“Which superhero would you be?”

Normally, an innocent question, but not when Caitlyn Howe is asking me.

Caitlyn is both my partner in entropy and mirror to my muse. I’ve learned that the more spontaneous her questions or intimations, the more likely she’s unknowingly musing on my soul’s behalf.

Standing outside the Austin theater, having just finished James Gunn’s Superman, I found my mind blanking…I didn’t have an answer for her.

This surprised me.

I’m a big superhero guy. From a Jungian lens, for better or worse, Marvel & DC are our modern Sophocles and Euripides, and they are giving form to the gods of our time. These stories are our Pantheon.

When I was a kid, my favorite hero was Batman. I come from a generation of absent fathers, and so the orphan Night King was my first symbolic guide. Puberty hit and symbols became less interesting than sports and cleavage. It wasn’t until dreams of professional athletics were killed by injuries that I slowed down enough to care about symbols again. My depression, nihilism, and grandiosity pulled me to Dr. Manhattan.

God bless the lost boys who love Dr. Manhattan.

I grew up enough to realize Dr. Manhattan was how a kid protects himself from love and responsibility. V from V for Vendetta became my next heroic symbol. I cared again. I wanted to help change the world, but the world was a place I resented, and so I’d rather die for a new world than find a way to change it such that I’d be willing to live in it.

The adolescent finds the story they’re willing to die for.
The adult finds the story they’re willing to live for.

Iron Man and Dr. Strange came through my mind as I contemplated Caitlyn’s question. Both of them being the favorite answer of kids with big brains and shelled hearts. But standing before Caitlyn’s amused stare, I felt no affinity for any of those characters.

Then something leapt to mind that surprised me (I give special attention to spontaneous thoughts that surprise me). That is often how the dreamer speaks to the ego.

The thought was ‘John Constantine.’

I vaguely remember enjoying the Keanu Reeves movie from more than 15 years ago, but I didn’t recall any details. I shared my answer with Caitlyn and she didn’t know who Constantine was. I explained he was a character that was gifted at ceremonial magick, and that he could see and talk to demons and angels.

The next day, as I sat down with my digital journal, I started doing some research on John Constantine, and started finding the synchronicities.

The following may not make much sense to most of you, but for me, this is the tenor and texture of a significant synchronicity.

The message: cultivate my Constantine (this article series is my heeding the whisper).

1st Synchronicity: my favorite fiction writer of all time is Alan Moore. Constantine was created by Moore. I did not know this when I answered Caitlyn. This dramatically increased my interest in the character.

2nd Synchronicity: I wanted to learn more about Constantine, so I researched what comic series to start with. I find that his first appearance into the Zeitgeist is through Alan Moore’s The Swamp Thing (issue 53). This is a huge synchronicity to me because, 8 months ago, I made a big ritual of studying The Swamp Thing as a mythic symbol to understand a part of my psyche that was communicating to me through my dreams. I bought the entire series, and forgot about the project after a few weeks. This paragraph betrays the depth of this synchronicity, but writers do what they can when trying to dress the great mystery with words.

3rd Synchronicity: As I began familiarizing myself with Constantine, I realized he is the just right symbol for a project I’ve been working on the last few months. Constantine’s gift is magick and his special ability is he can see angels and demons. By the end of this series, I hope it becomes clear why John Constantine is the just right symbol for this project.

My intention with this series is to ‘build in public’ a new operating system that will install ‘Constantine Vision’ into my psyche.

I’m going to show you how to see the gods that rule our world, and what kind of magick we have to contend with them.

What we’re gunna learn:

1. What Egregores Are
2. A pragmatic definition for Angels and Demons
3. A pragmatic definition for Light & Dark Magick
4. What DEVAs and MEVAs are
5. Why you ought to, and how to become, a DEVA pilot

II. Meet Our Gods: Egregores

Entities are real, and the kind of entity we all ought to learn how to see are Egregores.

By the end of this article, you’ll have a pragmatic, clear, and hopefully inspiring understanding of what an egregore is and what it means for you.

For now, an Egregore is a story that has grown beyond the storyteller. It is autonomous. It feeds on human attention and it organizes behaviors.

But let’s begin at the beginning.

Egregores Then:

The oldest record we have of the term egregore dates back to 200 BCE. Deriving from the ancient Greek noun egrḗgoros, the word means ‘Watcher; one who is awake.’

What was the context for this word being used? To describe the angels that watched over humanity in The Book of Enoch.

Have you heard of the Book of Enoch? I had heard of it, but hadn’t read it. Researching this article got me in the weeds for a few days, and it’s a good myth worth sharing.

The common version of the story goes as follows:

There was a special order of Angels termed the ‘Watchers,’ (egrḗgoros). They were sent by the Lord to protect humanity as it transitioned from hunter-gather to city states (the agricultural revolution).

The Watchers, totaling 200 angels, were led by an Angel named Semjaza, and Semjaza became enamored with humanity to the point he was compelled to join them in life and love and reproduction.

This was a violation of the Lord’s orders.

Semjaza used an oath pact to get the 200 to join him, and they descend unto earth, defying the law and order set by their God.

The following piece of the story is important, because we have an echo of a mythic motif that arises in many cultures: entities from above brought advance technology.

The Egrḗgoros came with gifts.

