My Forming Egregore

I am learning some surprising things of late.

Egregores can form quickly. I am teaching a class on qabala, meditational theurgy and tarot under the auspices of  a simple tarot class for eleven people in a private home. We meet bi-weekly. Last night, my dream hovered within the egregore forming by this polite little group. I lived within the emotional core of that spirit-body which is comprised of spiritual learning, joy, fun, friendship, appreciation, sexuality and appropriateness. I knew in theory that each gathering of people had its own egregore (wheresoever two gather in my name...) but I never expected to be able to perceive it and so easily understand its component parts.

My sources are Mary K. Greer's Tarot for Yourself, A.E. Wiate's Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Crowley's Book of Thoth,  Angeles Arrien The Tarot Handbook and Lon DuQuette's Understanding Thoth Tarot.* This class is becoming powerful for a couple of reasons. The first is that I am successfully sharing the meanings of the cards not directly found in books. For instance, the formula of the Fool is murder, acceptance, reformation and manifestation. I share examples of those vary formulas from my life and the lives of my students. Secondly, I am able to comfortably delve into the emotion of the card and inspire them to recall and feel that very emotion in their own lives. Lastly, I am a much better speaker than blogger. That one-on-one contact is more conducive to the expression of my thoughts and teachings.

Conversely the MM meetings I am holding monthly are not developing into an egregore. I believe that is because I do everything I can there not to be perceived as a teacher. Rule number one there is "I am not a guru. If you forget this rule, I will disabuse of that notion immediately." The work of the MM is so individualized that setting myself up as a focus, like in the tarot class, would be antithetical to the process. My theory is that, at least in the beginning, an egregore forms around a strong personality before it takes on a life of its own.

That said, there seems to be a consistency of process and development among the MM folks that mimics an egregore. I wrote mimics rather than is because I see no emotional bond between individuals at all. Every egregrore I have seen has that emotion tie. Therefore, I am concluding this is not an egregore but a manifesting process of development.

* I was quite pleased to see new copies of some of these books brought to class. I do take some pleasure in bringing Crowley to a small town in this conservative region.