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- a collection of essays on Neodruidic Studies
- a journal of Post-Reconstructionist Neopaganism

Monday, July 26, 2010

Misuse of the term “Energy”


- from a workshop I'm working on called

"Adjusting our Imagery:
    Why persist in using factually incorrect 
     imagery in our spiritual work?"

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Formally described, energy can be detected, measured and quantified physically by using appropriate instrumentation. Even Einstein’s E=mc2, the ultimate descriptor of the net sum of energy available from any quantity of mass meets this criteria. Yet “Love” cannot. Nor can any amount of "magical" influence, continually referred-to in our circles as “energy”, and therefore...

I contend that it is inappropriate, 
and in my opinion, actually 
injurious to our ends,
 to refer to magical influence
as "energy"...

Suggestions:

1.) Usually the substitution of the term "influence", or magical influence", is vastly preferable and carries us much closer to the actual dynamic of the matter in our discussions.

2.) "Energy", by definition, “plays by the rules” and to describe or model magical influence upon the nature of energy significantly places implications of qualities upon magical influence which may not be appropriate, since “magical influence”, by definition, does not “play by the rules” !

Although it remains an important part of our world and one that many of us are striving to understand better,  Magic may not be anything like a "force" at all.

I really do feel that this is one more way we are "selling magic short" by treating it as if it was limited to the rules of ordinary reality. 

I don't mean to imply that magic is not part of our reality, our world, but it seems quite clear to me that we get less close to understanding its operations by using imagery which forces it into a box of the wrong shape, color and volume.


- E.

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