the magic opportunity of a "canceled" 4th of July

It's the 4th of July, Independence Day here in the U.S.A., and officials have canceled most of the traditional fireworks celebrations due to pandemic concerns. 

The egregore of the U.S.A. will not be fed in the same way this year, and this gives an interesting magical opening. 

"Egregore" is a fun 19th century occult name for astral entities generated by group focus and belief over time. 

The egregore consists of the energy of individual group members coagulated into an astral persona that's held together via symbol, emotion, and repeated thought.  

An egregore can be anything from the "school spirit" of a college mascot to the astral presence of a whole religion or nation. The brilliant Hermeticist Mark Stavish wrote a whole book about it. 

The Statue of Liberty next to an illustration of Hecate, the Queen of Witches, Mistress of the Beyond, friend of Hermes. Lady Liberty and Hecate look a lot a like, don't they? How about let's just go full Hecate with it? Image by e.o.massey

The notion of an egregore is somewhat similar to Rupert Sheldrake's notion of a morphic field, a transtemporal, nonlocal field of energy and information that influences those who come into contact with it via ritual. 

Egregores, built up over centuries and millennia, can be very powerful - but to maintain their power, they need ongoing attention and energy fed into them.

One of the ways the egregore of the U.S.A. gets fed is through ritual fireworks celebrations in every city, town, and borough on the 4th of July each year, filled with billowing Stars'n'Stripes and patriotic music and "ooooh"'s and "aahhhhhs." 

And, as we mentioned, that energetic feeding of the egregore just ain't happenin' this year. 

Of course, people will still be setting off sparkly stuff in their backyards, but there's definitely this vibe in the air like - welp, it's over.  

Yes, the institutional machinery of the U.S. marches on, yet I can't help but feel that this weakening of the egregore caused by this canceled 4th of July opens a door of opportunity. 

What opportunity? 

To imagine a U.S.A. where we personally and collectively work on the Hermetic, alchemical magic of the integration of opposites instead of fetishizing entrenched, useless dualities like "democrat" and "republican." 
As many commentators have pointed out, the United States is more polarized and divided than any time since the Civil War, and it's a rather miserable state of affairs.

So why not collectively embrace a Hermetic philosophy that's all about using the wise reconciliation of polarities to access greater beauty and bounty?
I don't think this possibility is too far-fetched - after all, as Dennis William Hauck argues persuasively in The Emerald Tablet...

... everything good about the United States (like ideals of "freedom and justice for all," and a reverence for individual liberty) came out of magical Hermeticism (via the Freemasonry of the founders)...

... and much of what sucks about the United States (a frantic, bizarre prizing of "productivity" and "profit" above all else, a murderous disrespect towards indigenous cultures and other cultures in general, a legacy of slavery and a gob-smacking lack of reparations for slavery... etcetera, etcetera)...

... came out of dogmatic religion, via the puritanical Protestantism of the founders. 

So I say, let's take the relative quiet of this canceled 4th of July as an opportunity to vividly imagine a new U.S.A., one where the leaders and the people embrace the deep gnosis of magic & start living up to their Hermetic ideals...

... and ditch the stinky legacy of the Puritans. 

To help with your ponderings, here's one of my favorite talks from Terrence McKenna, on Magic and the Hermetic Tradition, to light up your imagination.