The 'X Energy' Mana

Welcome to the Power of Mana podcast. This is the Finding Manuland version, episode one: The X Energy. I’m Decoding Trolls. Welcome to Finding Manuland. Since this is episode one, let’s begin with an introduction. I’m going to do something very conventional in terms of podcasts: I’m going to set out what I’m going to do, and then I’m going to do something slightly differently — I’m going to tell you about the journey I embarked upon which led to the discovery of mana. This podcast is about mana, which is energy — or the X energy, as many have called it. It’s what the ancient Chinese culture called qi. In ancient Japanese culture, it is called ki. In ancient Indian culture, it’s called prana — from around 3000 BCE, around the time the first Indo-European migrants from ancient Ukraine reached India. In Hebrew culture, we talk about ruach. These are all equivalent to mana. Chi, ki, prana, ruach — mana is the X factor, the X energy. Teleama. Libido — Freud talked about libido. Synchronicity. Nous. Vis medicatrix naturae, in Hippocrates. Aristotle spoke of the formative cause. Erasistratus spoke about pneuma. Christians talk about the Holy Spirit. In Germanic culture, we use the term Woden — our Wednesday is even named for this: Woden’s day. The Sufis speak of baraka. Polynesians, as I do, speak of mana. I do not speak of mana because the Polynesians speak of mana. However, what the Polynesians talk about using the moniker mana is the same phenomenon. Polynesians started using mana to describe this energy around 600 in the Common Era. This is significant, and we’ll come back to why in a bit. Avicenna spoke of anima mundi — so again, there’s an M-N- sound in there, as Carl Jung noted. All of these terms are for this same phenomenon that I call mana, or that others call the X energy or X factor. There are so many different names for this energy in human culture. It’s a fifth force in nature, which I have for the first time in human culture detected as being also implanted in our language and in almost every sentence we speak or think. This is the second element of what the Power of Mana podcast is about. We cannot understand mana or energy without understanding language. Finding Manuland is about a particular Indo-European vision of this energy, this mana, which we exchange as a function of human beings. The clue is in the word human — it has the same sound, M-N-. I’ve looked into the question of how and why this M-N- sound is so immanent in almost every sentence we speak in Indo-European languages and what this might mean. I’m going to share this journey with you. This is what Finding Manuland is about. I’ve been looking into why the M-N- sound is so immanent in our language for several years now. Some other people call mana, or this M-N- sound, the X energy. It has all these different names in different global cultures: prana, qi, Woden, ki, ether, ruach, nous, numa, mungo in Africa, zogo in Africa, atua in Polynesia, libido. In Power of Mana and in Finding Manuland, we’re going to focus on just one global culture. We’ll look out at the world and at humanity from the standpoint of that culture. We call it Indo-European culture because over half of humanity speak a language which is part of the Indo-European language family. This language family was first created in southeastern Ukraine. Finding Manuland is about inquiring into why this M-N- sound has colonised our minds, our words, and our meanings. It’s about my physical journey across the area of the world between Ireland and India, where traditionally we speak Indo-European languages. I call this area Manuland. This is also a metaphorical journey through time. I began with a research question: why is it that this M-N- sound recurs in the monikers of the mythological founders of certain peoples? Why is Menua one of the founders of the Armenian people? Why is Manu the first human in Indian culture? Why is Aryaman, or Sapienta Manu, or Angra Mainyu the first spirit or the first human in Iranian culture? Why is Manannán the most preeminent pre-Christian god in Irish culture, in Celtic culture? Why is Manawydan the mythological overlord or monarch in ancient Welsh culture? I started from that point, and it led me all the way back from 2020, when I began this journey in earnest, to around 4000 BCE — to southeastern Ukraine, an area many of us don’t know much about. I didn’t know anything about it before I spent seven years in Ukraine between 2015 and 2022 as a diplomat. To understand the power of mana and Finding Manuland and the immanence of this M-N- sound, it’s impossible to ignore the ultimate source of all Indo-European languages. M-N- is the characteristic sound and meaning in Indo-European languages. As far as I can see, I am the first person who understands this properly in its universal meaning — though I am standing on the shoulders of giants, having read thousands of texts since 2020 and travelled tens of thousands of kilometres, visiting many different sites of ancient and current Indo-European peoples and towns and villages with the M-N- sound in their moniker. I do not expect you in the first podcast to take this on board as an article of faith. So I’m going to ask you gently — in a way that I’ll ask you again and again throughout Finding Manuland — just to park this idea that M-N- is the characteristic sound and meaning in Indo-European languages, and then you can test the stories I’m going to recount to you over the coming months and years against this primary hypothesis — or conclusion, in my case, but it’s just a hypothesis for you. Finding Manuland is also about a cultural journey. Culture is what is hidden. The word in modern English occult captures the etymology and meaning of the cult element in culture. Note, en passant, the M-N- is even in the word element. I’m going to help you get your eye into seeing this M-N- sound, which is in almost every sentence we speak, read, or write in Indo-European languages. The Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family takes its name from Keltoi — the hidden one, a lord of death, akin to Woden. In Germanic culture, what we call mana is sometimes called Woden. Odin, who is the lord of death in ancient Germanic culture — for whom our Wednesday, Woden’s day, is named — is mana, and mana is in Woden. Woden is like Christ, or Yama in ancient Iranian culture, or Yama in ancient Indian culture, or Jupiter — Deus Pater — or Zeus Pater. In Roman culture, in ancient Latin, it’s Jupiter. In ancient Greek culture, you have Zeus Pater. In Indian culture, we have Dyaus Pita. All of these manifestations of a supreme god to whom we have a contract with emanate from Sky Father, who is a creation of the ancient Ukrainians, the Yamna. There’s that M-N- again — the Yamna, who created the first Indo-European language between around 4000 BCE and 2500 BCE. To understand the power of mana and the M-N- sound, we need to journey through language, through space — through Manuland — across time from 4000 BCE until the present, and into all the many layers of our culture today and over time. I’m a cultural archaeologist. I examine — there’s that M-N- sound again — I examine and unpack the layers of our culture over time. I’m speaking to you in English now, which is a Germanic language, part of the Germanic or Gothic branch of Indo-European languages, whose existence was discovered in the 1780s by a Welsh scholar of Persian, ancient Iranian, and Sanskrit, whose name was Sir William Jones. Jones, in the 1780s, was a judge in India. He was translating India’s ancient law code, the Laws of Manu, when he suddenly understood that no philosopher or philologer could look at the grammar, roots of verbs, and vocabulary in Sanskrit — which is an ancient Indian language — alongside Germanic, Celtic, Greek, Latin, and Persian, without concluding that the similarities in grammar, roots of verbs, and vocabulary are so intense that they could not have arisen by coincidence or borrowing. No philosopher could… Get full access to Power of Mana at www.powerofmana.net/subscribe