"How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!"

Psalm 133 is a short psalm of praise for the blessings of close-knit family and community. This is a blessing increasingly rare these days. As I describe in The Shape of Joy America is experiencing an epidemic of loneliness. So much so in 2023 the Surgeon General released a health advisory warning about the lethality of social isolation. Loneliness is just as likely to kill you as being a pack a day smoker. We've reached the social end game that Robert Putnam predicted when he wrote Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community in 2000.

What's especially sad about all this his how we're actively choosing this unhappiness. Also in 2023 the Wall Street Journal polled Americans about what they believed was "very important" in life. Here's some of the findings:

Notice the trends on religion, having children, and community involvement. Americans are valuing these things less and less. Compare that to the trend regarding the importance of money. That trend is going up.

To be sure, the economy is rough right now. We're all concerned about affordability. Money is important. But relative to past generations, globally, and world-historically, we doing okay. And yet, we're increasingly valuing money over community, connection, and relationship. No wonder our collective mental health is fraying. 

I'm put in mind of a Dietrich Bonhoeffer quote that I've shared many times before concerning how community mediates grace:

Help must come from the outside...God has willed that we should seek and find God’s living Word in the testimony of other Christians, in the mouths of human beings. Therefore, Christians need other Christians who speak God’s Word to them. They need them again and again when they become uncertain and disheartened because, living by their own resources, they cannot help themselves without cheating themselves out of the truth...The Christ in their own hearts is weaker than the Christ in the word of other Christians. Their own hearts are uncertain; those of their brothers and sisters are sure.

This semester I shared a lecture with my students that had its origins in a series I did here in 2023 concerning clashing expectations we have about God's actions in our lives when it comes to our pursuit of mental health and well-being. 

Here's the basic thesis. Much of our imagination about how God works in our lives has been shaped by soteriology, our beliefs about salvation. That is, when we talk about God's actions in the world we mostly talk about how God saves us. This creates a habit of mind, an imagination about the shape and nature of God's actions in our lives. But this imagination, while appropriate for talking about salvation, isn't always the best for thinking about mental health and well-being. Basically, we import a soteriological imagination into therapeutic contexts where it is ill-suited. 

This is especially so in Protestant spaces where the soteriological imagination tends to focus on justification, God saving us by declaring us righteous. Justification becomes a template for how God works in our lives, and this creates unrealistic and triumphalistic expectations about divine action within our mental health journey.

What might that template of divine action look like? Salvation-as-justification has these characteristics: 

1. Immediate


2. Complete/Total


3. Permanent/Irreversible


4. Passive


5. Spiritual/Gnostic

Let's walk through the list. 

By "immediate" we experience justification as an event that happens in a moment. Justification is instantaneous. 

Relatedly, justification is total and complete. We aren't 34.7% justified. We're 100% justified. 

Salvation is also considered in Reformed and Calvinistic spaces to be permanent and irreversible. And if not permanent, then pretty durable and hard to lose. We don't move in and out of salvation. 

We also experience salvation passively. We cannot justify or save ourselves. Salvation is wholly the work of God and we are its passive recipients.

Lastly, salvation is experienced as "Gnostic." By "gnostic" I mean the event is largely invisible and spiritual. Justification is something that transpires in my relationship with God. Justification doesn't affect my physical body. 

So, that is what I mean by a "template" of divine action. Because we mainly think about justification when we think about God's impact upon our lives, the list above comes to shape our imagination regarding how God acts in the world. When God acts in our lives those actions and effects are immediate, complete, permanent, passively received, and Gnostic (affecting the spiritual rather than the physical). 

And yet, while these descriptions are perfectly legitimate for soteriological conversations about justification they are wholly unrealistic when it comes to our pursuit of mental well-being. Consider how we experience our mental health journey. Our pursuit of mental wholeness is experienced as:

1. Slow


2. Incremental


3. Faltering


4. Effortful


5. Embodied

As should be obvious, this list is pretty much the exact opposite of our soteriological expectations in regards to justification. Healing takes time, often over many years. It's an incremental, step by step journey. We can also stumble and fall. We experience setbacks. The process is hard and effortful. There's no silver bullet, just the work. Finally, well-being and wholeness are embodied. There are biological aspects that need to be examined and addressed.

Here’s the big implication. Many of the desolations we experience with our mental health struggles, I would argue, are due to clashing expectations related to the lists above. A lot of the confusions about how God relates to our mental health happen because we are importing soteriological expectations into our mental health journey. When facing something like severe depression our expectation is that God will act in our lives immediately, completely, permanently, passively, and Gnostically to resolve that depression. These soteriological assumptions create the triumphalistic expectations about mental health that we find within prosperity-gospel spaces. Mental health issues can be “fixed” in exactly the same way God justifies sinners. Say a prayer and your depression will go away. The Sinner’s Prayer becomes the paradigmatic model of divine action and the sole approach for addressing mental health.

This isn’t to say God has no impact upon our mental health. Just that God’s influence in our lives in regards to our mental health will be experienced as slower, more effortful, incremental, and embodied. People dealing with mental illness will be better equipped if they have these sorts of expectations. By contrast, importing soteriological assumptions into this domain sets people up for disappointment. The person might turn away from God, feeling that God has abandoned them. Or the person might come to blame themselves for not having enough faith.

But slowness isn’t a sign of God’s absence. Taking it step by step doesn’t mean God has failed you. Having a setback doesn’t mean God isn’t with you. Doing the work isn’t a lack of faith. Using medication isn’t a spiritual failure. Thinking otherwise means you’re mis-imagining how God acts within our lives on our journey toward wholeness and well-being.

Last spring I wrote about how, in addition to orthodoxy ("right belief") and orthopraxy ("right practice"), the Christian life demands orthopathy--"right passions," "right emotions," and "right affections." 

The emotional, passionate, and affectional life of the Christian has a particular shape, character, and orientation. So many of the imperatives of the Christian life address our emotions. The arena of spiritual formation is internal and affectional. The ask is for orthopathy. 

