Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's midnight, so we can proceed with a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism and I'll do my best to answer it. Any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. (Any question received after then will not get an answer, and will likely just be deleted.) If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 143,916th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.0 of The Magic Monday FAQ here.

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With that said, have at it!

***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***

***Ahem. People have continued to try to post questions, despite the post being closed. I have deleted these. Follow-up comments to existing questions are fine, but other than that, please save it until the next Magic Monday.***

Comments

Re: Some questions:

[ecosophia]

1) I can only go by my own past life memories, but those alternate male and female pretty regularly.

2) This is one of the places where I think Steiner, and the traditions from which he drew, were dealing in half-truths. Animals have group souls, true -- but they also have individual souls. The group soul of an animal is a collective entity shared by all members of the species, and is experienced by the individual animal as the voice of instinct. The individual soul interacts and is conditioned by the group soul, and as each individual soul evolves, it moves from one group soul to another.

If I recall correctly, Steiner also insisted that animals have no memory, which is provably false.

Re: Some questions:

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not the original poster.

Jung said "genetic inheritance," but would the humans' collective unconscious be their group soul?

Re: Some questions:

[ecosophia]

No, we don't have a group soul. That's why we flounder about so clumsily compared to animals, but it's also why we are more capable of individual creativity than animals are.

Re: Some questions:

[(Anonymous)]

Am I right in thinking that in lieu of a group soul, groups of humans form egregores that interact with and condition the individual in a similar way? That certainly would explain what is often called the "herd mentality", that one may choose not to participate in if he is aware of what's going on.

Your explanation of the animal group soul meshes quite well with the attitude I picked up informally from my Native American relatives. We say that when you communicate with one animal, you communicate to some degree with all members of its species; and when a dog or cat dies, you leave it in a respectful place in the woods or other secluded natural place, say goodbye to King or Jerrycat as an individual, and say a prayer of return to the spiritual Dog or Cat from which each individual animal descends (a kind of group soul for the species). No pet sematary for us! ;) I've thought this way my whole life, but if anyone asked me, "Do animals have souls?", I would be nonplussed for a clear answer, so thank you for showing a good way to express it.

--Taupe Orthogonal Raccoon

Re: Some questions:

[ecosophia]

That's correct. Egregors function as a kind of surrogate group soul, and that's why they can be so disastrous as well as so helpful, because it's essential to our destiny that we should learn to stand by ourselves spiritually as well as physically rather than relying on group consciousness.

Re: Some questions:

[(Anonymous)]

I always wondered about the souls of social insects. Do the females have them, and, if so, does each ant have a soul, is there a hive soul like there’s a hive mind, or both? And what about the males? Drone bees seem to want to live when they’re kicked out of the hive after the breeding season, they hang around and try to get back in—what kind of souls, if any, would they have?

I would love to perceive the world as a social insect does, for a time, although I suspect that when I got back to being myself I would, in effect, not remember because it would have been so different. It would be interesting to try!

—Lady Cutekitten

Re: Some questions:

[ecosophia]

It would indeed be interesting. I've wondered along the same lines whether the cells in my body have souls of their own.