AlchoPwn
Public Service is my Motto.
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2017
- Messages
- 2,527
Etymologically, the term "energy" has a strange pedigree. When Aristotle used the term (energeia), he used it to convey the idea of being, or the way we now use the term reality. It was the Romans who turned it into meaning "force"(energia), but by way of describing forceful rhetoric, not the force that drives a wheel. The term drifts around in church Latin then moves to French still in the Latin meaning. We owe the term's scientific use, I suspect, to the Royal Society, and probably Sir Isaac Newton's Principia (tho I may well be wrong). As to the adoption of the term by ritual magicians, it occurs as the word gains popularity in science, and is in frequent use in spiritualism and ritualism of the 19th Century.Thank you! Indeed '"energy" is an over-used word by in the psychic field of research by those who don't realise that throwing the word around like they know what it means does not lend credibility to what they are trying to say.
"Energy" is closely followed by "vibration" and "frequency" - both real terms with real meaning which just reveal scientific illiteracy by most users in this field. The trouble is, English doesn't have a suitable substitute that I can think of. "Power" or "force" are equally unsuitable. Maybe we need to look much further afield and look for words used by other cultures, and not translate them back into English.
Agreed. Borrowing terms from science is a bad idea for mystics. It makes them look like word poachers and reveals their ignorance. While the scientific terms often make useful metaphors, a metaphor normally breaks down. I have always preferred the term "signature" to "vibration" as it suggests unique agency, as well as the notion of a disappearing trail left in one's wake. As for "power" and "force", they had multiple meanings before science ever got hold of them, and while science uses those terms admirably precisely, the words pre-exist science and are still in common use.