noble. He was a real actor,
real method actor, you could say, right? So you can see the difference there. So very often when
I hear people mention being part of an egregore, I can react fairly harshly because it tends to be,
well, I just want to hide inside some kind of group mind that’s going to take care of me and
then tell me what to do and and then i can feel secure within that self-image and i don’t have
to become myself then i can just be like them okay so that’s one aspect of the egregore now
so conceivably um a temple or a lodge would be like that you would join the temple or the lodge
to become part of this sort of group mind that you can sort of hide inside but the adept who’s
in charge would know that and would use the um egregore as a means towards freeing you from the
egregore so that instead of it being a cloak for you to hide inside it becomes a canvas canvas for
you to eventually paint upon or to express yourself to express something real within that
medium of manifestation you’re still wearing the you’re still doing the cosplay with the robes and
the hexagrams and the wands and stuff like that but now you’re doing it as a means of awakening
the real thing inside you to come forth and express itself within that medium many of you
probably already know this about agrigors but what i suspect is that many do not know that what that
means and the agrigor of a hospital there’s um you can have this notion of yourself as inherently
healthy and in charge of your own health. And then you get some kind of ailment, let’s say
break a finger or something like that, or you get a really nasty burn and you go to the hospital for
that. The whole atmosphere there can strike a blow to your own ability to manage your own health.
The whole cause and effect atmosphere of modern medicine, especially as it is involved in a
hospital will kind of damage your ability to be in charge of your own health and because when you
go there the doctor is talked down to you and listens to you but always like ready to criticize
any interpretation that you have that you have any control over your own health things like that
right so going to see the doctor can often be a kind of egregore that is attempting to creep in
modern medicine and then tell you that you really can’t take charge of your own health that you are
a victim of various germs and effects and uh your the effects on your health are random meaningless
and you don’t so your your mindset does not have any influence on your health this can be really
damaging okay so that within the hospital setting there’s a whole egregore there that kind of um
envelops you and tries to get you to play along with this sort of meaningless,
scientistic version of sickness and health, which is fine.
That is one way of looking at medicine.
It’s very important to be aware of the various egregores that we come across,
to realize how they function and that they are not inherently real, none of them,
including the one that says you’re you’re the one that says that you’re you’re completely in
control of your own health that’s another sort of mindset that is can take us over you can join a
group of biohackers let’s say and then that mindset becomes really strong and that in itself
can become a problem as well and that the egregore of the hospital also has something to say about
reality okay both of those realities the biohacker group or the hospital they both have damaging
effects and they both have potentially useful effects and of course as the adept all of these
egregores we tend to be aware of as we kind of walk into them and rather than having the them
smother us and then envelop us like a cloak and then made it make us conform we learn to utilize
them or express ourselves within those within those parameters within within the within the
parameters of the egregore okay so this really this whole video is simply about the distinction
between an egregore as a place to hide and conform and a place to express something that’s truly
you whatever that is a comedy club many people might have noticed this you could even go to like
one of these talk shows and just watch the monologue and um some of them are better than
others um there are two types of egregores that exist within the comedy club and that is one of
the egregores is the the toxic one and that is where the jokes are made at the expense of people
Okay, sort of like doing a roast. Okay. Not that doing a roast is really a problem. But what you’ll notice is that some jokes that come off of the stage are not really funny. But people laugh, because it’s like it’s making fun of somebody. And the laugh that we deliver is more of a relief. That’s like, oh, thank God, I’m not them. Right. So there’s that one type of humor that always has to be at someone else’s expense.