For example:

Fear / Anxiety
Do not be anxious about your life (Matt 6:25)
Do not be anxious about anything (Phil 4:6)
Cast all your anxieties on him (1 Pet 5:7)
Do not fear those who kill the body (Matt 10:28)

Joy / Rejoicing
Rejoice and be glad (Matt 5:12)
Rejoice in the Lord always (Phil 4:4)
Rejoice always (1 Thess 5:16)

Love / Compassion
Love your enemies (Matt 5:44)
Love one another (John 13:34)
Put on compassionate hearts, kindness... (Col 3:12)

Gratitude
Give thanks in all circumstances (1 Thess 5:18)
Be thankful (Col 3:15)

Peace / Contentment
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts (Col 3:15)
Be content with what you have (Heb 13:5)

Hope / Courage
Do not grieve as those who have no hope (1 Thess 4:13)
Be strong in the Lord (Eph 6:10)

Anger / Wrath
Be angry and do not sin (Eph 4:26)
Put away anger, wrath, malice… (Col 3:8)

Envy / Covetousness 
Put away envy (1 Pet 2:1)
Keep your life free from love of money (Heb 13:5)

Forgiveness / Mercy
Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful (Luke 6:36)
Forgive one another (Eph 4:32)

Zeal / Desire
Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit (Rom 12:11)
Earnestly desire the higher gifts (1 Cor 12:31)

As should be clear from this list, spiritual formation has to address our inner emotional life. Many of our virtues are affective in nature, virtuous emotional responses toward life circumstance. And yet, orthopathy is a daunting challenge. By and large, our emotions are triggered by events. We react to life. Consequently, emotions don't seem to be very much in our control. 

However, as I describe in The Shape of Joy, can we gain control of our emotional lives through meaning-making, a top-down rather than bottom-up process. As I've shared here before, through this top-down process of meaning-making we acquire emotional dispositions, habits of the heart, that predispose us toward virtuous emotional responses. Forming our hearts doesn’t happen in a moment, it requires prior acts of preparation that reshape our deepest values. This prior work creates a capacity for emotional autonomy and control amid the vicissitudes of life. Simply stated, the story you're telling about your life determines your emotional reactions to the events of the day. And there is a story you can tell that traces the shape of joy, a story that can make you less anxious, more joyful, more loving, more grateful, more peaceful, more hopeful, more brave, less angry, less envious, more forgiving, and more passionate for the things of God.

For most of this series we've been thinking of egregores as an emergent phenomenon arising from a social collective that comes to exert downward causation upon the group. This approach to egregores is disenchanted. One doesn't need to believe in anything supernatural or occult going on to recognize that macro-level and trans-personal forces can arise from groups and organizations and that these forces can have significant moral effects upon the individuals within those groups. 

And yet, in esoteric and occult spaces there is a more spooky and enchanted view of egregores. A group can, with collective magical intent, will an egregore into existence. And by "existence" we mean a real entity--psychic, astral, or spiritual--possessing purpose and will, albeit an entity dependent upon the group. This raises the question, are egregores real? Real in the spooky sense. This more enchanted and occult perspective of egregores is controversial in Christian circles, so I'd like to take this final post to explore it.

In Meditations on the Tarot Tomberg leaves open the possibility that egregores are real, that groups can intentionally conjure, in his words, an "artificial demon." "Artificial" as opposed to the real demons we read about in Scripture, the fallen angels or spirits who had been created by God. As Tomberg was quoted in the last post, esoteric orders and fraternities try to create these entities to gain a magical ally. This would be a "positive" egregore, an entity that aids and helps the group. And on this point Tomberg is clear and firm: There is no such thing as positive egregores. As he writes, "good 'artificial demons' do not exist, i.e., one cannot engender positive egregores." Also: "If there are egregores of initiation orders and religious--and other--communities, they are always negative."

In short, if you're messing around with this stuff you're messing around with demons. 

Still, can a group manifest an "artificial demon"? Can such an entity be "created" by humans? 

Tomberg seems to think so (e.g., "one can certainly engender demons"), but that belief is controversial. Only God, it will be maintained, can create something out of nothing. Humans cannot magically conjure spiritual entities into existence. A safer, more orthodox view of egregores would be that a group trying to engender or conjure an egregore is, in the end, only summoning a demon, not creating one. Of course, the dark entity that shows up might let you think you created it to do your bidding, but the purported servant will, in the end, flip the script to become the master. The group will become collectively and individually possessed.

An esoterist might want to push back and say that humans, via biological processes, give birth to persons. So why couldn't some merging of consciousnesses on the astral plane give birth, via some metaphysical logic, to another sort of "person," an egregore? Why couldn't the egregore be real? 

For my part, I can't answer that question. And nor do I want to expose myself to the world where such a question could be explored. I think curiosity here is a temptation. Because I think Tomberg, who is a good guide on these sorts of topics, is exactly right. Even if artificial demons are real, you're still dealing with a demon. 

And there are no good demons.

I've mentioned that this series was prompted by encountering Valentin Tomberg's discussion of egregores in Meditations on the Tarot, his exploration of Christian Hermeticism. I had never heard the term.

For the first three posts in this series, I've described egregores as an emergent phenomenon related to group psychology. However, that's not how occultists view egregores. In occult circles, the egregore is a psychic or astral entity that is created by the group. The goal of this effort is to create an astral, psychic ally. 

Here's how Tomberg describes this, in light of his history with occultists and esotericists:

[A]s well as bad egregores good ones can equally well be engendered through collective will and imagination, i.e. "good demons" are engendered in exactly the same way as evil ones. According to this thesis, all depends upon the engendering will and imagination: if they are good, they engender positive egregores; if they are bad, they engender negative egregores. There are, according to this thesis, good "artificial demons" as well as bad ones--just as their are good and bad thoughts.

From a practical point of view this thesis gives rise to a practice where one endeavors to collectively create an egregore for this special purpose: as a "group spirit" or a spirit of the fraternity concerned. This egregore once created, it is believed that one is able to rely on it and that one has an efficacious magical ally in it. It is believed that every group has an active "group spirit" which renders it influential with regard to the outside world as well as with regard to its members. It is believed that real and effective traditions are, in the last analysis, only strong and well-nourished egregores, which live and act across the ages. 

