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Review of "Egregores: The Occult Entities That Watch Over Human Destiny" by Mark Stavish

2/28/2018

49 Comments

 
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EGREGORES: THE OCCULT ENTITIES THAT WATCH OVER HUMAN DESTINY
Mark Stavish | 160 pages | Inner Traditions | ISBN: 9781620555781 | (price not available)
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​I don’t usually review books of mysticism and New Age philosophy, but I make an exception where such books cross over into territory familiar to me, especially when they touch on either the Watcher angels from the Book of Enoch or H. P. Lovecraft. Occasionally, we find a book that mixes together both. Egregores: The Occult Entities That Watch Over Human Destiny (Inner Traditions, 2018) is one such book, and author Mark Stavish provides some confounding ideas about the relationship between Fallen Angels and the Cthulhu Mythos in a confusing book that is half book report and half New Age instruction manual. The book is due out in July, and this is an early review.
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​Here we run into an oddball problem that is worth less than the time it takes to explain but is nevertheless necessary to understand what is going on in Egregores. The term “Egregore” has two distinct meanings, which have become conflated. Originally, the egregores were the Greek translation of the Watchers from the Book of Enoch, the Sons of God from Genesis 6:4, which the author of Enoch had called by the name of the observant angels from the Book of Daniel. But in Le Grand Arcane in 1868 the occultist Eliphas Lévi merged the Watchers and their sons, the Nephilim, with an idiosyncratic idea that there were autonomous psychic phenomena that could be remnants of these monsters. Afterward, occultists from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the Rosicrucians took up the term and used it to describe any sort of emergent symbol or collective action that seems to behave autonomously of its creators. Thus, everything from the General Will of Rousseau to the Golden Arches of McDonalds is an egregore.
 
It is in this confounded and conflated modern form that we find the egregores appear in Stavish’s book, for Stavish is an alchemist, Hermeticist, and all-around believer in the esoteric. Thus, this is the kind of book that opens with a quotation from the Corpus Hermeticum 16:12-14, 19, without introduction or explanation, and expects the reader to know what the obscure language is talking about. But it is also the kind of book where the author is so enamored of the occult that he lacks functional knowledge of the actual history of the subjects he seeks to address. Thus, for example, he starts by alleging of the Book of Enoch’s section on the descent of the Watchers that the “only extant version that exists is in the South Semitic language of Ge’ez.” That is true of the book as a whole, but the sections on the Watchers and their crimes are also preserved in Greek by George Syncellus, and in epitome by other authors. If your goal is to extract divine truths form the text, knowing this would seem like it should be a priority.
 
Instead, the author lists, but does not reconcile, the many different definitions proposed for egregores and suggests that they are protective spirits, and powerful beings. Their withdrawal, he says, caused the fall of the Roman Empire, for he believes that pagan gods are egregores of a sort.
 
The majority of the book is given over to the explication of the effects of imagined egregores on the personal lives of readers of the volume. I have little to say about this, since the concept is nebulous and the assumption of the reality of these beings distinctly unproven. However, despite the author’s pretensions toward describing a universal experience, his Western and modern biases show through at every turn. Consider the opening to his first chapter: “Tibetan Buddhism began to appear in popular culture with its mention in the writings of the Russian occultist, spirit medium, and author Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society that she cofounded in the late nineteenth century.” Basically, every word of this is wrong. I assume by “popular culture” he means “Anglo-American popular culture,” though there is no attempt to delineate the field of discussion, or to acknowledge that Tibet and other Eastern lands have popular culture, too. At any rate, Buddhism was well-known in the West for at least a century before Blavatsky appropriated it, as represented by dozens of British volumes on the subject prior to her. It is, after all, rather amazing what Empire does for encounters with the colonized and the need to understand them. Similarly, Stavish’s discussion of Esoteric Buddhism is confined to how Western occultists viewed Esoteric Buddhism through Western lenses. The Tibetans themselves are reduced to “the Tibetan mystics,” a romantic, vague, and mysterious collective.
 
