What are egregores and how are they used to manipulate?

What are egregores, those collective psychic entities some place at the heart of power?

Imagine a stadium packed for a cup final. Tens of thousands of people vibrating in unison, one shared emotion, one single roar. For a strand of esoteric and conspiratorial thought, that is not just a sporting event: it is the feeding of an egregore. A psychoenergetic entity born of collective attention which, according to some, elites have learned to create and manage as a tool of domination.

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A definition between two worlds

The concept goes back a long way. The word "egregore" comes from the Greek egrégoroi, "the watchers", and already appears in apocryphal texts such as the Book of Enoch. In modern occultism it is defined as an entity generated by the concentration of a group's thoughts, emotions and wills. It is not physical, but it has very concrete effects on social behaviour. It can be understood in two ways: as a psychological metaphor (the set of shared beliefs that shapes a group) or as a real being inhabiting subtle planes of the mind or the collective unconscious. Both readings coexist in the debate, and the boundary between them is one of the thorniest points.

From god-states to viral memes

The idea is not new. In ancient civilizations, every city or kingdom fed its local deity with sacrifices and processions. Seen through this lens, those gods were the community's egregore: they embodied its identity, regulated its laws, justified its wars. Rome, when conquering other peoples, absorbed their symbols and merged their egregores. In the Middle Ages, guilds and religious orders operated in a similar way.

Today, the mechanism has become more sophisticated. Mass events such as concerts, sporting finals or even political rallies concentrate the energy of thousands or millions of people on a single point. It is argued that these peaks of collective attention can be harnessed —even through rituals— to sustain egregores that benefit certain groups. The uncomfortable question: who is behind the design of those focal points of attention?

Tulpas, homunculi and the engineering of attention

Just as an egregore is collective, there is an individual version called a tulpa or servant, an entity created by a single person. Some compare it to the alchemical homunculus, but on the mental plane. The longer it exists, the more autonomy it can acquire —a risk practitioners avoid by limiting its lifespan. But scale is what matters: a massive egregore, such as that of money or of an ideology, can imbue the psyche of millions without their being aware of it.

Forgetting as the final weapon

The central thesis of those who warn about the political use of egregores is that they feed on attention and emotion. Without them, they weaken until they disappear. The recurring example: media coverage of ELbichito-19. When the major media stopped giving it space, the collective panic faded away. "Forgetting kills gods, kills religions, kills beliefs," one of the analyses sums up. Democracies, dictatorships, brands, political parties... all would be egregores that need to be watered with the energy of citizens.

The final paradox is that the most effective tool against these invisible power structures is not confrontation, but indifference. Ignoring the egregore, refusing to feed it with our attention, would be the true act of resistance. But in a hyperconnected world, who can afford to look the other way?