Dear Reader,
In a past post, I discussed the relationship between Egregores and Servitors. This week, I wanted to introduce the relationship between Egregores and Deities. There are many in the ceremonial magic community, including chaos magic workers, who argue that Deities are another form of Egregore. I object to this argument on the basis that Deities have greater reach and more influence than Egregores. As I mentioned before, an Egregore is a group produced thought-form that has been elevated to the spiritual plane. It is powered by the focused will and concentrated spiritual energy of the group. Deities are not.
A Deity is an independent spiritual being that is a literal force of nature ensouled. They have independent agency and free will. An Egregore is limited to what it is programmed to do by the group that created it. Deities have no such limitations. Egregores will manifest strictly as the group has mandated them. Deities will manifest however they choose to reveal themselves. Deities have their own plans, interests, and operations to engage in. Egregores lack this ability.
An Egregore is like a very complex AI. It can simulate a Deity to a limited extent if it is programmed to do so. But it only operates within the limitations of its programming. Now, one may wonder why I bring this specific point up. There are cases where Egregores grow beyond the group that created it and get 'loose'. This makes telling the difference between a Deity and an Egregore that is programmed to be similar to the Deity a bit challenging. One must look at the behavior of the spiritual being in question. Is it repetitive? Does it deviate from the known behaviors of the Deity in question? Is it limited in what it can do/know in a given situation that is under the auspices of the Deity in question? If the answer to these questions are yes, it is quite likely that one is not dealing with the Deity but a simulation of them.
There are Egregores that are created to simulate the good qualities of a Deity. There are Egregores that are created to simulate the more questionable qualities of a Deity. In either case, the Egregore lacks the subtly and authenticity of the actual Deity it is simulating. It will only give answers to questions that it is programmed to find answers to. It will interact only in the fashion it is programmed to do. There are spectacularly complex Egregores that can fool the inexperienced into thinking they are dealing with a Deity out there. There are a collection of them based upon the Marvel!Loki concept, conflated with the actual god Loki.
Where the Marvel!Loki is generally malicious towards humanity, seeking to subjugate them and generally plays out its interactions like the character from the comic books and movies, the deity Loki is more prone to being friendly towards humanity or indifferent at worst. The interactions with Loki range wildly from loving and kind to severe and stern. The trickster god of the Norse pantheon is generally not an abusive deity, despite what Marvel and other sources have portrayed him. Loki is chaos ensouled. He is the entropy that keeps the universe from collapsing in to stagnation and oblivion. While some of his chaos is unpleasant, it is almost always necessary in some fashion. Marvel!Loki, on the other hand, is always unpleasant and the chaos created by this Egregore is always harmful, that's how the character was written.
Some may ask, aren't Deities the same thing as Egregores just on a larger scale? That is the position that many people take. I disagree with it because I have seen evidence that Egregores are severely limited in their capacity despite how much thought gets put behind them when they are compared to deities. A super powered computer is still a computer despite how much horsepower and complex programming you put to it and it will still suffer the limitations of being a computer.
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