Subsequent chapters examine the role of incorporeal entities in various esoteric traditions, such as the Golden Dawn and French occultism. The specter of the Ascended Masters of Theosophy is never far from the foreground, and while it might be interesting to explore the shades of difference among the many imagined sects of astral and interdimensional brotherhoods abstracted, conflated from Freemasonic myths of primeval brotherhoods and from the Shemsu Hor of Egyptian mythology, which Gaston Maspero and Francois Lenormant had hypothesized in the 1870s and 1880s were the god-men who built the Sphinx just after the Ice Age. Here again the author’s lack of inquiry and historiography does him injustice, as he speaks with awe of the egregores of The Tarot of Mouni Sadhu (Mieczyslaw Demetriusz Sudowski), written in 1962, without recognition that many of the claims found in the book were preceded by centuries among French occultists. Just for example, Court de Gébelin and the Comte de Mellet assigned to the tarot in 1781 an origin in the work of Hermes Trismegistus, channeling (as is clearly implied by allusions in the text) the antediluvian wisdom of the Fallen Angels. This all the odder since the aforementioned claims fed directly into works produced by the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, a group we would expect our author to employ in his analysis. But never mind, for our author is ignorant of his own area of expertise and therefore is silent on such matters, even when they might support his fantastical claims. It’s nice, though, that he was able to quote the parts of Mouni Sadhu’s text that deal with “the guards and masters of the White Race’s Kabbalah.” You might think that’s an esoteric reference to light or something, but it’s not. He’s talking about Caucasians, because for him initiation into the occult varies by skin color, with different races achieving different magics. He was progressive to an extent, though: He thought the Jews were black, and therefore of no relation whatsoever to white people and their magic. Our author silently glosses over this.
 
Too much of the early pages is given over to summarizing modern writers without establishing that their esoteric fantasies have grounding in reality. Most of the modern writers cited trace their ideas back to a few Victorian originals, and these are of highly questionable value. A deeper dive into their sources and their accuracy would have been helpful. References to the Simon Necronomicon ring especially false if you are not already inclined to imagine that a made-up text cobbled together from spare parts is imbued with eternal spiritual power. Let’s be frank: The “Simon” who claimed to have discovered and published the book is almost certainly its author, and almost certainly Peter Levenda, who denies the charge but nevertheless told the U.S. government that he and Simon were the same when it came down to the real brass tacks: money. It’s his name as author on Simon’s copyright registrations. It’s hard to assign eternal esoteric power to a book written by a guy I’ve talked to, who isn’t really all that magical. Ditto any revelations gleaned from Gary Lachmann. I suppose it is just my bias, but the weight of tradition at least gives a superficial patina of gravity to older works, since their authors are long since removed from the mundane reality of real life.
 
The subsequent chapter attempts to explain the fodder we find on the History Channel or Destination America, such as UFOs and even the completely made up fake legend of Slenderman, in terms of timeless interactions with the dimension of the egregores. But any chapter that takes Jacques Vallée and his sloppy research and poorly reasoned philosophy of UFOs as an invitation to spiritual awakening—even if mediated through Jean Dubuis, an occultist and friend of Vallée—is hardly a serious investigation of the paranormal. There is also the discomforting problem that the author cites approvingly Dubuis’s claim that he might have prevented 9/11 had he taken up an offer from a group of magic practitioners to join them to vanquish the “egregore of Islam” in the 1990s. Ponder it for a moment and it becomes darker and more disturbing the more you think about what Dubuis really said.
 
The author also cites with approval “superfascist” and “mystical Aryanism” philosopher Julius Evola, who was infamously cited by ex-White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, and who made use of the egregores to describe “those who are awake” to the power of conservative tradition to connect individuals to magical dimensions beyond reality. To be honest with you, I can’t imagine why anyone would be like our author and proudly embrace the idea of being part of any “spiritual elite” identified by a fascist white supremacist, but it is a truism that below the surface of most fringe ideas lies a morass of racist, xenophobic, right-wing nonsense.
 
Speaking of which… We all know that H. P. Lovecraft was also a white nationalist who mourned the loss of a white-dominated America, who wrote nasty poetry about his hatred for Blacks, and who was warmly receptive to Hitler, at least for a while. So, it’s no surprise that our author moves from Julius Evola to H. P. Lovecraft, with a whiplash-inducing detour into the career of Jean Houston, the Mind Games coauthor who inspired John Lennon in his last, most radical years and who led Hillary Clinton in channeling Eleanor Roosevelt, though both women denied that there was a séance involved, claiming that the event was imaginative role playing. The Watchers are truly malleable enough to become icons of both the Left and the Right, leading one side to dubious flights of imagination and the other to advocate ethnic purification and authoritarianism. Our author treats all of this as moral equivalency, glossing over the worst aspects of the occult right and never mentioning racism, fascism, etc.
 
Anyway, the fifth chapter is about Lovecraft, and it is assembled from well-worn nuggets of information familiar from standard sources that I need not review here. However, the author isn’t quite comfortable with these sources, as evidenced from the fact that he italicizes Cthulhu Mythos and treats it as the title of a book, rather than an informal name for his concocted mythology, coined by August Derleth years after the fact. What’s stranger is that he knows this, as he says on page 74, yet goes about treating it incorrectly anyway. The only good news is that Stavish at least concedes that the Necronomicon is not a real book and is the product of Lovecraft’s imagination, and that many “genuine” grimoires are similarly fabricated texts passing under more famous names:

