Did you know your name is guiding your life?

A 2002 study, delightfully called “Why Susie Sells Seashells by the Seashore: Implicit Egotism and Major Life Decisions,” found that we’re more likely to marry people who’s name start with the same consonant as ours, Louis is more likely to move to St. Louis, and Dennis is more likely to become a dentist.

It’s worth noting that the effect size is small, but it is higher than chance.

Hilariously, if you want to believe telepathy is real, the scientific studies that find evidence for it deal with the same scale of correlation as this study (very small but higher than chance). So if you wanna believe in telepathy, you also gotta contend with your name influencing major life decisions.

This study has stayed with me since I learned it. I realized that three of my four long-term romantic relationships were with people who’s name started with the ‘ch/k' sound. My name doesn’t start with that sound, but my name ends with not one, but two of those sonic symbols.

And then there is my last name.

If I’m honest, I’ve been obsessed with trying to ‘see’ God my entire life. My arrogant atheism was an attempt to find God. But it wasn’t until I discovered Carl Jung that I began to see something.

A lot of people who drink deep from the sludge cup of Ayahuasca eventually change their names. I don’t mock this. Many cultures that lived before imperialism and colonialism had sacred rites engineered to guide adolescents from childhood into adulthood, and these rites often contained a name change. Our birth name identified us as the children of our parents. In many of these cultures, the new name identified the emerging adult.

Our culture lacks these kinds of initiations, and so, be slow to mock people who change their names. I think they’re reaching for something it takes courage to admit.

However, my ‘name initiation,’ facilitated by Ayahuasca, was the opposite. Around my 15th time drinking, the jewel of the journey was realizing and embracing the weight and responsibility carried in my birth name Erick Godsey.

I embraced that a part of my artistic expression is to watch the gods of our times, to share what I see, and when the invitations come, to create new ones.

Let’s get clear on what I mean, because when talking about God, the definitions matters.

My God Frame

For my own sanity, I’ve created a personal God frame that has survived 100s of psychedelic journeys and borderline nihilistic skepticism.

For me, there are 3 faces of God.

1. GOD
2. God
3. gods

Capital GOD, for me, is the word I use to point to the whole thing. The thing that cannot be spoken. The ONE without other. No boundaries, no constraints. This is the face of GOD that Krishna tries to show Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. This is the face of GOD that brought Arjuna to his knees, screaming and weeping, begging Krishna to conceal again. This is the face of GOD that if you’ve ever glimpsed, it shattered you. This is not the GOD taught in churches. This is the GOD that, when glimpsed, turns shepherds into prophets, or office workers into psychotics.

Then there is God.

Each of us gets to choose what our God is. That is the birthright of consciousness. For better or worse, you get to choose.

Carl Jung called this the ‘imago dei.’ Translated as ‘the image of God,’ our imago dei is whatever we place as ‘the most high’ in our psyche.

For Christians, their God is some version of the Christ they have cultivated. For Muslims, it is Muhammad or Allah, depending on their personal histories. For Buddhists it is some personal visage of Buddha.

For most modern people, they don’t know what their God is. They do not have a clear inner image of the most high.

For me, God is a force, not a personality. I find the best description for it is what the Greeks called The Good, The True, The Beautiful.

My God is a kind of wave I seek to catch and surf as often and as long as I can manage.

The wave is goodness. The board required to surf it is truth. The reward is the benediction of beauty.

A less poetic description is that my God is that which grows life.

The key distinction between GOD and God is God has edges. Whatever your imago dei is, by the fact you can comprehend it, means there are things it is not.

Your God (hopefully) doesn’t celebrate the abuse of children.

God has opposition.

Every God requires a Satan.

The original meaning of the word Satan was a title, not a proper noun. It was a title given to someone who was antagonistic to a king or some central authority.

Satan means adversary.

GOD has no adversary. God does.

Whatever your personal Imago dei happens to be, there are ways of behaving that fall outside of that image. Exploring the life-shaping effects of this dynamic is a story for another post (because I still need to introduce you to the third face of God - lower case g gods).

GOD is ineffable.

God is singular.

gods are legion.

Lower-case g gods are what Carl Jung called ‘organizing stories.’

gods are stories. gods organize human behavior. Any of the thousand different denominations of Christianity are gods. Political ideologies are gods. Every protest, strike, or rebellion is a god.

One of the most important psychological truths to recognize is that your psyche is a battleground of competing stories -- competing gods. Your spiritual life, in large measure, is your attempt to alchemize this war that is happening within you.

In each of us, gods compete to become our God.

Give 74 seconds to watch Jordan Peterson describe this (the video will start at the 15:09 mark). Point ends at 16:23 (74 seconds long)

Your personality is the ‘battleground of warring stories.’

The stories competing inside your psyche are gods.

A useful metaphor is to think of stories like mental organisms.

Organisms need food to survive. The food of a god is human attention. The body of a god is the collective group of people that believe in, and act out, that god's story. Some gods are apex predators. Some gods are lichen on a tree trunk.

Western Magick called lower case g gods Egregores.