As Tomberg goes on to say, even churches have egregores which are "generated by the collective will and imagination of the believers." 

This view of egregores is more controversial than what I have been describing over the first three posts. Specifically, people may be willing to admit that there are top-down, emergent properties that affect human groups, collectives, and cultures. But the occultist believes more than that. The occultist believes that the egregore is a real conscious entity. That's a much stronger and more controversial claim. I'll turn to that controversy in the next post. But before I do I want to make some connections between how Tomberg describes egregores and the work of the late Walter Wink. 

As I've shared many times before, Wink argues that the dualism of the ancients, where spiritual powers are believed to exist above or over physical powers below on earth, is difficult to maintain for many modern disenchanted believers. To keep us tethered to the ancient imagination, Wink suggests we retain the spiritual/physical dualism by trading in the Up/Down spatial metaphor of the ancients for an Inside/Outside metaphor. That is, social, cultural, institutional, organization, and political structures have an inner spirituality that animates, holds together, and perpetuates the collective structure. Here is Wink describing this:

What I propose is viewing the spiritual Powers not as separate heavenly or ethereal entities but as the inner aspect of material or tangible manifestations of power...the "principalities and powers" are the inner or spiritual essence, or gestalt, of an institution or state or system; that the "demons" are the psychic or spiritual powers emanated by organizations or individuals or subaspects of individuals whose energies are bent on overpowering others; that "gods" are the very real archetypal or ideological structures that determine or govern reality and its mirror, the human brain...and that "Satan" is the actual power that congeals around collective idolatry, injustice, or inhumanity, a power that increases or decreases according to the degree of collective refusal to choose higher values. 

This sounds very similar to Tomberg's description of the egregore. As Wink puts it above, demons "are the psychic or spiritual powers emanated by organizations." In fact, like Tomberg, Wink argues that the "angels" of the seven churches of Asia who are addressed in Revelation are examples of this phenomenon. That is, the "angel" of the church is the "good egregore," the collective spiritual power created and emanated from the church. As Wink writes:

It would appear that the angel is not something separate from the congregation, but must somehow represent it as a totality. Through the angel, the community seems to step forth as a single collective entity or Gestalt. But the fact that the angel is actually addressed suggests that it is more than a mere personification of the church, but the actual spirituality of the congregation as a single entity. The angel would then exist in, with, and under the material expression of the church's life as it interiority. As the corporate personality or felt sense of the whole, the angel of the church would have no separate existence apart from the people. But the converse would be equally true: the people would have no unity apart from the angel. Angel and people are the inner and outer aspects of one and the same reality. The people incarnate or embody the angelic spirit; the angel distills the invisible essence of their totality as a group. The angel and the congregation come into being together and, if such is their destiny, pass out of existence together. The one cannot exist without the other.

There's a lot here, in Wink's description of the "angel" of a church, or any organization, that fits with the esoteric description of the egregore. Just like there can be good versus bad egregores there can be good versus bad "angels" inhabiting groups, organizations, and nations. 

That said, there is a key ontological distinction between Wink's description of "angels" versus the esotericist's egregore. Wink seems to think that the angel/egregore comes into existence spontaneously and as an emergent property with the formation of the group as a collective. With the esotericist egregore, by contrast, at least in some conceptions, the entity is "summoned" or "manifested" by the group though an act of intention and will, as a practice of occult magic. Again, we'll talk about this ontological issue in the final post. 

Another connection between Tomberg and Wink is how both connect "collective spirits" with ideologies. For example, Tomberg describes Marxism as an egregore (and it's helpful to note that Tomberg was writing in the midst of the Cold War):

With respect of generation effected collectively, the demon--which in this case is known by the term egregore--is likewise the product of will and imagination, which in this case are collective. The brith of such an egregore in modern times is known to us:

"A spectre is haunting Europe--the spectre of communism"--such is the first phrase of the Communist Manifesto...

What I am saying here concerning the generation of the most imposing modern egregore is in perfect accord with Marxist teaching itself. Because for Marxism there is no God or gods--there are only "demons" in the sense of creations of the human will and imagination. This is the foundational Marxist doctrine of the so-called "ideological superstructure"... And this method of production of ideological superstructures on the basis of will is precisely what we understand by the collective generation of a demon or egregore.

Now, there is the Word, and there are egregores before whom humanity bows down: there is revelation of divine truth, and the manifestation of the will of human beings; there is the cult of God, and that of idols made by man. Is it not the diagnosis and prognosis of the whole history of the human race that at the same time that Moses received the revelation of the Word at the summit of the mountain, that the people at the foot of the mountain made and worshipped a golden calf? The Word and idols, revealed truth and the "ideological superstructures" of the human will, operate simultaneously in the history of the human race. Has there been a single century when the servants of the Word have not had to confront the worshippers of the idols, egregores?

Walter Wink makes similar observations about "the principalities and powers":

None of these "spiritual" realities has an existence independent of its material counterpart. None persist through time without embodiment in cellulose or in a culture or a regime or a corporation or a megalomaniac. An ideology does not just float in the air; it is always the nexus of legitimations and rationales for some actual entity, be it a union or management, a social change group or the structure it hopes to change. As the inner aspect of material reality, the spiritual Powers are everywhere around us. Their presence is real and it is inescapable.

Consequently, battling against these powers and advocating for change demands focusing upon the inner and invisible spiritual dynamics that keep powers structures animated and intact. And as Tomberg has pointed out, this resistance is fundamentally a struggle against idolatry. 