These erroneously or even falsely attributed practices, East and West, have not prevented generations of practitioners from having some kind of psychological (if not paranormal) experience—or even enlightenment itself. Neither has the fictional nature of the Necronomicon been a stumbling block for those who see it as a gateway to genuine and existing alternate realities, even if it means risking insanity, as in the case of the “Mad Arab” before them.
​Stavish isn’t one to state anything directly, so he lets a potted biography of magic practitioner Kenneth Grant, who famously claimed Lovecraft channeled real interdimensional powers in his story, stand for an endorsement of Lovecraftian magic. Further discussions of writers associated with Lovecraftian fiction, including Robert E. Howard, and past inspirations like Arthur Machen basically boil down to a line quoted from one of Howard’s letters: “I have sometimes wondered if it were possible that unrecognized forces from the past or present—or even the future—work through the thoughts and actions of living men.” This is the warrant for implying quite heavily that the Watchers, or egregores, operated through the Weird Tales authors.
 
The succeeding chapter talks about egregores in modern Rosicrucian thought, but the chapter is composed of so many quotations, it ultimately says nothing original.
 
As we head into the conclusion, I was left confused by the purpose of the book. The author said nothing definitive, provided no real analysis, and merely gathered together summaries of twentieth century occultists’ books, largely undigested. But the final chapter made plain that despite the author’s previous refusal to commit to the reality of the egregores, he means the reader to believe in them, even if he wants plausible deniability about any specific claim. The final chapter teaches readers how to free themselves from the power of the Fallen Angels, which are apparently somewhere between demons and engrams in the hierarchy of cosmic soul leeches.
 
This confuses me a bit, for if the Lovecraft circle produced admirable fiction under Watcher influence, then what is the purpose of removing them? Here, the problem of definition becomes acute. Stavish takes the broadest view of egregores, identifying them as all forms of socialization and therefore assigns them to everything from the PTA (seriously, he said that) to nationalism, and he offers as a solution a program of nihilism in which the initiate retreats from all contact with the evil world of social relations. Witness his description of the evil that is cheerleading: “The whole function of cheerleading is the enhancing of sexual and psychic energy by way of music, costumed animal figures, and logos. It is nothing less than a religious ritual wherein the participants are united in a single identity and purpose.”
 
But he also claims there are “classical” egregores which are basically demons, with “preternatural intelligence” that need to be combatted with, more or less, exorcism. But in the end, did he not argue that adherence even to New Age magic is itself the domination of an egregore and therefore to be rejected? I never quite understand these things. Indeed, Stavish announces bluntly that he doesn’t care about trying to define an egregore. He simply knows it when he sees it.
It is functionally irrelevant, except for academic definition, if an egregore is understood to exist only in the classical sense or if we can consider a thoughtform an egregore. It is also equally irrelevant if thoughtforms as actual psychic entities exist either—as modern media has demonstrated that ideas (or memes) are constructed with the intention of manipulating mass opinion and, thereby, public activities
​Stavish hates logos. He considers symbols to be powerful agents of the evil angels, swamping our independent mind with hated “group” identities. That (a) people might willingly select symbols to represent their deeply held values, and (b) collective action is not necessarily evil never occur to him. A child postwar America, the rigid individualism of American capitalism is synonymous for him with an objective evaluation of the ideal state of human affairs. In short, he’s managed to project into the mystical realm of supernatural magic a justification of his own power and privilege. Thus, when he concludes that we must all take it upon ourselves to “become masters of our own lives” and reject responsibility or obligation to “the life of someone else,” he is assuming that his readers agree that the individual takes precedence over the family, the community, or the nation. In the end, this is a Western belief, not one from the heavens, and it is quite clear that at every level Stavish, and many of the occultists on whom he draws, cannot separate themselves and Western culture from the universal truths they claim are represented by modern Western values.

I gave the book one and a half stars because I see no evidence that soul-sucking cosmic leeches are trying to drain our energy. But if you do, then you can fee free to add another star.
49 Comments
A C
2/28/2018 09:13:21 am

"though both women denied that there was a séance involved, claiming that the event was imaginative role playing"

How does one tell the difference? Most of the more rational occultists will retreat to the latter if they think its a more defensible position.

The Watchers were originally protective spirits (probably a form of the Mesopotamian Apkallu) before the Book of Enoch demonised them.

Eliphas Lévi was wrong to conflate watchers with nephilim but the idea that the nephilim survived as disembodied evil spirits is in the Dead Sea Scrolls so was a good guess.

The Golden Dawn/theosophy/rosicrusian egregore/thought form/tulpa concept is basically a have your cake and eat it too approach to rationalising mysticism as being mostly psychological. Its not without some rational sense but really all these systems are interchangeable when having a system to contextualise your imaginary meditation quests is more important than the specifics of the system.

