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Mastermind groups, in their most traditional form, should be designed along the guidelines laid out in the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.⁷ We propose that these mastermind groups are leveraging a form of entity that emerges from complex webs of consciousness of each of the participants within the group, and that entity has come to be called an egregore in the technical language of the magician.

An egregore is, in a sense, a hive mind generated out of a group and a body capable of transmitting memes across networks. The term egregore can be used in referencing a guiding intelligence within corporations, institutions, and religions that exhibits elements of an individual entity.⁸ Concepts like genus loci, or spirit of a place, and the zeitgeist, or spirit of a time period, can also be referenced as an egregore, but for our purposes we are more interested in examining those egregores which arise from mastermind groups and which go on to influence social networks.

Cybernetics deals with systems that embody goals, and we apply lessons from cybernetics to the study of networks which transmit memes. This includes internal psychic processes, multi- or trans-media narratives, religious, governmental, corporate, and academic institutions, and both local and non-local social settings.

Over the years, most of the ideas that were once confined to magical theory and practice have been isolated and reformulated in different fields of study. Magicians are left guarding only a few nuggets of practical application that remain unique to magic. For the most part, all that remains solely under the banner of Magick⁹ is: interaction with essences generated from patterns, the manipulation of belief to alter subjective experiences, and non-local action of thought and will. Even these few ideations are being carted away into other disciplines. So why not just study those other disciplines?