Money: The Egregore
What is money? Ask a hundred people, and you’ll likely get a hundred different answers. Currency, a medium of exchange, a store of value — the list goes on. But what if we’ve been trying to define money all wrong? What if money isn’t something to be defined, but rather an emergent collective consciousness, an Egregore that we’ve been feeding.
Egregore (also spelled egregor; from French égrégore, from Ancient Greek ἐγρήγορος, egrēgoros ‘wakeful’) is an esoteric concept representing a non-physical entity that arises from the collective thoughts of a distinct group of people.
An Egregore is a collective psychic entity, born from the shared beliefs, emotions, and intentions of a group of people. It’s a cultural spell that shapes our perceptions, actions, and interactions. Egregores are not inherently good or bad; they are shaped by the collective will of those who feed them.
The Egregore of Money: The Egregore of money is a powerful one. It’s a spell that has told us what to value, how to interact, and even who to be. It’s a enchantment that turned natural resources into commodities, human relationships into transactions, and life itself into a race for accumulation. This Egregore is the child of colonialism, power-mongering, and greed. It’s an entity that thrives on inequality, that feeds on scarcity, that grows stronger with every act of selfishness.
The Forgotten Egregores: But this isn’t the only Egregore we can feed. Before the colonizers set foot on new lands, indigenous populations had their own Egregores, ones that were rooted in mutual aid, community, and a deep respect for the natural world. These Egregore were the essense of grassroots economics where people pooled together commitments toward service into economic commons of well-being. These were Egregores that saw value in relationships, not just transactions; that measured wealth by the well-being of the community, not just the individual; that understood that we are all interconnected, that we are all part of something much larger than ourselves.
The Tools for Change: We have the tools to bring these peace-loving Egregores back. We have the wisdom of the past, the technologies of the present, and the collective will for a better future. We can use modern tools like decentralized networks and AI to facilitate mutual aid on a global scale, to coordinate resources in a way that nourishes not just the individual, but the community and the planet.
The Path Forward: So, what if we stopped feeding the Egregore of money? What if we let that old spell fade away, and started nourishing a new/old collective consciousness of grassroots economics? It won’t be easy, and it won’t happen overnight - but Egregores are fed by belief, and belief can change. Each of us has the power to shift the collective consciousness, to choose a different path, a path that values all types of assets — social, human, spiritual, physical, natural, political, economic.
Let’s walk that path together, letting the old Egregore fade as a new & old wisdom takes its place. Let’s stop feeding the spell that binds us, and start nourishing the ties that set us free. Because money, is not the end; it’s just an Egregore - and we have the power to choose which Egregores we bring to life. Choose wisely my friends.