Defining Slenderman as a Tulpa (a buddhist term some latter theosophists decided to misuse to make 'thought form' sound more like a legitimate ancient concept) was popular in New Age circles around the time the creepypasta his the news.

https://skeptic.libsyn.com/slenderman-and-tulpas

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Machala
2/28/2018 10:08:06 am

Adherence to to ideas that The Watchers, Egregores, Guardian Angels, Nephilim, or demons exist requires the willing suspension of disbelief. I am unwilling to throw away all logical thinking on biblical fairy tales and errant philosophy.
To believe in the above fictional creatures means that you give credence to the Bible, along with other works of historical fantasy and delusive thought.
I enjoy reading writers like Lovecraft and Poe for what they are...authors of dark, imaginative, well written stories. Stories ! Fictions ! Some fictions, like parts of the bible, have small basis in historical fact but that history is used to make the fantasy appear more credible.
Thank for your excellent revue, Jason. I doubt though, that I shall be rushing to my bookstore to purchase it, when it eventually comes out.

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Brian
2/28/2018 10:22:57 am

"...he is assuming that his readers agree that the individual takes precedence over the family, the community, or the nation. In the end, this is a Western belief..." Well, yes, but I would argue more narrowly that it is at least a recently exaggerated neoliberal belief. The last 40 years have not been kind to a belief in community. Thank you, Friedman and Hayek, Reagan and Thatcher, et al.

Jason, can you tell me, is this insistent harking back to Biblical silliness something that is equaled in other cultures? I would suppose Muslims might be tempted to tease out odd interpretations of a stray sentence in the Koran, but they're part of the same Semitic tradition. Do Hindus mine their sacred scriptures for the odd statement to base a weird belief on? Do the various Buddhist sects scour the sutras for mysteries? Do Shintoists leap to conclusions from a line in the Kojiki? Or is this purely a Judeo-Christian neurosis?

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Only Me
2/28/2018 01:33:45 pm

Let me see if I understand Stavish correctly: every human concept, idea or symbol is either influenced by an egregore, or, eventually attains the power to become an egregore. If I'm misunderstanding this, please let me know.

If I'm not misunderstanding him, then what would be the purpose of seeking wisdom from interdimensional beings if we mere mortals can alter reality subconsciously? How do we free ourselves from our own creations?

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Shane Sullivan
3/1/2018 02:48:39 pm

Erm... Buddha, Dharma and Sangha?

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Only Me
3/1/2018 03:04:14 pm

Aren't they egregores? Again, if I'm not misunderstanding Stavish, they would be. As Jason pointed out above:

"But in the end, did he not argue that adherence even to New Age magic is itself the domination of an egregore and therefore to be rejected?"

I'm curious as to what Stavish proposes we do if we perhaps create the very egregores that must be rejected.

An Over-Educated Grunt
2/28/2018 01:47:15 pm

So... animism?

I was going to say he believes in the Lares, but it's simpler than that. Everything has a spirit, and if it doesn't, you give it one, so... just plain old animism?

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Americanegro
2/28/2018 01:54:36 pm

Unless otherwise stated "popular culture" means "the popular culture of my country people or clonebatch." Otherwise, why aren't you living Gangnam style?

"At any rate, Buddhism was well-known in the West for at least a century" You moved the goal post here from "Tibetan Buddhism" to "Buddhism in general". Stavish's statement was correct. Waddell was probably the first Brit to write extensively or at all on Tibetan Buddhism, though Desideri was the first Jesuit; he wrote in Latin and it all got sent back to the Vatican.

Stavish's view of T.B. however seems to be on par with that of the plumber Lobsang Rampa.

Apparently talking about Mouni Sadhu: "He thought the Jews were black, and therefore of no relation whatsoever to white people and their magic." So just like the Black Hebrew Israelites and similar to the Nation of Islam. Remember the Mad Scientist Yakub. Whites have no monopoly on crazy racist ideas but Jason is right to highlight them.

It occurs to me that humanity can be divided in twain: Slenderman people and Salad Fingers people.

"Ponder it for a moment and it becomes darker and more disturbing the more you think about what Dubuis really said."

I don't see what's disturbing about a bunch of people getting together to think thoughts about a religion that explicitly aims to make everyone in the world a member, whether it be under a revival of the Caliphate or the sudden un-occultation of the Twelfth Imam. Remember that: "Getting together to think thoughts" is "disturbing". First they came for the occultists, then they came for our prayer group. Harrumph! From later in the review "collective action is not necessarily evil".

"both women denied that there was a séance involved, claiming that the event was imaginative role playing." Absent actual trickery that's what a seance and channeling are.

"In short, he’s managed to project into the mystical realm of supernatural magic a justification of his own power and privilege." I guess the reader is expected to interpolate "white" here. What power does Stavish have again?

Stavish talks about "…we can consider a thoughtform an egregore." "Thoughtform". That's a Theosophical term, no?