Along with Walter Wink, the lawyer and theologian William Stringfellow powerfully described how demonic powers, the egregores of collectives, are at work in social movements and ideologies. Here is Stringfellow:

According to the Bible, the principalities are legion in species, number, variety and name. They are designated by such multifarious titles as powers, virtues, thrones, authorities, dominions, demons, princes, strongholds, lords, angels, gods, elements, spirits…

Terms that characterize are frequently used biblically in naming the principalities: “tempter,” “mocker,” “foul spirit,” “destroyer,” “adversary,” “the enemy.” And the privity of the principalities to the power of death incarnate is shown in mention of their agency to Beelzebub or Satan or the Devil or the Antichrist…

And if some of these seem quaint, transposed into contemporary language they lose quaintness and the principalities become recognizable and all too familiar: they include all institutions, all ideologies, all images, all movements, all causes, all corporations, all bureaucracies, all traditions, all methods and routines, all conglomerates, all races, all nations, all idols. Thus, the Pentagon or the Ford Motor Company or Harvard University or the Hudson Institute or Consolidated Edison or the Diners Club or the Olympics or the Methodist Church or the Teamsters Union are principalities. So are capitalism, Maoism, humanism, Mormonism, astrology, the Puritan work ethic, science and scientism, white supremacy, patriotism, plus many, many more—sports, sex, any profession or discipline, technology, money, the family—beyond any prospect of full enumeration. The principalities and powers are legion.

And following both Tomberg and Wink, Stringfellow goes on to describe how these powers, dark angels and egregores, become locations of idolatry: 

People are veritably besieged, on all sides, at every moment simultaneously by these claims and strivings of the various powers each seeking to dominate, usurp, or take a person’s time, attention, abilities, effort; each grasping at life itself; each demanding idolatrous service and loyalty. In such a tumult it becomes very difficult for a human being even to identify the idols that would possess him or her…

Again, while there are ontological issues here I want to talk about in the next and final post, there are remarkable convergences between Tomberg, Wink, and Stringfellow in how they describe the spiritual powers that emerge from social collectives, from organizations to churches to nation states to ideological movements. 

Dark angels haunt the world. 

"Magi"

We seek in sand beneath the stars,
plotting fixed coordinates
upon the sifting, mutable, and inconstant.
Sweaty cartographers imposing maps
upon the mysterious and inscrutable.
Our navigation anxious, provisional, uncertain.

Then here, an offered beacon,
precise and definite.
A sign unknown to us.
Direction so gracious
this steady, gifted light.

"on him his crown will shine"

Psalm 132 weaves together cultic and royal imagery. From the cultic angle, there's a focus upon the ark of the covenant in the history and life of Israel. From the royal angle, the psalm declares the Lord's promises to David and his descendants:

The Lord swore to David a sure oath
from which he will not turn back:
“One of the sons of your body
I will set on your throne.
If your sons keep my covenant
and my testimonies that I shall teach them,
their sons also forever
shall sit on your throne.”

During this Advent season, my mind goes to Zechariah's song in Luke 2:  

“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for he has visited and redeemed his people
and has raised up a horn of salvation for us
in the house of his servant David."

Three covenants weave through the story of Israel. The covenant of Abraham. The covenant of Sinai. And the promises God makes to David and his descendants concerning the throne of Israel. This last covenant, as you know, becomes the source of Israel's Messianic expectations. This is the hope we witness in Zechariah's song.

Ever since the rise of the historical-critical method within biblical studies, it has been a bit gauche within scholarly circles, hermeneutically speaking, to read the Old Testament in Christological terms. But the church fathers did this with great abandon. And I shall follow their lead. I trust Augustine and Maximus the Confessor more than Bart Ehrman and his ilk

What strikes me today is the final line of Psalm 132:

"On him his crown will shine."

Obviously, we are put in mind of the crown Jesus will come to wear. From John 19:

And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe. They came up to him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and struck him with their hands. 

This crown shines, but with the strangest light.

Musically and artistically, I'm not a huge fan of the song "Mary Did You Know?" But I will defend its sentiment. It flows straight from Simeon's remarks to Mary about her child:

“Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.”

The Christ child is a sign that will be opposed. 

A sword will pierce Mary's soul. 

Right at the start, the crown of thorns intrudes. 

Christmas is shadowed by Calvary. 

I wrote Reviving Old Scratch in 2016 during my early years of prison ministry. As you can tell from the subtitle of the book--"Demons and the Devil for Doubters and the Disenchanted"--Reviving Old Scratch was a "Devil for Doubters" sort of book.

I wrote the book for myself, given that I thought the book would have a limited audience. Conservative Christians don't doubt the existence of the Devil. So why would they need the book? Progressive Christians, by contrast, have deconstructed (if they are ex-evangelicals) or demythologized (if they are mainline) themselves out of any belief about the Devil. Consequently, who was going to read this Devil for Doubters book? 

But Reviving Old Scratch found its audience.  Alongside Unclean, Reviving Old Scratch has been my most rated and most highly rated book on Amazon and Goodreads. In retrospect, this makes sense. For the very reasons I felt I had to write the book. True, a lot of modern Christians might have trouble believing in a literal Devil. But evil is a real thing, which even the most disenchanted Christians will admit. Especially given how much of progressive Christianity is devoted to social justice. (To fight against evil, it seems, you need to believe in evil.) Plus, a lot of Christians who deconstructed started to realize that deconstruction is a dead end. Faith just dissipates into a spiritual-but-not-religious haze. Reconstruction, putting some ontological conviction back into the faith, became a pressing need and desire. So, Reviving Old Scratch, my "Devil for Doubters" book, became a good companion for many on that journey, especially how to think afresh about Satan, demons, and spiritual warfare. 

One of the moves I make in Reviving Old Scratch is how there are trans-personal forces at work in the world that influence human actions, pulling us into the darkness. We are products of our time and place and the forces at work have a profound moral influence upon us. We aren't as free and independent as we imagine ourselves. We are, rather, pulled into the tides of culture and history. Pawns in a game we only dimly apprehend. As N.T. Wright has observed, "there is such a thing as a dark force that seems to take over people, movements, and sometimes whole countries, a force or (as it sometimes seems) a set of forces that can make people do things they would never normally do." Wright goes on to elucidate:

You might have thought the history of the twentieth century would provide plenty of examples of this, but many still choose to resist the conclusion--despite the increasing use in public life of the language of "force" (economic "forces," political "forces," peer "pressure," and so on). 

