Do any Western mystical/esoteric traditions have the idea of a battle aura or internal energy...

Do any Western mystical/esoteric traditions have the idea of a battle aura or internal energy, or is purely an Eastern concept?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneuma
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Élan_vital
fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Väki_(mytologia)
fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luonto_(mytologia)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutelary_deity
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

Well, maybe Cuchulainn's Warp Spasm or whatever the hell people call it now.

Odic Force. Soul. Psionics Humors. Vitalism.

Orgone energy.

>Odic Force
>Orgone energy.
I wouldn't call shit made up by new age wannabe occultists in the last two centuries a "tradition".

Achilles's nigh-invulnerability from being dipped in the River Styx?

Runes/Geas

>needing internal energy

Not really. They do "supernatural" stuff or bisect plate-armored men just like muh chinese animes, no mana required.

Vis Vitae?

The concept of aché, often translated as soul, comes form western Africa.

The closest I can think of is Anaximander's Apeiron

Everything was new age bullshit at one point, to be honest.

That's a good point until you think about it.

Not really.

You have ridiculous feats like Heracles tying the Hydra into a knot, Samson killing a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass and Beowulf fighting a protracted battle underwater but none of those heroes "power up" before their feats.

Western legend has many of its heroes as the subject of direct, divine intervention. Anything involving auras or radiating light is almost always a sign of piety or favor rather than projecting your own power.

There's plenty of moments that are just described as flying into a rage and doing crazy shit, but don't think it's really ever made into some sort of mystic shit aside from maybe

Diomedes had a battle aura that was literally fire thanks to Athena's blessing, according to Homer in The Iliad.

Cu Chulainn's berserker rage was supposedly "visible" as warp spasms.

Pneuma is simlar to Ki in that it is an energy drawn from breathing. The original greek psyche may also apply. I suggest you read the link:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneuma

The issue is that the associated idea, that this could be enhanced as to make you stronger in some way, wasn't developed in the west. It could have, for pneuma was a concept in ancient greek medicine.

>mfw Greeks were the ones who invented Ripple

>The first warp-spasm seized Cúchulainn, and made him into a monstrous thing, hideous and shapeless, unheard of. His shanks and his joints, every knuckle and angle and organ from head to foot, shook like a tree in the flood or a reed in the stream. His body made a furious twist inside his skin, so that his feet and shins switched to the rear and his heels and calves switched to the front... On his head the temple-sinews stretched to the nape of his neck, each mighty, immense, measureless knob as big as the head of a month-old child... he sucked one eye so deep into his head that a wild crane couldn't probe it onto his cheek out of the depths of his skull; the other eye fell out along his cheek. His mouth weirdly distorted: his cheek peeled back from his jaws until the gullet appeared, his lungs and his liver flapped in his mouth and throat, his lower jaw struck the upper a lion-killing blow, and fiery flakes large as a ram's fleece reached his mouth from his throat... The hair of his head twisted like the tangle of a red thornbush stuck in a gap; if a royal apple tree with all its kingly fruit were shaken above him, scarce an apple would reach the ground but each would be spiked on a bristle of his hair as it stood up on his scalp with rage.
>He attacks the army and kills hundreds, building walls of corpses.

>Your barbarian rages will never be as metal Cu's riastrad

>not knowing that being devout and righteous gifts you power

Deus vult!

Honestly, and somewhat tragically, most western stuff falls under the umbrella of 'willpower'. None of it glows, but it acomplishes basically the same shit in legends.

I don't even with Christianity
>Hardcore prayers that is basically meditation with intense focus
>Halos
>Gods will
>Blessings
>Nice somewhat flat structure of power
>Pope is generally not a faggot
Its pretty hardcore, but hasn't been like that for like 200 years. Which is a shame, because even basic Christfaggotry could have had cool media.
Instead its basically martial arts dramas, sci fi, and Jap imports based on Journey to the West.

So when are you going to start thinking?

that ability in Grim Dawn finally makes sense. thanks user

That's coming from god, not one self.

