Life Energy Beliefs
V
Life Force Ideas Around the World
Here are the V entries of life energy beliefs around the world and from antiquity to the present. An edited and expanded version of this Life Energy A to Z is published in my book
Life Energy Encyclopedia.
V
Vibration is a term often used about life energy, and how it is perceived.
This implies some kind of waves, like in radiation, suggesting an
emanation that reaches the surroundings, but not necessarily so that any
of the five senses notice it.
Vis medicatrix naturae (Latin for 'nature's healing force') is used for the
principle of a healing energy that permeates everything, according to the
Greek physician Hippocrates (460-377 BC), who is in western tradition
regarded as the father of medicine. His healing methods were mostly very
practical and concrete, emphasizing diet and cleanliness. The vis
medicatrix naturae has several evident parallels to life energy such as qi.
Vita see life.
Vitalism (from the Latin vita, life) is a theory in older European biology
about a goal oriented force in all living things, controlling their
evolvement. Aristotle (384-322 BC) called this force entelechy (see this
word). The vitalism theory, which was established around the year 1600,
made a distinction between organic and inorganic matter, where the
former was said to contain life force. The idea was picked up in the early
20th century, under the name neo-vitalism, by the French philosopher
Henri-Louis Bergson (1859-1941, photo above) and the German biologist Hans Adolf
Eduard Driesch (1867-1941, left photo). They also claimed that a certain life force, not
just purely biological mechanisms, governs the evolvement of living
creatures. Bergson called this governing life force élan vital (see this word),
whereas Driesch used the Aristotelean term entelechy.
Vital magnetism is an expression for the life force coined in 1910 by the
physician Charles Wentworth Littlefield (1859-?). He experimented with
mental concentration by repeating certain Bible verses, and by
visualization, in order to influence the crystallization of salts, which were
by this process vitalized. He also claimed that they formed into different
animal shapes. Littlefield stated that the mental image precedes each
creation, and therefore decides its properties. The salt crystals were
processed through several evaporations in water, which he claimed to be
the universal process – in the seas and on land – generating the subtle
magnetism that is the life force of animals and plants. This magnetism
saturates the body salts, so that mental influence on them becomes
possible.
Vivaxis (formed from the Latin vivus, 'alive', and axis) is a term
established in the 1970s by the Canadian Francis Maude Nixon (1910-1984). It is a vertical line through humans, which to the life energy is sort of an umbilical cord to Earth. The society she formed around this idea,
Vivaxis Energies Research International Society, was dissolved in 2001.
Vördr/vörd se hugr.
Vril is a term introduced by the English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton
(1803-1873) in his science-fiction novel Vril, the Power of the Coming Race,
from 1871. Bulwer-Lytton was also the writer of the infamous introductory
sentence to another of his novels: “It was a dark and stormy night,”
parodied in the comic Peanuts. A Vril society was formed in Berlin, 1918,
by the German general Karl Ernst Haushofer (1869-1946), who was a
student of the Armenian mystic George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (c.1866-1949).
The society was also called The Luminous Lodge. It was inspired by Bulwer-Lytton's book, and occult ideas from different cultures. They built a
saucer-shaped vril machine for time travel. The maiden trip was in 1934.
In Bulwer-Lytton's book, vril was a mystical energy, a radiation or a flow
from the Black sun at the core of Earth, consisting of Prima materia (see this
word). This was a secret knowledge kept within a superior race, vril-ya,
which hid below Earth but aimed to emerge and take over the rule of the
world. This people was linked to the arian race, which explains the interest
in the Vril society shown by Nazi leaders in the 1920s and 1930s.
Vril time travel vehicle. See Vril.
Vyana see prana.
Life Energy Beliefs from A to Z
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Qi, prana, spirit, ruach, pneuma, and many other life forces around the world explained and compared. Click the image to see the book at Amazon (paid link).
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Erroneous Tao Te Ching Citations Examined. 90 of the most spread false Lao Tzu quotes, why they are false and where they are really from.
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About me
I'm a Swedish author and historian of ideas, researching the thought patterns in creation myths. I've also written books about Taoism, the Tarot, and life force concepts around the world.
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Life Energy Encyclopedia
Qi — Increase your life energy
Cosmos of the Ancients
Archetypes of Mythology
Tao Te Ching
Fake Lao Tzu Quotes
Stefan Stenudd