Now, how are we to imagine these forces? The enchanted view is that these forces are malevolent angelic agents. Demons. But again, I was writing Reviving Old Scratch for skeptics. So, the argument I made wasn't enchantment but emergence, using ants and weather as examples. Here's a bit from Reviving Old Scratch:

We don’t have to get overly spooky when we think of these forces. All we need to recognize now is that there are unseen, impersonal forces in the world that can’t be located in time or space, forces that are perpetually pulling us into darkness, forces prowling the world like a lion looking for someone to devour. And if you’re still struggling to get your head around that notion, let me share two metaphors that might help. Think of an ant colony. No single ant has the blueprint of the ant colony in its head. No one ant is running the show, directing the ants to forage, build, or defend the colony—all these things happen with no one running the show or calling the shots. What we observe from on high, looking down at the ant colony as a whole, is order and pattern, an order and pattern that, once established, has causal effects upon the individual ants, directing and organizing their behaviors. A pattern emerges from the parts and then exerts a downward force upon those parts. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

But this causal force can’t be located in or reduced to any of the parts being affected. If you could ask the ants, “Who’s in charge here?” they’d be stumped. No single ant is the Wizard of Oz running the show behind a curtain. Instead, the Wizard is everywhere, an unseen force at work in every microscopic interaction between the ants, organizing and directing their behavior. And the Wizard of Oz is much older than the ants. As the lives of ants begin and end, the pattern organizing them persists, outliving the individual ants.

The ants die. But the Wizard lives on.

Or think of a cloud. A cloud is a structure that emerges from a collection of individual water molecules. Clouds can’t be reduced to those water molecules, but clouds, once they exist, start bossing around those water molecules, throwing them around in thunderstorms and hurricanes.

Similar things happen with human beings and societies, forces that sweep through human history on large and small scales. Like water molecules, people are sucked into a dark vortex, a moral tempest, a thunderstorm.

Again, what I'm describing here is what is called emergence. There is "upward causation" from smaller, constituent parts at the micro-level that create a larger, patterned, macro-level structure. Then, once that macro-level structure "emerges," like an ant colony or a hurricane system, it begins to exert "downward causation" upon the smaller, constituent parts. One of the things I suggest in Reviving Old Scratch is that if you're having trouble thinking of the dark forces and powers at work in the world as literal demons you can think of them, instead, as emergent forces that exert downward causation upon human behavior. "Spiritual warfare," in this view, is battling against these impersonal and trans-personal moral forces in the world. Instead of demonizing individual persons--battling against "flesh and blood"--we focus our collective efforts upon extracting ourselves and others from the dark vortex dragging us all under the water.

Given this use of emergence to describe demonic powers in Reviving Old Scratch, I expect you can see how Valentin Tomberg's description of egregores in Meditations on the Tarot would have caught my attention. Egregores manifest and behave like emergent systems. The process begins at the micro-level, in the upward causation of the individuals within the group. Once the egregore emerges, it exerts downward causation, shaping and directing the group in return. Also, like all emergent systems, the egregore is bounded and dependent upon the group. That is, the egregore cannot act or display powers beyond the group’s own potentialities. Yet as a demonic power alive within the group, the egregore shows a potency not predictable from its individual members alone, appearing as more than the sum of its parts. The egregore has come to "possess" the group as it exerts its dark moral effect. 

Given this picture, we can define what might be called “egregoric possession” or “emergent possession.” Egregoric/emergent possession is the condition in which individuals within a group come under the influence of an egregore, an emergent property of the collective. In egregoric/emergent possession, the egregore exerts downward causation upon its members, shaping their perceptions, emotions, and actions. Unlike traditional demonic possession, which is imagined as an external spirit invading the self, egregoric/emergent possession arises endogenously from the group itself. Instead of an individual being “possessed” by an alien entity, a community finds itself controlled by the collective spirit it has generated and set loose within itself.

In the last post I described how the egregore is identified as a demonic power holding sway over a group. And while that isn't how we typically think about demonic possession, there is a biblical background for this idea.

In Deuteronomy 32 we are told that when God created the world He assigned a "son of God" to rule over and watch over each nation:

When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance,
when he divided all mankind,
he set up boundaries for the peoples
according to the number of the sons of God.

In some ancient texts, these regional deities and territorial spirits are described as the "angels of the nations." We find these regional deities in Psalm 82 as members of the Divine Council:

God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment. 

As mentioned in the last post, these angelic rulers are described in Psalm 82 as the cause of injustice and oppression upon earth:

“How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked?
Provide justice for the needy and the fatherless;
uphold the rights of the oppressed and the destitute.
Rescue the poor and needy;
save them from the power of the wicked.”

We also find rebellious territorial spirits at work in the drama of Daniel 10. Daniel has been praying to the Lord for three weeks. Eventually, an angelic messenger arrives explaining that his three week delay was caused by a territorial spirit, the "prince of Persia." Daniel's messenger was only able to break free when Michael, the angelic protector of Israel, came to his assistance:

A hand touched me and set me trembling on my hands and knees. He said, "Daniel, you who are highly esteemed, consider carefully the words I am about to speak to you, and stand up, for I have now been sent to you." And when he said this to me, I stood up trembling.

Then he continued, "Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia. Now I have come to explain to you what will happen to your people in the future, for the vision concerns a time yet to come."

Before the angelic messenger leaves Daniel, he anticipates meeting additional resistance from a second territorial spirit. The "prince of Greece" will join "the prince of Persia":

"Now I must return to fight against the prince of Persia, and when I am through with him, the prince of Greece will come. But I am to tell you what is inscribed in the book of truth. There is no one with me who contends against these princes except Michael, your prince."

What I want to highlight in all this is how, in the biblical imagination, demonic activity is described as being associated with nations and groups. As I've mentioned, this tends to cut across how we typically conceive of demonic activity. Most of us think of the movie The Exorcist when we think of demon possession, a demon inhabiting an individual. But in the Old Testament, demonic activity was regional and territorial, associated with nations and populations. 

Relevant to our reflections upon the egregore, demonic influence over a group, even a whole nation, is a very biblical idea.