okay there are people in the world who tend to believe that the only type of humor there is
is the humor that is at someone’s expense pretty much yeah and then in order to get out of that
they’ll say well you just need to keep in mind that the humor sometimes needs to be at your own
expense that’s not true at all and so when you kind of wake up from this mindset of the pecking
order and you know some people are better than others and thank god i’m not that person who’s
lower on the pecking order. When you wake up from that, there’s a whole world of humor out there
that has nothing to do with humor being at your expense or at another person’s expense. The world
is quite hilarious without any of that having to happen. Okay. So within the magical community,
that tends to be a big thing as well. And I’m going to talk about that in a bit. Okay. In other
words, there’s one type of humor in the magical community that looks down at others and makes fun
of them. And there’s the other type of humor that thinks everything’s funny. In other words,
all of the behaviors that we see are funny, regardless of the people, right? So regardless
of the people. And of course, gangs. This is just to point out that it is natural for human beings,
especially men, young men, to form clubs and gangs. Okay. Presumably this happened because
women were able to enter adulthood by simply having their period and so they wouldn’t have
to form special cults or groups among women because one because they had this natural
initiation process whereas men really don’t have much of a visible change that comes over them
that’s kind of strange they do don’t they but somehow that um the the blood the appearance
of blood for the woman was such a dramatic transition into womanhood that the men supposedly
had to have initiation ceremonies for entering into manhood. I don’t know. That’s what the
anthropologists say. Just to say, though, that the tendency to form clubs and gangs with secret gang
signs and secret handshakes, such as the Golden Dawn secret handshakes, this is all perfectly,
apparently natural, even instinctive, especially among men. These social clubs with these sort of
hierarchical pecking orders and things like that, it’s important to recognize that
a hierarchical system or a grade system of initiation, even though these are fictional
constructs, they still have a function and they have evolved, they apparently evolve sort of
naturally. They seem to be a reflection of our natural tendency to want to operate in these
hierarchical terms sort of like a wolf pack might operate or the hierarchy in a group of chimpanzees
let’s say and of course tribal markings and when people are teenagers they tend to wear t-shirts
that have various ideological you know things going on i used to wear led zeppelin t-shirts and
and um of the various concerts i went to and of course it’s it bothered me a little bit then
and i still notice that when people wear um you know insignias or try to show what they’re all
about it there’s two aspects to that sometimes usually they’re hiding inside that um sort of
cultural phenomenon and as conformists because they’re still trying to find themselves let’s say
right um but but some of them are already wearing those things as expressions of no this is what i
like this is what this is what i’m into let’s talk about it in other words let’s you know this is my
thing in other words it’s not more there’s there’s two different aspects to that and you can especially
notice that with tattoos some people wear them as a means of self-expression for something
authentic about themselves and many people wear them as more of a conformist thing and you can
almost see it visibly where they’re hiding inside the tattoos it’s like you don’t see me i’m just
like all you see is these awesome tattoos and these these tattoos make me awesome right and the
other the other aspect of wearing a tattoo is more like no no this tattoo is an expression
of my inner awesomeness and so you can see my inner awesomeness through the appearance
the outward appearance of my tattoos that’s magic right there so the difference is is the two
different kinds of mystique okay and of course these are agrigors of course if you’re wearing
symbols or t-shirts and various things, you are marking yourself as part of a certain
egregore. And then the question is, are you using that as a means to express
yourself authentically, or is it still a place of conformity, a place to hide, even a place to
avoid becoming who you really are? And within the temple or the lodge, another example here
is um once when i was at a golden dawn retreat our teacher showed us a video it was on vhs
because it was in the 90s and uh someone had sent it to her saying what do you think and it was a
video about solomonic magic or something like that and now our teacher showed it to us because she
was trying to show us what can happen to you when you don’t do magic properly in other words ego
inflation and glamour and affectedness you know and and so we were you know watching this
presentation and yeah the the guy giving the presentation was very affected very um ego
inflated and he would say well i came across the secrets of the universe but for a time even i
couldn’t figure out this mystery you know he would say things like that and everybody noticed it of
course now our teacher wanted to show that to us just to give us a taste like don’t let don’t let
this happen to you um in retrospect it seems like it was a mistake that she did that because the way
that most of the people in the group were understanding that they were understanding that
as a an opportunity to make fun of this person. I noticed that right away and I tuned it out
because there was some interesting information in the video. And I think my teacher noticed it too
because eventually she called us together later and said something quite shocking to us.
She said, I would like once you leave here, once you go back home, I would like for you not to
communicate with each other only with me that’s what she said because what i saw happening what
i thought but my opinion was she noticed that we were feeding off of each other creating this sort
of toxic um egregore of well let’s make fun of people who aren’t really doing what we are doing
who aren’t doing it properly or something like that um and that was pretty cool too that she
was able to spot that and then come and really be harsh about it and say i don’t want you talking
to each other like not at least not for now i only want you talking with me she wanted to keep that
group mind from taking us over because it wasn’t really about the the egregore that the temple was
really about that the golden dawn temple was really about okay you could even say that this
is a difference between an outer order egregore and an inner order egregore if it’s legit the
outer order egregore is going to be have some toxicity in it some politics and things like that
and uh and you can easily recognize it um as um criticizing others for who they are like globally
instead of just focusing on behaviors and trends i don’t know if that makes any sense anyway so that
um it’s very easy for some kind of those kinds of politics to take over and it’s one of the reasons
why the original Golden Dawn fell apart is that the toxic egregore took over eventually,
mainly because the solitary work was not pursued in a disciplined enough manner.