"Thus, when he concludes that we must all take it upon ourselves to “become masters of our own lives” and reject responsibility or obligation to “the life of someone else,” he is assuming that his readers agree that the individual takes precedence over the family, the community, or the nation." That is sooooo close to "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer". But the first part sounds like Ayn Rand or Thelema depending on your filter.

On the other hand he's absolutely right about cheerleading. I'm puzzled how there's even a question about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As-OiUZ_4j8

These are just things that jumped out of me like a nameless eldritch thing from the space between; overall as Arsenio used to say I give you some dap. Thorough review.

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David Bradbury
2/28/2018 04:47:22 pm

"You moved the goal post here from "Tibetan Buddhism" to "Buddhism in general". Stavish's statement was correct. Waddell was probably the first Brit to write extensively or at all on Tibetan Buddhism,"

You also moved the goal post, as the text under discussion referred to Tibetan Buddhism in "popular culture". In practice, there was enough research on what was then often called "Lamaism" by bodies like the Asiatic Society of Bengal for the basic details of the religion to find their way into family reference books and magazines before Waddell was even born.

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Americanegro
2/28/2018 11:27:58 pm

You misunderstand or misreprresent me, Triple D. Remember the drinks are to help you dazzle the drizzly dowagers, they are not for self-dazzling. Waddell was well known and published in non-academic press by at latest the turn of the twentieth century. Leaving aside your "family reference books" in what universe, Anglo or Indian has the Asiatic Society of Bengal ever been part of popular culture?

"Consider the opening to his first chapter: “Tibetan Buddhism began to appear in popular culture with its mention in the writings of the Russian occultist, spirit medium, and author Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society that she cofounded in the late nineteenth century.”"

I'm sticking with popular culture. It is you who is attempting to change the framework of the debate by asserting JABS as a pre-1854 influence on popular culture.

So, in popular magazines and "family reference books" whatever those are, before 1854, a date you chose. I leave it to you to provide citations. Until then your gratuitous assertion is according to the rules of debate just as gratuitously denied.

David Bradbury
3/1/2018 03:58:13 am

Most obvious one (1848 in the USA):
books.google.co.uk/books?id=PqNJAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA313

The first significant British publication on Buddhism in Tibet (George Bogle's account remaining unpublished for a century or so) seems to have been chapter VIII of "An Account of an Embassy to the Court of the Teshoo Lama, in Tibet" by Samuel Turner (1800).
https://archive.org/details/accountofembassy00turn

Americanegro
3/1/2018 11:09:17 am

Well done. Now to fulfill the rest of your bargain, evidence of it being part of popular culture. Remember you insisted on that. Go.

David Bradbury
3/1/2018 02:25:42 pm

I did clarify that I was referring to "family reference books and magazines". Remarkably, in the latter category I see that "The Lady's Magazine, or Entertaining Companion For the Fair Sex, Appropriated solely to their Use and Amusement" had an article on "Ceremonies attending the Inauguration of the Infant Lama in Tibet" as early as 1795 (taken from "Asiatic Researches"- the journal of the Asiatick Society in Bengal).

Americanegro
3/1/2018 05:17:37 pm

Good researching. Now prove that "The Lady's Magazine or Dazzling Drizzly Dowagers" was part of or a force in popular culture, to abide by your insistence of course. The key word of course is "Lady". Life Magazine ran an article on psilocybin mushrooms but that didn't inject them into popular culture.

It's ALMOST like you think I don't know about Tibetology.

Doc Rock
3/1/2018 05:29:42 pm

David,

Just to make sure that I understand you correctly you are referring to the colonial era precursor to the contemporary Asiatic Society. If so, the Asiatic Society of Bengal (which later became the Asiatic Society) was a colonial era version of an area studies organization. Despite the name referencing Bengal, it was founded to study all aspects of Asia. In the late 18th and early 19th century, present day India and adjacent areas were ground zero for British colonialism. So, people, cultures, and religions of that general area would have been the most popular topics for research and publication by the Society and this material consistently found its way into popular discourse in GB and beyond.

Excerpts from publications of the Society (in general) can be found in the American press by the 1830s. References to Tibetan Buddhism (or Lamaism) and discussions of it can be found in the American press of the same time frame, even if they did not necessarily originate in the efforts of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.

Under the circumstances it would have been unusual if discussion of Tibetan Buddhism had not penetrated popular culture of the early to mid-19th century on both sides of the pond. Assessing the degree of influence on pop culture of the time is subjective and depends on what particular narrative one is trying to sell.

David Bradbury
3/1/2018 05:44:41 pm

"It's ALMOST like you think I don't know about Tibetology."

I definitely think you think you know about Tibetology.

David Bradbury
3/1/2018 05:48:55 pm

"Just to make sure that I understand you correctly you are referring to the colonial era precursor to the contemporary Asiatic Society."

Yes I am: the Kolkata-based one, accept no substitutes.

