Egregores

The concept of egregores is extremely interesting and I've enjoyed learning about them recently. However, I disliked this book for a few reasons.

First of all, there were several parts that raised some big alarm bells for me due to sort of an alt-right feel, not really explicitly stated but more just the vibe. Especially the fact that Julius Evola was cited multiple times as a valid source without even a simple acknowledgement, much less a denunciation, of his background. Ya know, self proclaimed "superfascist" Julius Evola, who Steve Bannon cites as an inspiration. Ugh.

Beyond this, which was more than enough reason to put a bad taste in my mouth, the writing simply wasn't that compelling to me, and were I not listening to this audiobook during a long car ride at night which required my full attention, I would have probably switched to something else. There were a large number of fascinating sources from different periods of history that were extensively cited and quoted, but a lot of it just felt like listening to a wall of text word-for-word from some more interesting work, with the occasional lengthy tangent about how the author finds video games evil or some shit like that. Definitely want to check out those primary sources in the future, though.

Can't really say I recommend this book. There's plenty of high-quality (and non-sketch) resources and podcasts out there to learn about egregores from. Check those out instead.