They were mainly relying on their group initiation efforts and study only to facilitate their
progress and that uh proceeded to inflate egos and of course then the toxic egregore takes over
but they were pioneers they didn’t know what they were doing at the time they they were
just starting out since then the golden dawn has evolved um in various forms to involve primarily
daily work in a solitary basis and then an occasional coming together let’s say
with the teacher or with the group that also is helpful to progress. But primarily,
it’s the solitary work on a daily basis that does the practice. As with any advanced traditions,
really, relying on the group mind to enlighten you is a mistake if that’s all you’re doing.
However, dismissing the group mind is also a mistake. My computer froze there for a second.
The distinction is that if you want to avoid the toxic aspect of the egregore, the principle is really quite simple.
It’s the principle that we experience at the initiation at Periketh.
But anybody who’s attracted to spirituality or the Golden Dawn probably already has some understanding of Periketh without even realizing it.
and so if if you’re if you’re participating in a group mind and you’re attempting to
feed off of it to provide you with something right it’s kind of vampiric okay so i’m going
to hide inside this group mind and it’s going to take care of me and give me energy energy right
it’s a pool of energy i can draw from right like a bank account or something like that right
very transactional way of looking at magic. And that is the horizontal way of looking at magic,
which is considered sorcery or Goetia or low magic. And so the other, the alternative to that
is that a group mind or an egregore is ensouled by some formless dimension. In other words,
if you persist in a manner that seeks to embody formless divine virtues in your life,
then you can become aware that the egregore that you’re participating in is a means of doing that.
The egregore is not like a bank account you can draw from or a pool of energy of limited
resources you can pull pull from it is a means of accessing unlimited formless divine power okay
that’s a completely different thing and yet these things are connected okay so in other words
the it will feel like you’re feeding off of the pool of energy from that egregore but um the
difference is that you’re aware that well the egregore is mainly just a means of accessing
unlimited formless divine power let’s say okay there’s nothing really special about that it
basically amounts to the experience of authenticity so that experience i had at the the ren fest where
most of the people doing cosplay were sort of just hiding inside their little roles saying oh i don’t
need to develop as a person if i can just pretend to be this right that’s that was kind of going on
there i’m being very harsh of course um but but then there was the one guy who was like no no no
know this is some i’m using this cosplay to to uh express something that’s that’s that’s authentic
to me there was a difference okay so and it wasn’t that um he was feeding off of the egregore there
it was more that he it was a canvas that within which he was expressing something um divine
something authentic this is possible everybody knows this on some level but it’s difficult to
talk about it as you can tell it’s difficult to talk about these things all right so you might
notice then in the magical community there is a tendency to try to form an egregore that is
limited and it’s a place where i can hide inside and derive a sense of identity so i don’t really
have to pursue the work of finding out who i am but there’s also a sort of egregore that you can
hopefully find or participate in that is really facilitating you becoming who you are. There are
group minds that enslave you and there are group minds that strive to set you free. And the
difference between them is all the difference in the world. But to people who don’t really
have the initiation yet, it’s hard to tell the difference. And you’ll enter a group mind where
suddenly everything feels wrong. Everything’s toxic. It’s like, what happened? I thought this
was it. And the main test is that a group mind that is toxic consists of one form feeding off
of another. One person deriving pleasure from downgrading another. One person becoming powerful
with the approval of another these are all horizontal low magic type behaviors which
are essentially corrupt because they lack that vertical dimension of high magic or theory okay
all right that probably made sense i’m noticing that also that as i do videos like this i’m really
pleased that many people do understand them and but what you might also notice in the comments is
that there are many people who still subsist upon the realm of the sort of toxic egregore where
what’s like well what he’s saying doesn’t match with the group mind of the golden dawn in other
words like he’s not conforming to the group what’s what’s going on here like we have to remember
there’s a difference between wearing the group mind as a cloak to hide inside and then turning
that cloak into a canvas upon which to express authenticity or whatever it is you truly are
Okay, hope that makes sense. All right, let’s upload this video until next time