I've mentioned how I encountered Valentin Tomberg's Meditations on the Tarot, his exploration of Christian Hermeticism. And while I don't think many readers would tolerate a deep dive into the book, there are topics within the book that I think would be intriguing to explore. 

One of those topics is Tomberg's discussion of egregores. 

Personally, I had never heard of egregores. I had to go look it up. When I did look it up I was intrigued. Egregores sounded like things I describe in Reviving Old Scratch. But egregores are also controversial in Christian spaces. So, this is a series devoted to sorting it all out.

Let's start with some history. 

The Greek word ἐγρήγοροι (egrēgoroi) comes from the Book of Enoch and literally means “watchers.” The Book of Enoch is a Jewish apocryphal text from around the the 3rd–1st centuries BCE, and was an influence upon Second Temple Jewish and Christian thought. In the Book of Enoch, the “Watchers” are fallen angels. These are identified as the "sons of god" in Genesis 6.1-4 who descended to earth, interbred with humans, and gave birth to the Nephilim, which Enoch describes as the "giants." This Enochian tradition influenced later Christian demonology. Specifically, when Noah's flood destroyed the bodies of the giants their disembodied spirits continued to haunt the earth as the "unclean spirits" we encounter in the gospel accounts. 

Early Christian thought was heavily influenced by Neoplatonic philosophy and its view of celestial and angelic mediation. For example, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite described a "celestial hierarchy" of angelic powers connecting heaven and earth. According to Pseudo-Dionysius, the nine ranks of the celestial hierarchy are Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. In the Biblical imagination, the world suffers under these divine powers, the fallen and rebellious "principalities and powers." The Enochian tradition describing the Watchers was later taken to be an example of this angelic rebellion. Consequently, the Watchers come to be associated with fallen angelic and demonic powers in medieval Christian thought.

This theological background laid the conceptual foundation for the egregore in Western esotericism, the concept described by Tomberg in Meditations on the Tarot. The major development occurred in the 19th century, when the egregore came to be understood as a “collective spirit” or “collective consciousness” generated by a group. Drawing on the notion of powerful spiritual forces influencing human affairs, like the Watchers and the principalities and powers of biblical and medieval thought, these collective spirits could be angelic or demonic, benevolent or malevolent. Once the egregore manifested, it was believed to take on a quasi-autonomous agency, exerting influence over the group while remaining dependent on their energy and devotion. 

In Tomberg's view, as a Christian esotericist, egregores are demonic and come to "possess" groups, large and small, maintaining and directing their behavior toward bad ends. For our purposes, there are two things that are distinctive about the egregore in relation to more traditional Christian demonology. First, the egregore results from a "bottom-up" process rather than a "top-down" view like what we see Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite's celestial hierarchy. This is an intriguing reversal, and it opens up the idea of viewing the egregore as an emergent phenomenon. But the "bottom-up" creation of the egregore is also where most of the controversy exists. Second, in contrast to traditional views of demonic activity and possession, what is unique about egregores is the focus upon groups rather than upon individuals. The egregore/demon is a product of the group and operates within and upon the group. 

That's what interesting about the egregore, the demonic possession of groups.

As described in Part 3 of this series, Wolfgang Palaver was influential in introducing the Biblical notion of the katechton into Girardian thought. Girard himself cites Palaver at the end of I See Satan Fall Like Lightning. 

The Colloquium on Violence & Religion was established in 1991 to explore, critique, and develop the ideas of Girard. And in the February 2025 COV&R Bulletin, Palaver shares thoughts about the katechon given the recent attention Peter Thiel has brought to Palaver's work on this topic. The title of Palaver's article is "Desacralize the Katechon, Do Not Create Empires!" which is a follow-up to a 2024 article Palaver wrote entitled "On the Dangers of a Return to Constantinianism."

If you've been following this series, Palaver's point is easily stated. As mimetic rivalry and violence escalate in society and the world, given how the Gospels have deprived us of the cathartic and unifying power of archaic religion, we will be tempted to create a new sacred order to save us. The old sacred order, archaic religion, will be replaced with a new sacred order. And given that Christianity replaced the old sacred order, the new sacred order will be Christian. Palaver argues that Constantinianism became that new sacred order.

I expect most know the basic plot point of this history, how, with the Emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in the 4th century AD, the Christian church increasingly became fused with political power, culminating in the Holy Roman Empire that ruled over Latin Christendom. According to Palaver, by baptizing the empire scapegoating violence was resacralized. This allowed the Holy Roman Empire to maintain religious and political cohesiveness and control through continued practices of sacred violence. Simply put, instead of conversion, the West chose scapegoating. The church had a choice between Christ and Constantine, and it picked Constantine.

Palaver uses Fyodor Dostoevsky's parable of the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov to illustrate this choice of Constantine over Christ. To recap, if you haven't read the book: in the parable, Christ returns to earth during the Spanish Inquisition, performs miracles, and is promptly arrested by the Church. That night, the Grand Inquisitor visits Christ in prison and delivers a long speech explaining that the Church no longer needs Christ. Humanity, he says, cannot bear the freedom Christ offered and instead desires authority, miracle, and security. The Church, therefore, has allied itself with worldly power to rule over people for their own good. And yet, in doing so, the Church betrays the way of Christ.

Here's where we can turn back toward the katechon. In the parable of the Grand Inquisitor, the masses are witless sheep, so the Church steps in to guide them. But in modern times, the concerns of the people will focus upon social chaos, dissolution, and violence. In the face of that threat, the Constantinian state steps in as katechonic savior. The Constantinian state thus becomes the new sacred order and uses scapegoating violence to bind society together. And this is where Palaver and Peter Thiel start to part ways. Palaver sees the sacralization of the state, like we see in Christian nationalism and Catholic integralism, as the Church opting for the Grand Inquisitor over Christ. Thiel, by contrast, seen in his support for J.D. Vance, seems supportive of these right-wing political projects. Notice, again, just how slippery the Antichrist and the katechon are. Thiel supports the Christian nationalists because they reject globalization, which for Thiel is the Antichrist. As I pointed out in the last post, the Christian nationalists are playing katechon, holding back the Antichrist's global takeover. And yet, in promising to hold back the Antichrist, the Christian state becomes the Antichrist, the new sacred order, the Grand Inquisitor, that binds the nation together by identifying national scapegoats.

