The Dark Egregore Saga

As the One Girl in All the World class finishes Promethea, begins looking at political and theoretical feminism, and looks toward The Hunger Games, I thought I'd throw out a little discourse on the word "egregore."

First, I'm borrowing this word for academic purposes from the world of the occult, which is only fitting considering the trajectory of Alan Moore's Promethea. So here's a bit of linguistic history:

"The" egregore might have been the father of the nephilim--the product of angelic and human sexual relations in the antediluvian world of the Judeo-Christian Bible. The word is translated as "watchers" which makes sense here. Up until the 19th century, the word more or less is used this way, though only in obscure texts. For instance, Eliphas Lévi, famous French occultist of the 19th century, thinks the egregore are "terrible beings" who don't even recognize that we exist (Le Grande Arcane ).


At the same time, other occult groups based on masonic organizations begin developing the concept of the egregore as a thoughtform, specifically a thoughtform created accidentally and through the unity of a group, especially one joined by ideas. This is the definition that most concerns us now. In this usage, each occult group would have its own egregore, a mystical entity that arises through the group's shared beliefs and rituals.

That's fine, but makes sense only if you start multiplying invisible entities (chipping Occam's razor, so to speak). The problem is that the concept was created because these thoughtforms, once created, have a life of their own, a will of their own, and can influence both the original group and the outside world.

Think of it like mass hysteria (or because that term has an unfortunate gender bias, mass paranoia, or mass nuttiness). Think of it like a meme--an idea that replicates itself the way genes do, traveling and accruing strength as each new thought adds to the aggregate thought avalanche.

So bringing this back to Promethea and feminism, we can see how the concept of Promethea is sort of an egregore birthed from our collective imagining of what an ultimate woman warrior might be. But so is, we argued, Wonder Woman. And as you continue reading, you'll see that even with the liberating beauty of being the Promethea incarnation, there are dire, fatal consequences that happen in the world of flesh and rock (I'm thinking the fate of Bill, here). And so I'd like to open the discussion onto the benefits and dangers of egregores, whether you think this is a useful way to describe the way things work, and whether (and how) we can actively manipulate egregores for equal rights or good, smart narratives. Use examples from Promethea and political history.


One of the reasons I'm interested in egregores--besides the fact that I think it's a useful concept for Promethea--is the sudden increase in public misogyny in light of the renewed debates about women's reproductive health insurance (also click here for more outrageous behavior). And also, as you research political feminism, you will find that ideology doesn't stay fixed for very long and that certain feminist ideas seem to have a life of their own that have interesting trajectories in light of how they were first introduced.

The Right Questions--Blood Meridian and the American War Cycle

As we’ve looked at the Judge’s famous “War is God” speech in Blood Meridian and basically agreed that while his (perversion of) Nietzschean philosophy may or may not be the most ethically sound outlook, his conception of war is a fairly accurate description of the way we conceive of war—if not exactly the way it actually is. He claims, “War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence.” Following the mystical subtext of the novel, he proclaims war to be God, as according to gnostic understanding of the divine, God is that which is unified.

Now this seems to be a monstrous extension of occult logic, but nevertheless, it seems right to say that war creates an egregore, meaning an aggregation of a group’s collective will which then “takes a life of its own.” Not so much that war creates real deities, but that the identities of the participants do get subsumed in the greater Will of the “war effort.” And even if this is inaccurate, we don’t treat it as such, creating monsters out of the collective ideologies of our enemies. The Nazi Party. Radical Islam. The Mongolian Hordes. Each of these enemies certainly embodies physical elements that are particular, but more so, they embody an ideology that casts our conceptions of individuals on the enemy side in a new light—that they are merely the mindless supplicants carrying out the will of their egregore. We ignore the very real possibility that not everyone who goes to war does so because he identifies with an ideology, and that even he does, that doesn’t mean that he’s any less human and shouldn’t be reduced to the sum of his beliefs.

After the September 11 attacks, we all got to witness as over-night, our nation became obsessed with the threat of terrorist attack at the hands of Muslim extremists. Often, Muslims in America suffered abuse, whether or not they actually agreed with the actions of the terrorists. We equated them with the egregore we were fighting against. The media became so jumbled in the aftermath, that people believed our aggressive entry into Iraq had something to do with 9/11, further attributing the egregore of the terrorists to everyday people in Iraq—people who probably knew as little about us as we did of them, people who were often more concerned with acquiring their daily bread than defeating the “Big Evil.”

Following the bleak logic of Judge Holden, we have an unconquerable urge to know our universe, and when we can’t know something, we destroy it. We cannot know the other, so we destroy him if we can. War is a test of wills, and like any other test of wills, we are fascinated by it. Here’s a link to CNN’s Iraq coverage, here’s Afghanistan, and here’s a great compilation of the 9/11 news footage. There’s much more than this out there. It’s interesting to think that the videos of the planes going into the twin towers shares a lot in common with the violence in Blood Meridian—it is depicted for its own sake. The news shows violent images just to show them to you, to inform you that they exist, and to give you some sort of experience of them mediated through representation. Like in art, sometimes these images intend to outrage or shock, but other times, they’re intended to be shown just for experience of seeing. Why else would we want to watch the destruction of the World Trade Center?

It’s for the knowledge of it happening, and because we can’t be there ourselves. A witness, and as I quoted in my last post, each man is tabernacled, etc, witness, etc. I’m opening up the discussion here for comments on Blood Meridian, politics, and the aesthetics of news violence. I’m not sure I have the answers here, but maybe through discussion, we might at least have the right questions.