Mana

The concept of mana comes from the language of the Māori and plays a central role in the traditional cultural and religious beliefs of the peoples of Polynesia. As an essential element of the derived from the shamanistic religious traditions of Hawaii Huna teachings as well as other neoschamanistisch embossed thought it has found its way into Western-influenced ideas of esotericism and Neoschamanismus.

Basic meaning

In its elemental meaning of the term Mana simply means power, this is spiritual or secular nature. The Polynesian culture sees no fundamental difference here: A person who is characterized by great abilities, strength and self-confidence, has a significant mana and thus - according to the Polynesian belief - inevitably great spiritual energy.

The concept of this spiritual energy can be to a certain extent similar to ideas from other cultures such as Qi ( Ch'i, Ki Japanese ), prana, orgone, psi- power and much more. Mana describes a universal life force that flows in every phenomenon of secular reality and these come to life. Mana within the meaning of Polynesian thinking approach must be bound to a concrete form: Thus, every stone, every tree and every person has their own personal mana, a spiritual- energetic force potential, which equally draws on worldly and spiritual components.

Mana and Tapu - both names from the Pacific cultural space - are two benchmarks that are similar, not to separate as action and reaction from one another: Mana is located verselbständigende, a well-defined behavior triggering stigma ( of a living thing, an object, a state ), Tapu is the corresponding ( distancing ) Vorkehrungsmaßnahme.

Cultural classification

In Polynesian view of the world there was no difference between " farther " and " secular " forces. Both were equally real and involved in the shaping of the daily lived reality for the Polynesians (as well as for many American Indians and other indigenous cultures). So you had to take account of this fact in everyday behavior.

Since Mana in Polynesian point of view as a spiritual force had a very pragmatic content was generally assumed that a high social position (and thus power ) should grant its wearer also has a high spiritual status. In this way, received at the Polynesian Society hereditary title of nobility or family forwarded functions as experts in various fields a high spiritual status. This resulted in quite a separate issue, if necessary, which could often be solved only by fighting also closely related counterparties with the death of one of the parties. The practice of many Polynesian societies, adoption by talented members of a minor whose branch of the family introduce closer to the original lineage, will find their explanation: to be closer to the power meant for so honored just to have even more mana.

The Polynesian society shows an example of the difficulty of transferring such a religious- ideological concept on the order of a society. However, this concept of Polynesian culture over thousands of years has allowed to survive in one of the most dangerous and the most difficult to be held settlement areas of our planet.

Decline

This inseparability of spiritual and secular thought in the Polynesian culture, however, also had disastrous consequences, as the culture of the Polynesians who met the Europeans. Starting from the idea that represented that worldly power inevitably also spiritual power, subjugated many nations in Polynesia without significant cultural resistance to provide the superior weapons of the Europeans: As zBdie Māori New Zealand subject to the British troops, they went as naturally assume that conquerors have had the better or more mana. As a result, it fell to the British easily enforce their alleged cultural and religious superiority in the conquered territories. Much of the content of the Polynesian cultural tradition went so lost irrevocably.

View

In recent decades, the Polynesian culture experienced a decided Renaissance. Even the concept of mana in Polynesian pragmatic sense finds new recognition.

Religious Studies using

As a scientific term mana is primarily associated with the theory of pre-animism by Robert Ranulph Marett. This represented, inter alia, in his book The Threshold of Religion ( 1909) theory, early religions are not characterized by metaphysical soul concepts but relate to non- personalized everyday except powers. Furthermore 'll differentiated in such communities are not intellectually between secular nature influencing and magical or religious practices.

Use in popular culture

Entrance into popular culture invented the concept first by using in Larry Niven's 1969 short story, Not Long Before the End, in which Mana described as a natural resource, with their help it is possible wizards to cast spells.

In this sense the term was taken up in numerous works and popularized. Thus, the term mana is today as a term for a form of spiritual energy of the standard vocabulary particularly in computer games, but also generally in fantasy media of any kind