As a historical example, recall how Hitler promised to play katechon for Germany. That's how Carl Schmitt saw Hitler and used his rise to power to introduce the biblical image of the katechon to modern political theory. The German Christians sacralized the katechon. They lined up behind the Christian nationalist project. And they unified the nation by ganging up on the identified scapegoats, the Jews especially.

This is, argues Palaver, the temptation now facing the West. Christian nationalism is on the rise because we're looking for the katechonic savior. There is a longing for Constantinianism, the Christian prince who will restore our Christian nation by holding back and restraining the darkness. A new sacred order is established, built upon scapegoating.

This is why Palaver calls upon us to "desacralize the katechon." Borrowing from John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas, Palaver asks the Church to turn away from Constantine and back toward Christ. As Palaver writes:

The katechon is nothing divine or holy but results from the human creation of the sacred...It needs to be desacralized so that its immanent nature becomes obvious. It is the task of the Church to desacralize the katechon by living as a communion of saints.

In short: Be converted! Do not create a new sacred order—a restored Christendom—built upon scapegoating violence. Of course, it is true that the state exists to be the katechon. That is the biblical view. As Paul writes in Romans:

For [the ruling power] is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.

You'll recall how the church fathers believed that the katechon in 2 Thessalonians was the Roman Empire. So there is something positive at work in the state, from this katechonic perspective. And yet, Rome is also the empire described as the Antichrist of Revelation. Once again we see the big point of this series, how the katechon and the Antichrist are doppelgängers. 

Summarizing, while the state does serve a legitimate katechonic function, we must not sacralize that function. Do not equate the state with the Church. Do not baptize the empire. We must resist the Constantinian temptation. Simply put, when the Church sacralizes the katechon, it becomes the Antichrist.

Stated positively, the Church views the state with bifocal vision. Through one lens, the state is katechon. In that regard, it should be obeyed. Through the other lens, the state is the Antichrist. In that regard, the Church is called to “come out” from the sacred violence of Babylon.

The Constantinian temptation loses this bifocal vision. It begins to identify the katechon, not with the Antichrist, but with Christ. That is what is happening with the Christian nationalists. In longing for a Christian prince to hold back the darkness, they sacralize the katechon. They choose the Grand Inquisitor over Christ.

"Mary"

Toil over.
Weary twilight comes.
Silence and rest.
And she, unaware,
of the cosmic singularity
that is herself.
Eternity soon to intrude
at the fulcrum of her assent.

She bears no weight.
Seconds have fallen lightly, gently.
Her days unfreighted
by intimations of destiny
or portents of glory.
The lightest of miracles.
A most ordinary election.
All her recommendation
escaping our gaze,
until heaven announces 
her unseen worth.

Discussion

"my soul is like a weaned child"

The short Psalm 131 is built around a single image, a weaned child resting with his or her mother:

Lord, my heart is not proud;
my eyes are not haughty.
I do not get involved with things
too great or too wondrous for me.
Instead, I have calmed and quieted my soul
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like a weaned child.

The image of a weaned child, rather than a nursing child, is interesting. We're further along the developmental trajectory. Not a newborn infant, but a toddler who is walking around, talking, and eating solid food. The metaphor is less about dependency than trust. What we see in Psalm 131 is what psychologists would call a "secure attachment." The weaned child experiences their mother as a secure base and a haven of safety. 

The Psalm connects this trust with humility: "My heart is not proud; my eyes are not haughty." There's also an experience of inner peace and tranquility: "I have calmed and quieted my soul." As I describe in The Shape of Joy Psalm 131 is depicting a "quiet ego." 

The story I tell in The Shape of Joy is how transcendence is good for you. The modern self has collapsed in upon itself, becoming introverted, ruminating, self-referential, and morbidly self-absorbed. We are incurvatus in se, as Augustine put it. Curved in upon ourselves. And there are mental health consequences of this curvature. Instead of quiet, the ego is loud, agitated, unstable, and reactive. 

Consequently, we need to make an "outward turn" to become excurvatus ex se, curved outward to make contact with a reality bigger and other than our own. The science of awe, humility, gratitude, meaning in life, and spirituality, in their relation to mental health and well-being, all converge upon this story. Joy has a shape.

And that's the shape we see in the metaphor of Psalm 131. Humility and inner quietude flow out of a relation of trust. That's the key. The story I share in The Shape of Joy is largely descriptive, connecting the correlational dots of positive psychology to bring its main, and often unstated, conclusion into view. Because a clear story has emerged. Trouble is, if you read a book on the science of gratitude, the research on awe, or the effectiveness of humble leadership, you can miss the forest for the trees. You won't see how all these disparate research literatures, along with their outward facing self-improvement podcasts and books, reach the same conclusion. Transcendence is good for you.  It's like the parable of the blind men and the elephant, each one touching a different part of an elephant and arguing about what the creature is, since each describes only the piece he feels—the trunk is a snake, the tusk is a spear, the leg is a tree. Each holds a bit of the truth but can't see the unified whole. The research on gratitude, humility, awe, and meaning in life is like this, each book and podcast a blind man describing only a part of the whole. We fail to see the elephant—transcendence—because we consume the science bit by bit. The goal of The Shape of Joy is the bring the elephant into view.

Still, as I said, that was largely a descriptive task. It doesn't really answer the question about why transcendence is good for us. That's an explanatory, rather than descriptive, question. And since I didn't want to get too preachy in The Shape of Joy I didn't push too hard in this direction. But the explanation is the one we find in Psalm 131. Specifically, the self is inherently relational. There is no isolated ego or self. We exist only in relation. Thus, I can only come to know, define, and explore myself through relation. Self-help, self-exploration, and self-actualization are, at root, delusional, resting upon a false ontology and anthropology. Consequently, it stands to reason that when the self cuts itself off from relation, and tries to explore, define, and know itself in isolation, it will become disordered and hallucinatory. Just look around at the world. That’s what we see at the heart of our modern mental health crisis—disordered, hallucinatory selves.

