Summary
An egregore is a group mind: something that arises from the shared thoughts and feelings of a group and seems to act with a life of its own. The word comes from Western esotericism, from the Greek for ‘wakeful’. In occult writing it can mean an independent entity sustained by a group’s devotion; more loosely, a 1987 article by Gaetan Delaforge called it “a kind of group mind which is created when people consciously come together for a common purpose”.
Recent commentary on the ‘metacrisis’, associated with Daniel Schmachtenberger, borrows the term for self-organising cultural tribes that act in a coordinated way without being institutions or following a leader.
Rationale
Named in a Part 2 footnote as the third term of ‘hyper-agent, institution, egregore’, one of the three-level models behind its nested circles. A borrowed label for emergent group culture; we don’t build on it.