Qi synonyms

Life energy beliefs around the world

i is the Chinese term for life energy, or life spirit, a vital force that flows through all living things. Similar beliefs exist all over the world, in many cultures. Here is an encyclopedia of such beliefs - and of terms mistakenly believed to be such.
     You find an edited and expanded version of it in my book Life Energy Encyclopedia.

Faculty X is an expression for the psychic power behind paranormal ability, introduced by the English writer Colin Wilson (1931-) in his book The Occult from 1971. He argued for one and the same power of some sort behind any kind of paranormal activity.

Fifth force is an imagined fifth force, in addition to the four of physics: gravity, electromagnetism, weak and strong nuclear force. Its existence is doubted by most experts, who instead try to find one uniting force that all the four known ones consist of.

Fire has always had a central place in human thought, both for its importance in everyday life and for the mystery of it. Fire is one of the four elements in Greek philosophy (fire, earth, water, air), and one of the five elements in Chinese tradition (metal, wood, water, fire, earth). It has rarely in the past been linked to ideas of life energy. That would be more in line with our modern views on heat, combustion, and energy. Still , there have been ideas about a fire from within, such as the Chinese symbol for dantian, the power center of humans, which combines the color red with a rice field, implying a glowing vital energy. Also, there are modern myths about spontaneous self-combustion, hinting beliefs in an inner fire. To ancient humans, though, the light of fire was probably of greater importance than the heat of it. See also phlogiston, heat, and light.

Flogiston see phlogiston.

Flow is a term for creativity or inspiration, introduced by the American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1935-) in the book Flow, the Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1990. Flow is a pleasant state of mind, during which innovation and other creative activity comes very easily. See also inspiration.

Fluoroplasmic energy is a concept used by Barry Hilton for energy coming from the fluoroplasmic ether, which has been compared to Greek and other theories about a life-giving ether. The theory is connected to that of orgone (see this word). Since the 1990's, Hilton has written books about applying orgone as a free energy (see this expression), by the transformation of water – a technique called Joe Cell, after its anonymous inventor Joe X. The word fluoroplasmic connects to fluorescent light, which also Wilhelm Reich experimented with in his studies on orgone. See also quintessence.

Force, the is a term used in the George Lucas Star Wars-films for a universal energy accessible to the initiated. It seems to be a loan from qi and similar concepts. Lucas used the ideas of Jungian mythologist Joseph Campbell (1904-1987), who was quite learned on all kinds of mythological ingredients.

Formative force is an expression within 20^th century research into unknown energy sources, for a primordial basic force, which is the prerequisite for, and source to, all forms of energy. There are several far-reaching theories about how formative this force is for energy, as well as matter and living creatures. In the 1910's the Austrian biologist Paul P. R. Kammerer (1880-1926) introduced the theory that important learning and experience made by animals are transmitted biologically to their offspring. He called it the Lamarckian inheritance, after Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829), who had comparable ideas. The similarity to qi is almost non-existent. See also implosion energy.

Free energy is a modern expression for energy in unlimited supply in nature, such as solar energy and wind power. To this category belongs also theories about replacing gasoline with water, running engines with a constant magnetic field, and so on. An old expression for this strife is perpetuum mobile, perpetual motion, which has haunted inventors since the Middle Ages. There are many suggestions for such machines, and for limitless energy sources, more or less fantastic. The principles of natural science dictate that truly free energy cannot be affected by entropy, the deterioration of energy into decreasingly usable form. Qi can be seen as a free energy of sorts, since it is supposed to be everlasting, but it can hardly be used to run machines. See also negative entropy.

Stefan Stenudd