Egregore (sometimes spelled “egregor”) refers to a kind of collective thoughtform or psychic entity that arises when a group of people focus their emotional and mental energies in a shared context—be that a religious community, an esoteric lodge, a movement, or even a highly devoted fan base. In esoteric thought, an egregore takes on a semi-autonomous existence, influencing the group that created it while also being sustained by that group’s continued attention and devotion.

Egregores are gods.

For a lot modern history, the strongest gods were monotheistic religions (the administrative church, not the personal relationship with God).

These gods were slowly replaced by Nation States and their Political Ideologies.

However, in the last 150 years, a new species of gods has risen to power.

Corporations.

These are gods we must learn to see if we’re going to grow up and help the next 7 generations.

Facing The Brutal Facts of Growing Up

Have you heard of Admiral James Stockdale?

Stockdale was a U.S. naval officer who was shot down over North Vietnam in 1965. After emergency ejecting from his downed plane, as he sailed above the Vietnam jungles, supported by his parachute, he writes:

“I whispered to myself; five years down there, at least.”

Imagine that for a moment.

You're gently gliding above a foreign land. You know when your feet touch ground, you will be hunted. Captured. Tortured.

You are the highest ranking officer the enemy has ever imprisoned.

You know you will get special attention. You know you'll meet a man whose entire being will be dedicated to breaking your spirit and get you to betray your comrades.

He spent over seven years as a prisoner of war in the notorious “Hanoi Hilton.” He was tortured throughout his imprisonment.

James Collins, author of what many regard as one of the greatest business books ever written, Good to Great, interviewed Stockdale for many hours. The two summarized Stockdale’s mindset in what is now known as The Stockdale Paradox.

The mindset is made of 2 parts.

1. Unflinching confrontation with the brutal facts of reality
2. Absolute faith in eventual positive outcomes

Stockdale shares there were 3 groups of prisoners. Those without hope, those with naive hope, and those with his mindset.

The first prisoners to die were the ones who did not have hope. This doesn’t surprise us.

However, Stockdale describes a second kind of prisoner. Ones who wishfully believed they’d get out in a few months (in time for Christmas). When Christmas came and went, some of these men wouldn’t make it. The survivors would pick a new arbitrary date - a birthday, another holiday, and as these dates passed, more men would give in to despair and die.

Stockdale’s group never hoped for freedom by a specific date. They assumed it would be years (and it was). They focused on the brutal facts of the day, on the specifics required to survive, and that what mattered was making it to tomorrow.

A brutal fact of our current reality is that our culture is sick and we are in a death spiral that could extinct us (lemme know if this isn’t obvious to you).

The absolute faith in eventual positive outcomes is that at any moment, a new story can ignite the zeitgeist and change our collective behavior. It is the only thing that has ever changed cultures.

The vehicle of our sickness are the egregores of our time.

The solution to our sickness will also be egregores; healing our current ones and creating new ones.

And the brutal truth is…if you want to be a part of the renaissance, you are going to have to learn how to spot egregores, alchemize egregores, and eventually create egregores.

But let’s bring it down to the personal and practical.

The brutal fact of our lives is we either have to learn how to create a corporation we believe in, or give the majority of our waking life to corporations we often hate.

If you want to be a parent that provides a home for your children, you either have to learn to create a corporation you believe in, or hope someone else creates one and lets you be a part of it.

Many of the best people I know are stuck here.

They see the cultural death spiral. They have touched spiritual epiphanies and have dedicated their lives to pursuing the truth, being kind to others, and trying to be an embodiment of love.

But they deny their developmental call — to learn how to play the egregore game. Their genius is shibaried by money wounds. Their ambition is muffled with spiritual cliches. They dissociate when they hear the words finance and business.

They’re unconsciously hoping someone will do what they are unwilling to do — to learn how to create a business (an egregore) that is in service to the next 7 generations.

This is part one of a series.

It’s about growing up and learning the art and science of egromancy.

If you want to be a true adult in 2025, you’re going to have to learn this game.

It doesn’t mean you have to create a business, but it does mean you will have to learn to see what they really are, recognize they are the apex god of our time, and that the future will be built by them.

The question to ponder is:

Am I willing to learn how to create and grow an egregore in service to the future, or am I unwilling, and therefore hoping someone else does it for me?

Tell the truth, but also be kind to yourself.

Song I'm Listening on Repeat

​The Rhythm of the Night (Marano remix)​

Quote I'm Enjoying

“Do I know you well enough to call you fellow plunderers?

There is not an industrial company on Earth, not an institution of any kind, not mine, not yours, not anyone’s, that is sustainable. I stand convicted by me, myself, alone, not by anyone else, as a plunderer of the Earth, but not by our civilization’s definition.

By our civilization’s definition, I’m a captain of industry, in the eyes of many, a kind of modern day hero.

The first industrial revolution is flawed, it isn’t working. It is unsustainable. It is the mistake. We must move on."​
-Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface

Weekly Journal Prompt

"Am I willing to learn how create and grow an egregore in service to the future, or hope someone else does it for me?"