Americanegro
3/1/2018 11:20:17 pm

"Yes I am: the Kolkata-based one, accept no substitutes."

On this we are in agreement; there has been no misunderstanding, ergo no need for the third input. Being airtight is not like in the movies.

Americanegro
3/1/2018 11:24:56 pm

""It's ALMOST like you think I don't know about Tibetology."

I definitely think you think you know about Tibetology."

When you get to something that's recognizably Tibetology I'll get back to you. So far you've quoted an article that was the equivalent of "We went to Ascot and there were animals." I read Chinese as well as Tibetan, if that helps you.

David Bradbury
3/2/2018 03:41:21 am

"an article that was the equivalent of "We went to Ascot and there were animals." "
In the context of Tibet and the West, what would be the point of such an article?

Doc Rock
3/2/2018 07:21:17 am

...ergo no need for the third input...

No need for you to make an ass of yourself, but you are managing to do it quite well in this little tete a tete dur, as you have on various other occasions.

My question was addressed to David since this topic overlaps with some of my current interests and he seems to be both rational and knowledgeable about what is being discussed. You don't.

Thank god for Spring Break and ten days away from the internet.



Americanegro
3/2/2018 12:43:22 pm

"an article that was the equivalent of "We went to Ascot and there were animals." "
In the context of Tibet and the West, what would be the point of such an article?
_______
Now you're playing the "pretend to be obtuse" card Triple D by asking a demonstrably stupid question. The article you pointed to was at best a travelogue. Going to Stonehenge doesn't make you a geologist. Going to Glastonbury Festival doesn't make you an ethnomusicologist. Trying to be a pompous ass, oh wait, that one DOES work.

David Bradbury
3/2/2018 03:43:03 pm

Not a stupid question at all, as your response indicated.
Meanwhile, if you want to make meaningful contributions to discussions like this, you need to learn a whole lot more about the transmission of knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism to the West, because your claims so far in this thread have mostly been false (as indeed, technically, was one of mine: George Bogle was quoted by other writers long before the formal publication of his work).

Americanegro
3/2/2018 05:28:29 pm

"Not a stupid question at all, as your response indicated."

When you pretend to be obtuse, it's a stupid question.

So you can't show it was in popular culture, which YOU insisted on. Keep dazzling the drizzly dowagers Triple D.

David Bradbury
3/2/2018 06:14:58 pm

As early as 1779 the Dalai Lama was being used for satirical purposes in the Public Advertiser (a London newspaper). But that's no longer the point. Your evident lack of understanding of the topic means you have not a shred of credibility in this discussion.

Americanegro
3/2/2018 06:37:21 pm

Prove it.

Americanegro
3/2/2018 06:52:02 pm

I'll try to dumb this down for you Triple D. Muhammad bin Sultan has "been mentioned in despatches", appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines, yet is not a figure in popular culture. The Houthi rebels, while interesting and important, are not figures in popular culture. The current Panchen Lama is not a figure in popular culture, regardless of his predecessor being "mentioned in despatches" in a 19th century travelogue. Robert Mugabe, not a part of popular culture. Current President of Iran? Not a figure in popular culture.

David Bradbury
3/3/2018 06:33:53 am

First Jesuit to study Tibetan Buddhism?

Stickler
3/4/2018 01:55:41 am

As if the Jesuits would let you know, you sad soused puppet.

David Bradbury
3/5/2018 04:38:56 am

Well, the Jesuits always were surprisingly keen on spreading knowledge ...

Americanegro
3/3/2018 12:22:14 pm

I'll take Names E.P. Grondine Calls Me for 400 Alex.

Since I already mentioned Desideri, the answer is probably "not Desideri". It may have been Ricci but my guess would be not. Since dazzling drizzly dowagers is not my aim in life I'm comfortable saying "I don't know".

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David Bradbury
3/3/2018 01:24:38 pm

Fair enough.

First reference to the Dalai Lama in Chartist propaganda?

Americanegro
3/3/2018 01:39:41 pm

First mention of Mel Profitt by Occupy Wallstreet?

David Bradbury
3/3/2018 07:44:39 pm

Occupy is post-1854, so excluded. Chartists are pre-1854, and I thought it was interesting that in 1840 they were making the comparison between the average Briton's mockery of the concept of the Dalai Lama as a head of government, and the average Briton's acceptance of a dubiously hereditary monarch as a head of their own government.

Americanegro
3/3/2018 10:50:36 pm

So what you're saying is you can't cite a source.

In your post of 2/28/2018 04:47:22 pm in your zeal to dower the dazzly drizzlers you argue both sides of the skin while admitting as you say "Waddell was probably the first Brit to write extensively or at all on Tibetan Buddhism".

Jesus Christ dude. Lose an argument once in a while. It'll do you a power of good. The other kids may even want to play with you.

