Killing the Undead

The undead are a favorite subject of movies, TV shows and literature. They're a special kind of threat to the heroes. Since they're already dead, it's not possible to kill them by ordinary means. They can only be killed with a ritual or a special weapon that can only be obtained after a long quest.

I believe mythical creatures, like werewolves, vampires, or the zoo of undead and spirit critters in a TV series like Supernatural are fictional representations of real world phenomenon: egregore. Egregore are entities that arise from otherwise unrelated constituent elements in the way that our consciousness seems to arise from the neurons of our brains, or in the as-yet-to-be understood relationship between our gut bacteria and our minds.

Since egregore are third things, and are ghost like, mere information and the flow of information, and not at all apparent in the matter from which they arise, the means of interacting with them are indirect and haphazard, and perhaps the effectiveness of these interactions can only be known ex post facto and through the interpretation of signs. Hence, we get rituals and hoodoo like Ouija boards and we get the fictional representations of vampires repelled by crosses and garlic, and killed with complex rituals and weapons.

Meta-Animals, Thoughtforms, Egregore

When I was a college student at Hiram studying Physics, I was struck how improbable it is that numbers and algorithms are able to describe and predict natural phenomenon. I began probing the concept that there's something else out there. I was attracted to "The Ideas" of Plato, which served as a formal introduction to the concept of thought forms. Roughly at the same time, the concepts of emergent properties worked their way into the popular imagination. I started to see how the two concepts were complementary. The idea of emergent properties could serve as a sort of skeleton for thoughtforms.

Scientism is the dominant view in Western thinking today, that is, that Physics explains all, that the interaction of particles and forces causes everything. From the scientist's point of view, consciousness must arise from matter and really not be any more mysterious or any less mechanical than the operation of a computer. My instinct, though, is this interpretation is simplistic and wrong and that thought forms, or the more musical sounding term egregore offers an alternate and more compelling explanation for the relationship of consciousness and the material universe.

The term egregore has its roots in The Book of Enoch, and found new usage in the occult revival of the 19th century. My interpretation of the concept is that thought forms, the egregore actually exist, that is, they have an independent existence from human beings but that they arise from our consciousness. We have a symbiotic, or perhaps simultaneous co-existence.

This concept can be broadened, or maybe given a more technical spin if we think about a new idea: the meta-animal. That is, an organism that arises from a group of organisms. One very familiar example is the state, which rises from the people of a nation. A biological example is a slime mold, which is a colony of cells that behave as an individual creature. (See slime mold problem solving as an example of emergent behavior.)

The concept of the meta-animal, though, differs from the orthodox notion of  "the state" in that this meta-animal has an independent consciousness and an independent will from its members. It is a thing that emerges from the sum of the parts.

I very recently realized that when you look at an animal, or at consciousness from an information theory point of view, it becomes possible to imagine ways to detect these creatures and discern this flow of information within a meta-animal. How one would do this is not apparent, or obvious, so this is undoubtedly a long term project.

Regardless, the concept of the egregore or a meta-animal is intimately tied to mythology; the egregore, the thoughtforms are the gods.