Transcendence is good for us because it restores relation. And at the heart of the Christian vision of reality is the confession that this relation is, ontologically, personal. As Martin Buber put it, our relation to reality is not I-It, but I-Thou. But actually, object-relations theory and Psalm 131 would reverse this. Thou precedes I. The relation is Thou-I. Relation is prior to the self. The child only comes to know herself in relation to the mother. Self-definition assumes relation. The Thou, the maternal relation, is prior to the development of the self, the I. 

That is the explanation about why transcendence is good for us. Our flourishing flows out of a trusting relation with reality. Our I comes into being in relation to a prior, parental Thou. And in trusting this relation our souls become like a weaned child, peaceful, quiet and at rest. 

As I mentioned, my explorations into Girardian thinking regarding the katechon were kicked off by my colleague David sharing a recent Wired article about the tech billionaire Peter Thiel. I didn’t know much of anything about Thiel at the time, and I typically don’t care what tech billionaires are up to or thinking. But I was struck by how Thiel had been going around giving lectures about the Antichrist and that his ideas were based upon his readings of René Girard. The article was also my first introduction to how the biblical reference to the katechon had been put to use in Girardian thought and modern political theology. I’d read Girard’s I See Satan Fall Like Lightning but missed his reference to the katechon and the work of Wolfgang Palaver at the end of the book.

So, what is Peter Thiel saying about the katechon and the Antichrist?

The most Girardian aspect of Thiel’s thinking concerns the coming Apocalypse. We’ve discussed this over the last two posts. Since the Gospel accounts have demythologized the sacred violence at the heart of archaic religion, modern societies have lost the ability to handle, direct, and discharge rising mimetic violence. Slowly, a war of all against all begins to tear the world apart. All this is foretold in the book of Revelation.

Revelation also foretells the coming of the Antichrist, a power that rises to global dominance. From Revelation 13:

The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise its authority for forty-two months. It opened its mouth to blaspheme God and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven. It was given power to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language, and nation. All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.

The Beast in Revelation is “given authority over every tribe, people, language, and nation,” and “all the inhabitants of the earth” will come to worship the Beast. With the rise of modern dispensationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries, these lines from Revelation 13 were taken as prophecies about the coming of a global power ruled by an autocratic dictator. Because of this, Christians subscribing to dispensationalism have often been suspicious of “one world governments” and, in more recent times, anything related to “globalism.”

Here’s where Thiel’s ideas show up. According to Thiel, how does the Antichrist rise to global power? As the world faces increasing chaos and violence, it will look for a savior. The world will look for a katechon, a power with global reach that can hold back, contain, and restrain the enveloping darkness. The Antichrist will offer itself to the world as the katechonic solution to social dissolution and escalating bloodshed. As the katechon, the Antichrist will restore safety, peace, and prosperity. And so, the world makes a deal with the Devil. The Antichrist is given global power and authority to play the role of katechonic savior.

Those are the dominoes that fall. The world worsens and the Apocalypse looms. The world clamors for a katechonic savior, a power that can hold back and restrain the coming disaster. The Antichrist promises to be that savior but needs global power to do so. The world cedes that global power to the Antichrist. And that is how the Antichrist comes to rule the world.

I’m describing all this in biblical and apocalyptic imagery, which makes it seem occult and supernatural. But for Thiel, this is a straightforward material and political analysis. Liberty and freedom are ceded to centralizing governmental and economic forces that arrogate power for themselves by incessantly banging the drum about looming catastrophes—from global warming to AI to nuclear war to terrorism to economic inequality. Stated that way, one starts to see how Thiel leverages this suite of ideas to justify his support of right-wing politicians who decry globalization.

The pithy way Thiel has summarized his theories about the Antichrist is “Don’t immanentize the katechon.” This is a play on the political-theological maxim, “Don’t immanentize the eschaton.” An “immanentized eschatology” is a utopian vision of bringing heaven to earth, that the kingdom of God can be achieved by human effort from within history. Marxism, for example, has been criticized for trying to immanentize the eschaton by claiming it could establish a worker’s paradise on earth. You can see here Thiel’s (serious) joke about immanentizing the katechon. According to Thiel, it would be disastrous if we ceded our freedoms to a global power promising peace and security. It would be a catastrophe if the katechonic savior were realized upon earth.

Personally, I do find this bit of Thiel’s thinking worth pondering. In the past, political visions like Marxism were utopian. They promised heaven on earth. The political saviors of today, by contrast, present themselves more grimly and realistically. Today’s political saviors don’t promise heaven on earth. Rather, they promise to be strong enough to protect you from outside threats. They promise to be your katechon. They promise to fight for you and defend you. The salvation political saviors promise today isn’t utopian but katechonic.

And here, once again, we observe just how slippery all this is, how the katechon doesn’t hold back the Antichrist, as described in 2 Thessalonians, but becomes the Antichrist. The crux of Thiel’s theory is how the Antichrist gains power by promising to be the katechon. In biblical language, Satan is being used to cast out Satan. Satan prowls the earth, causing a rise in mimetic violence. Then we turn toward Satan to restrain that violence. 

Which brings us to the katechonic irony of Peter Thiel. In Ross Douthat’s interview with Thiel, he asks Thiel a sharp question. (Douthat starts his question around the 55:30 mark.) Douthat asks whether all the stuff Thiel’s developing—from AI to military tech to surveillance tech—in order to prevent the Antichrist from taking over the world might contribute to facilitating that arrival. As observers of the interview have noted, it’s a question that seems to put Thiel on his heels, giving him pause and making him visibly uncomfortable.

That’s the irony, isn’t it? Thiel is playing katechon. Thiel is trying to prevent the coming of the Antichrist, to restrain its coming. That’s his agenda. And to accomplish that goal—notice this—he’s banging the catastrophic drum. Thiel then steps in as katechonic savior to prevent the Apocalypse.

And isn’t that precisely what Peter Thiel says the Antichrist would do?