David Bradbury
3/4/2018 04:25:05 am

Eh? I was quoting you about Waddell, then arguing that Tibetan Buddhism entered British popular culture (particularly satire as it turns out) before he was even born.

Can't cite a source for which particular claim? (If you mean the Chartist thing, I accept Argus' "Original Republican Aphorisms" in the Chartist Circular may not have been the very first such use by the Chartists- as noted above, I just found it interesting)

Americanegro
3/4/2018 11:28:29 am

While I didn't structure my earlier remark with this in mind,

Are the words

PROBABLY

and

EXTENSIVELY

foreign to you?

David Bradbury
3/4/2018 02:34:52 pm

The word I had difficulty with was "or".

Americanegro
3/4/2018 03:15:31 pm

So you LITERALLY don't understand the meaning of the word "or"!?!?!?

I'll give you a hint: it doesn't mean "and".

Jesus effing Christ you're an idiot. Stop the madness. Get yourself a gym bag, put it in your bathtub, crawl into the gym bag, affix a padlock to it from outside and wait for help to arrive in your apartment full of women's clothes and wigs. If you miss one or two details that's fine, the important thing is that you kill yourself.

David Bradbury
3/4/2018 05:10:26 pm

"Stop the madness"
Where's the fun in that?

Momus
3/1/2018 07:43:42 am

"The Tarot" of Mouni Sadhu was essentialy a plagiarised version of "The Course of Encyclopedia of Occultism" by Gregory Ottonovich von Mёbes, a Russian Martinist who founded his own school after he split from the Russian branch of the French Martinists of Papus, established in Russia early in the 20th century first by Papus himself and then, after his forced departure from Russia, by his emissary Czesław Czyński (acting as the regional head until his forced departure). As such, the work of Mёbes is indebted to the French (neo-)martinist tradition originated by Papus and his associates, (a number of whom were also members of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor). Ultimately the sources of their tarot lore are in the works of Éliphas Lévi (Alphonse Louis Constant) and Paul Christian (Jean-Baptiste Pitois) wedded to the Archeometer system of Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre. More on that tradition is to be found in "A Wicked Pack of Cards: The Origins of the Occult Tarot" by R. Decker, Th. Depaulis and M. Dummett.

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Machala
3/2/2018 07:20:44 pm

AMERICANEGRO,

".....Robert Mugabe, not a part of popular culture. Current President of Iran? Not a figure in popular culture."

I follow your argument but wonder, according to your lights, would Lhamo Dondrub, the current Dahlai Lama be considered a part of popular culture ? Would Elvis Presley or Donald Trump ? Nelson Mandela or Wyclef Jean ?

What is your criteria ? ( And I'm not trying to be a smart ass. I'm really curious. )

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Americanegro
3/3/2018 12:38:22 pm

The criteria are nebulous. Basically has the mythical average uninformed person, educated or uneducated, the mythical Joe Sixpack heard of them and can he make a reference to them or use them to make a reference in conversation.

He tasks me.

Many people know the origin of that line in cinema.

Fewer know the original origin although the source itself IS in popular culture.

But EVERYONE... knows... Captain... Kirk. Ya feel me, Shmoopy?

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J Fish
5/22/2018 01:34:56 pm

what a terrible review.

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PositiveInsomnia
7/18/2018 04:43:39 pm

Flipping through the book , I can see it is contradictory garbage.

He recommends using 'God' (surely, another egregore) to banish egregores. And spinning. lol


He writes a lot of questionable books that are rehashes of Golden Dawn and AMORC material and also seeks donations

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/a-step-by-step-guide-to-the-path-of-return#/

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Psyche link
7/29/2018 10:37:39 pm

Spot on, and it's even worse than that. Wasserman's forward is a bizarre alt-right screed, and it seems especially out of place given the gist of the book seems to be to break away from dogma that limits the self.

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David Steele
9/27/2018 01:22:51 pm

I’m surprised that Inner Traditions would publish this work. It will make me think twice before I buy anything from them again - the name used to be synonymous with good esoterica.

That’s now no longer the case.

It has to be the worst account I’ve read re: Tibetan Buddhism. While this author seems likes to project himself as an expert, that is clearly not the case. It is c. 1930 knowledge and rumor.

The same goes with the title, which AFAIK is a made up word from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and has no basis in reality for describing systems of collective consciousness. There is research on these topics but Stavish has made no attempt to explore them and instead relies on weak 1900-1980 occult writings and evidence, much of it of questionable veracity, it’s like a bad UFO segment on cable TV.

This could have been a good book and study, but clearly the author made no effort, other than relying on his book knowledge of subjects he really does not understand. Peppering a book with borrowed quotes does not accomplish this task. It ends up looking desperate.

I have to point out this habit of taking material from other authors seems to be the hallmark of this unconvincing and unknowledeable author and poseur.

