There’s been a good deal of discussion—quite interesting actually—on the topic of egregores extending about beyond its more usual confines in esoteric, occult, and parapolitical circles into wider discourse. In this piece I want to explore the concept of egregores in its original formulation connected to the teaching of The Watchers (fallen angels).
Egregore comes from a Greek word meaning “wakeful or watchful” and by watchful the term is then linked directly to The Watchers from the apocalyptic Book of Enoch. The Watchers are angelic beings sent to Earth to “watch over” or guard the realm of Earth but some eventually find themselves allured by the presence of human women and mate with them. It’s worth noting that the text is silent whether in some, most or all of these cases the intercourse was consensual or not. I’ve covered intimate and bodily relations with non-human entities in a previous piece exploring the UFO/abduction phenomenon. I’ve also covered the vexed question of consent (or lack thereof) in the same set of experiences in two related pieces. Either way, the intercourse transpires and from those exchanges are birthed The Nephilim, considered to half-human/half-angelic beings who become great heroes of an almost demi-god status.
In the Biblical text we have now the text is very sparse and clearly edited (found in Genesis 6):
When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. Then the Lord said, ‘My spirit shall not abide* in mortals for ever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred and twenty years.’ The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterwards—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.
The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.’ But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord. (Genesis 6: 1-8)
There’s a great deal of confusion and potentially excision of other verses in this section. But the basic outline is that the sons of God (that is The Watchers) take human wives—note that the word take potentially has very dark undertones (abduction? Bride price?). Then a strange insertion about the Lord making the mortal lifespan of 120 years. Then the reference to the Nephilim who are either with the Watchers and their demigod offspring or are in fact the same (I tend to the latter view).
Then there’s quite the jump to the “Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth” and the Lord deciding to bring the flood, which immediately takes into the story of Noah and the Flood. The Watchers or Watcher-type figures incidentally show up in other ancient Near Eastern mythologies having to do with a worldwide catastrophic flood.
There’s clearly a background set of images, symbols, and context that are missing here. Theologian Margaret Barker helps fill in that background context, which she refers to as Temple Theology. I mentioned briefly Barker’s work previously in a previous piece explaining contemporary forms of apocalyptic Judaism and Christianity. There is no feasible way to summarize the depth and scope of Barker’s illuminating research but I’ll try my best. This excursion may seem to take us far away from egregores but given that the egregores have their roots in the Watchers it’s directly relevant. To bolster that point, Barker has an entire book on Enoch and the Watchers (called The Lost Prophet.)
So where do the Watchers come from? What is the larger context that makes sense of them? And why the Divine Wrath in response to their intermingling with humanity? If we were using more Ufology terminology, perhaps we might even call it their hybridization program?
According to Genesis 1, the first of two creation stories in The Bible, The Creator apportions the universe based on harmonic principles during “6 days”. Those days are not literal 24 hour periods but references to the dreamtime. Within those six days all of reality is dreamed into being and placed in proper relationship to all other beings. There are the waters above and the waters below. The luminary of day and the luminary of night. The animals of the land, the air, and the sea.
Barker calls this interweaving the cosmic covenant—the original design of The Divine Dreamer. Everything has its autonomous existence but also is in proper communion and properly boundaried in relationship to all other beings.
On the seventh day God rests (sabbath) in the completeness of reality. Hence the Sabbath practice in Judaism of resting on the 7th day in honor of the Divine Rest. In the 7th year, a fractal of the symbolic 7th harmonic, there was to be release of indentured servants, the land, burdened animals (yoking the ox) and so on. On the 7th times 7th cycle—49 years or the 50th year as the year following—there are the prescriptions for The Jubilee which is meant to re-enact the original plan of Creation (the cosmic covenant).
The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), the highest Jewish holy day, was the day in which creation was restored (redeemed) or ‘rebooted to the divine cosmic factory settings", as it were. On the Day of Atonement the High Priest went into The Holy of Holies, the innermost sanctum of the temple, and emerged as the human representative/emissary of the Divine and enacted the atoning rites. Blood (in whom was said to be its life) is poured out. Another—the so-called scapegoat—is sent off into the wilderness with the sins of the people placed upon the beast.
Both animals symbolize the Divine act of redemption—God pours out God’s lifeblood and then takes on and transmutes the sins of the people.
Within this symbolic system, The Temple (of Solomon) was Creation.
The key point here is that the Temple didn’t simply symbolize creation; it was creation.
The Temple is the physical manifestation of the Divine Ordered Plan of Creation. The Holy of Holies (the innermost sanctuary) is the space of The Divine Presence. The Holy of Holies was the first day of Creation--or rather we might say, Day Oneness. Day One represents the origin or source point of the cosmic covenant. The entire rest of the days of creation flow from an original oneness or unity. That is why The High Priest would only go into the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur (The Holiest Day) and emerges from The Holy of Holies as the Divine Emissary to physicalize the kippur (atonement or at-one-ment).
In the apocalyptic strains of Judaism in the centuries leading up to John the Baptizer and Jesus, there was a vision of a Final Jubilee—a Maha-Jubilee if you will or Jubilee to end all Jubilees. This dreaming is that of the apocalypse, aka the end times, The Final Judgment, or The Day of the Lord. The Final Atonement or At-One-Ment of God and creation.
In the Gospel of Luke Jesus begins his public ministry by commenting on a passage in The Prophet Isaiah referencing The Jubilee, essentially stating that he understood his ministry to be a fulfillment of that divine prophecy.
This ancient form of Temple Judaism—which Barker calls The Older Testament—is core the vision of Enoch and The Watchers and by extension The Essenes and the founding of what would become Christianity (also latter Kabbalah). It was a cosmovision shared across many peoples of the ancient Near East.