Semjaza taught humans legal codes (enchantments).
Azazel taught humans metallurgy (weapons, jewelry, etc).
Armaros the resolving of enchantments.
Baraqial (taught) astrology.
Kokabiel the constellations.
Ezeqeel the knowledge of the clouds.
Araqiel the signs of the earth.
Shamsiel the signs of the sun.
Sariel the course of the moon.

The Egregores mated with human women, and a new kind of being was born. In the Book of Enoch, these beings are called a Nephilim.

Nephilims are another important part of our story.

These hybrid beings are described as:

The Nephilim were bad news. They upset the balance of the cosmos sufficiently that the Lord intervened. The Lord sent his four enforcers; Michael, Gabriel, Uriel and Raphael. He tells them to imprison the Egregores **and genocide the Nephilim.

Michael, Gabriel, Uriel and Raphael do so.

And like only monotheism mythology can deliver, this is the ending. Exile, annihilation, and judgement rendered.

For our mythic purposes, the following is worth highlighting:

1. Egregores endow humanity with incredible powers.
2. Mixing Egregores with human nature can yield Nephilims.
3. Nephilims are huge, insatiable, and can harm all life on the planet.
4. Nephilims were stopped by a different kind of Egregore (Michael, Gabriel, Uriel and Raphael)

The mythologist in you should feel a tickle. These are hints.

Some questions to cultivate Constantine Vision:

1. What are our current Egregores?
2. What are our current Nephilims?
3. What would Michael, Gabriel, Uriel and Raphael be today?
4. Is there anything about the structure of this myth that needs updating?

Egregores Now:

Lemme open the kimono; I believe Egregores and Nephilims exist today, and that, in order to avoid extinction, a generation of magickians are gunna have to learn how to contend with them. When we talk about our culture, or ‘the world order,’ we are talking about an ecology of egregores.

Civilizations are ecologies of egregores.

Nations are egregores.
Corporations are egregores.
Religions are egregores.
Scientific paradigms are egregores.
Memes are egregores.

The inside jokes and private symbols between you and your lover are little egregores.

All egregores can become Nephilims if sufficiently corrupted by the selfish, terrified, and resentful aspects of human nature.

Nephilims can only be contended with via other Egregores (Michael, Gabriel, Uriel and Raphael).

If a civilization develops Nephilims, Egregores will need to be cultivated to confront them.

Our civilization has developed Nephilims.

Egregores are mental organisms that grow out of groups of people. Egregores are when our stories wake up. Egregores are the greatest testimony that we are all more powerful magickians than we understand.

They’re real enough to deploy bombs, consume rainforests, fly planes, and generate a stead flow of wattage to your home; powering your AC, buzzing your lights, and stoking the wifi you use to read these words on a device so complex, that if you had to make it from scratch, it would take you dozens of lifetimes.

Turning On Your Constantine Vision

Remember Our takeaways from Enoch?

1. Egregores endow humanity with key skills.
2. Unchecked melding of Egregores and human nature can yield Nephilims.
3. Nephilims are huge, insatiable, and can harm all life on the planet
4. Nephilims were stopped by a different kind of Egregore (Michael, Gabriel, Uriel and Raphael)

Before we learned how to create Egregores, we were an unremarkable animal in the middle or bottom of the food chain. No fangs, no scales, no wings. Not the strongest, quickest, or most durable.

But we learned how to tell stories.

What elevated us to terraforming apex animals was our ability to create fictions. Stories allowed us to act in coordinated groups which at first unlocked group hunting and proto-tribes. Evolution rewarded this skill and it eventually gave birth to egregores.

Egregores are stories so well told people don’t recognize them as stories.

A well-told story becomes a Nation.
A well-told story becomes a corporation.
Well-told stories becomes Religions.
Well-told stories become scientific paradigms.
A strong enough story can cause a world war or overthrow an empire.
A story told well-enough becomes an Egregore.

Our Civilization is an ecology of stories.

If you want to do something about our civilization, the medium will be through egregores.

So let’s do a quick overview of the different types of Egregores.

As far as I can see, there are 6 specific types of Egregores:

A fun way to think about this is using the Infinity Stones as a memory device.

The field all these egregores play in is what we call Civilization.

A civilization is an egregore with all 6 Infinity Stones.

Here is a brief table showing egregores of different sizes.

The reason I’m showing you this is to emphasize how real egregores are, and how practical it is to learn to recognize them.

You see that big boy at the top of the scale chart, the one called ‘Global Market Capitalism / Modern Monetary System?’

Let’s call him ZOD (the zeitgeist God).

This is the largest egregore on this planet, and it is sick. It has turned into a Nephilim.

And let me be clear:

I think a lot of our myths get something very important very wrong. The Book of Enoch’s response to Egregores was to exile them, and to destroy Nephilims. Like most of the mythology of the old testament, the response to the opponent is death. This worldview justifies geneocides.

The new story is regenerative. The metaphor is gardening. The method is composting.

ZOD is an ecology. Nephilims are a type of cancerous fungus that hijacks the host.

In the next article, we’re gunna get deeper into the kinds of Egregores, and the practical magick that effects them.

Song I'm Listening on Repeat

​Light of the Seven​

Dharma Artist Elder Dropping Knowledge

Alan Moore is my favorite writer of all time. Get a vibe for him here.​

Quote I'm Enjoying

“Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?”
― Yuval Noah Harari

“Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.”
― Alan Moore,

Weekly Journal Prompt

What Egregores do I feed?