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Sandra MacDonald
9/27/2018 09:58:04 pm

Oh Lordy, another Mark Stavish book.

Self-proclaimed gurus are always interesting, from afar, but I always worry about the poor suckers who get drawn into this sort of schlock without really knowing what they’re getting into.

First it was alchemical adepthood I remember him claiming - at least until his book began to poison people.

Then it was lame, theosophical and Golden Dawn era material, most serious practitioners had jetisoned decades before - the body of light, which turned out to be a gross mental body kinda thing, and certainly not some exalted state of liberation.

And now a raving alt-Reich diatribe from a recovering heroin addict to open your books? Are new agers now writing for the opioid crisis genre?

The lack of depth of the rest makes it an easy dismissal and a bad, desperate read. And toilet paper IS much softer.

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Douglas
6/28/2024 10:28:30 pm

I was reading this and now commenting, now many years after the initial fanfare, mainly due to going down an internet search rabbit hole. Or is it really a wormhole? I stopped reading the whole review when it got to slightly snide comments on Vallee and UFOlogy. And, I'll be blunt, half the things mentioned in this review are barely an area of interest or expertise of mine; and I only enter these wormholes since, it seemed, that something entered me by way of one. If that makes any sense. I'll explain below a bit, not at length, but it will definitely be an experiential take on matters (um, mine), as augmented by bits and pieces of videos and readings due to said experiences, as opposed to a scholarly retort. I nearly got a PhD in a non-related field; I know about research, conducted it, written vis-a-vis grassroots reading (wish I could italicise that) and all that jazz. However, changes in life do, in fact, bring about manifestations of the mind that have shown me experiences to matter and count for a lot, much more than throwing out a number of names and dates and factoids which amounts to a pissing contest of sorts. I just shuddered, as I wrote that last sentence, with some key moments of my academic portion of my checkered past.

Due to the time on the wall and the like, I'll be brief and try not to laden this part with much detail. A few years ago I became involved with someone romantically (and the rest of it) that changed into something very intangible and not good. I realized, via readings online and YouTube videos, that he was a covert narcissist. Knock that all you want, it's how I "discerned" (big word these days, and btw the narcissistic abuse community is generally an online one, and growing daily I bet, since things are on the rise)...sorry for that parenthetical, um, how I discerned what he was. And that was important. But, given the general downturn of my life in so many ways in time after entanglement with him -- pretty much a before-after situation -- I wanted to know what he was (again, which I could put that last word in italics). Plus to get his craptastic residue out of me. In short, was he a demon or demonically-driven? Are narcissists descendants of Fallen Angels, and/or the titular figures of the book you review here? Because, sorry to inform the DSM-V crowd, narcissism ain't just a personality disorder.

Thus, this led me to various theories, plus sessions with energy healers that were healing to a degree, but more enlightening. Don't knock energy healers as hucksters (some perhaps); or, rather, don't knock the only two sessions I had with two different healers since you, or anyone else, wasn't there but us two, respectively. And while I haven't delved into Vallee's ideas, I know that he collapses all sorts of phenomena (ghosts, demons, angels, hauntings and possessions, let alone UFO areas proper) into a "grand alien theory," or whatever it's termed. And you know what? It doesn't sound half-baked. Well, I'm leaving out what one healer did in fact see in the "trace" left in me from the narcissist and, let's say, it wasn't "demonic" in the traditional sense of Christian ideations. The extent to which my life seemed to dismantle, my health too with mystery afflictions ongoing, truly has made me realize that this huge reach, to affect all sorts of factors, that this reach of "theirs" is palpable and frightening actually. No time or space (keyword, hint) to get into what she saw but, via cinematic analogy, I'll put it this way. I headed into that session fully expecting her to see something along the lines of the "The Exorcist," in so many words, when it came to his essence. I've since realized that I was thinking in terms of not quite the correct genre and, that is, what was discovered was more akin to "The Invasion of The Body Snatchers." And, no, she didn't come upon his closet Communism; but what she did come upon, she hadn't been with an energy like that in doing what she does for 30 years. And that little nugget, revealed in September, in fact changed everything since.

So maybe it's incurred a "spiritual awakening" in me which, btw, should be derided or scoffed since, apparently, you haven't had one or begun the auspices of one. And it's no walk in the park. Instead, and perhaps you have already or since this review writing, I suggest taking a look at the books of John Mack. Or, for a more warning-laden counterpoint, those of David Jacobs. Both learned men who took grave chances on careers and reputations over notions that might seem like fanciful ideas and yet, to those going through a version of it, they seem more plausible by the minute. That Mack refers to the people he worked with as "experiencers" I believe speaks volumes over facts, figures, and minutiae found in ancient tomes and obscure histories. Even of the occult which, harkening back a bit, can also fall under Vallee's umbrella. Which ain't a bad place to be, I've found, when

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