In this theology there was El Elyon, The Most High. El Elyon (or simply El) was a more remote utterly transcendent figure about whom little can be or is said. El Elyon becomes in Christian theology The Father, the First Person of The Godhead: The Source, The Fount, The Originating Principle.
Then there were The Elohim, the gods, aka the sons of El. The gods were alternatively depicted as constituting a divine council or a divine courtroom. Each people group or nation had its appointed god. Elohim is the name for the god of each group. There was an Elohim each for the Philistines, The Assyrians, The Canaanites, The Egyptians, etc. Elohim is a plural word meaning “gods”. Hence the non-monotheistic quality of the Biblical text since the name for “God” in the Bible actually means gods.
There was an Elohim appointed to the people of Israel: known in The Bible as The God of Israel, The Holy One of Israel, The Redeemer of Israel, etc. Note the emphasis on “of Israel”, i.e. the member of the divine council apportioned to the Israelite people. Barker calls this being The Second God of Israel, i.e. The Lord. Hence the Day of the Lord (The Day of Atonement) is the Day of this Second God. The Second God becomes The Second Person of the Trinity (The Logos/Wisdom) in later Christian theology.
Within this ancient Jewish lineage, there were various entities that were thought to embody The Second God: The High Priest, The Prophet, and The King. Remember that the kings of ancient Israel (e.g. David) were anointed with oil and the anointing made them a messiah (Messiah = anointed one). The Messiah then is the embodiment of the Elohim of Israel (Adonai Elohim, The Lord our [Israelite] God.)
The messianic Jewish movement known as The Way would later claim Jesus to be High Priest, King, and Prophet as the Divine Emissary or Incarnation of The Second God (The Elohim of Israel), eventually codified in subsequent Christian theology at the Council of Nicaea where Christ Jesus is said to be the Incarnation of the Logos, The Second God/Person of the Trinity.
Within this vision angels were messengers (malach) of the divine king (melek). The angels carry messages back and forth between heaven and earth—hence the long standing tradition of connecting angels with stars.
Which brings us eventually back to The Watchers. The Watchers, aka “the fallen angels” are members of the Divine Council (“sons of El”) who go rogue and violate the boundaries established by the cosmic covenant. They break a hole in the cosmic bubble as it were. They cross lines they are not supposed to disrupting the original harmony of the cosmic covenant. Once again this pattern of crossing lines leaves an ominous undertone to the possibilities of “taking the daughters of men as wives.” This violation or boundary crossing is said to have happened before the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden. Hence the Divine Wrath In Chapter 6 of Genesis—the cosmic covenant of right relationship has been violated first by angelic beings and then flowing downward into the human realm. The Watchers are directly connected to Cain (son of Adam and Eve) who infamously murders his own brother Abel.
From an initial boundary crossing by the Watchers, we then have the eating of the forbidden fruit and attempted cover-up by Adam and Eve, followed by the murder of Abel by Cain. Through this original tear in the cosmic fabric pours evil, evil which is accelerated in destructive scope. Hence in Chapter 6 God threatens to wipe the whole creation out. It is only Noah’s righteousness that becomes redemptive—righteousness meaning in proper alignment to the cosmic covenant.
The Watchers, i.e. the egregores, bring to humanity knowledge of metal-working, war, technology, and certain occult processes oriented to control of life. As I’ve written about before in the character of Sauron we see a very similar thread in Tolkien’s subtle explorations of the inherently ambivalent, if not outright dark, nature of technology. We might say Tolkien saw technology as “grey”, linking us back to the UFO Phenomenon once more, as I’ve detailed elsewhere.
As Barker has it, The Watchers bring false teaching. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil symbolizes their false teaching which is why Adam and Eve are forbidden from eating the fruit of the tree and can eat instead the fruit from the other trees, including the Tree of Life, aka The Tree of Wisdom.
Eden means delight and is a vision of overunity or abundance processes/physics. Another word for delight is ecstasy or in Sanskrit ananda. In order to maintain that ecstasy, one must remain in the state of Wisdom undivided and whole rather than bifurcated and fragmented into supposedly neutral forms of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the false teaching of The Watchers, is a scientistic outlook, rooted in the notion that knowledge and technology can be neutral rather than having to either be oriented to wisdom or inevitably then to foolishness and destruction. That was the lie, the seduction the snake offered to Eve. As I’ve written about previously scientism is a supposedly secular cover for dark occult processes. Those inverted, twisted false teachings lie at the root of transhumanism, with its avowed appreciation of the snake in the garden.
To bring back a parapolitical context for a moment, I’ve argued previously that a number of such “Edenic”—that is to say abundant and free flowing—processes exist in physics, ecology, energy, gardening, the UFO phenomenon, even in economy/money. I’ve also argued that what we see in the current machinations—machinations which have history behind them—there is an attempt to co-opt or subvert these “edenic” processes and to control and even weaponize them by a hidden elite. A major part of that agenda is a psychological war to prevent people from realizing the very possibility of such processes from the beginning (hence reductive scientism and materialism).
Rudolf Steiner, covered previously on the site, also explores a similar terrain in his teaching on Ahriman, the egregore, as it were, of technology and materialism, in its destructive form reducing life to hyperreal, pseudo-reality (plastics, GMOs, bio-engineered chimeras, etc.)
So long as technology, economics, engineering, healthcare, and energy are under the sway of the distorted vision of The Watchers, then human participation in those realities will continue to absorb more and more of humanity into its maw.
Consequently, when contemporary thinkers are pondering whether it is right to call the internet, globalized cities and computerized networks egregores, they are actually returning to the original roots of the term, whether they realize that or not.