You have to better yourself to get Gods blessing user
This is Christianity 101
There is a reason all those Heathens converted, beyond Loving Embrace and Jesus

That's still not coming from yourself as a direct product of your abilities, but an entity deeming you worthy and granting it's power to you.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Élan_vital
>Élan Vital is a "life force" which directs evolution into a certain direction
>In other words, it's something that's in all of us and all around us
>The French military attempted to master this force to make themselves invincible by constantly attacking
>You lose this force by being autistic
If that's not some 40k shit, I don't know what is.

So what do western wizards use as MP, then?

They know the names of shit, and string together long sentences and fancy words. Western magic is really more of an Invocational style.

Sometimes they also use magic letters and symbols instead

Polynesian folklore had the concept of Mana, nobles would fight bare handed and shave their heads to accumulate more

>The French army incorporated the doctrine of élan vital into its thinking during the leadup to the First World War by arguing that the spirit of individual soldiers was more important for victory than weapons.[7]

well, we know how THAT worked out

Western magic is like technology. No MP required.

No bulli, the French adapted rapidly after the War of the Frontiers and spearheaded tank warfare. Unlike the Italians, who kept charging the Austrians uphill and then blamed morale for charging uphill against an entrenched enemy in the mountains during winter not working out.

When WW1 fantasy where French soldiers fly around shooting ki blasts?

The whole point of Christianity is the dependence on Christ because man is incapable of clearing the mortal sin. It's a dependent as you can get.

Speaking of Cuchulainn, I've seen several mentions of him having a "hero light", but I can't find anything that actually explains the term.

You don't understand.

The power was inside you all along, but it didn't come out till you dedicated yourself to god and the good way of life.

God helps those who help themselves after all.

In Tolkien's Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, he describes the "helm of horror" falling around Sigurd like darkness. I dunno if that doesn't count due to being more like a magic item, though.

Hey, public school kid, the French were victorious in WWI.

No, user, all power comes from God. All other "power" comes from the devil, and you'll find it vanishes into smoke when confronted by true belief, because the only power the devil has is deceit, and all he can give you is lies.

Actually it's just all power comes from God. even the devil's power is God given.

>Actually it's just all power comes from God.

That's what I just said:

>all power comes from God.

Satan has no real power, only deceit. He can't make anything because he's cut himself off from God, he can only corrupt things that God made by tricking people into believing things that are not true.
If you trust in God and deny Satan's power, it turns out he doesn't have any power at all, he just wanted you to think he did.

OP the problem is that your perception of fantasy has been warped by the Sword and Sorcerey boom of the 30's where all fantasy settings needed to be super low and sorcrerers were just guys in horned helmets who make wierd expressions and earthquakes occur.

Try reading some Arthurian Legend sometime and you'll see no shit a Demigod and a hyper-beautiful Bishonen do battle against an evil faye sorcererss. Western mythology is all kinds of bullshit magic powers.

I'm not gonna lie. A lot of old Sword and Sorcerey stories were good and definately had appeal to them but I sorta hate how they KILLED fantasy, or at least the West's perception of what it should "be".

Halos.
Even before Christianity halos signified you as powerful

Sorry, that was just a quick clarification I wanted to make because I thought it was relevant knowledge for the thread. most christian faiths hold that all demons even lucifer himself have god given powers that are quite real so long as god wills them to be. That idea actually forms the basis for a lot of western ideas about magic. Take king Solomon's usage of demons as a tool for the advancement of god's will as an example.

Oooooooh. So that's where Slaine got it from.
I was surprised to see TWO Slaine RPGs- d20 and RQI.

Well yeah, Slaine is a retelling of Cu Chulainn.

To be honest the only mythology I ever read was Greek, Norse and Egyptian. My mythological education may have been lacking.

It is.
But if you don't better yourself, you don't get blessings.
Being a Christan Saint is basically having trained to enter tutorship of a Ancient Chinese Martial Arts master: Everything you are helps you enter, but you still need to Git Gud and find Jesus in your Heart to truly enter.
So you can Git Gud without Christ, but you won't have Halo. Just impressive breath(Greek), Pulse(France), shadow/presence(many Germanic sagas), literally turning red(Celts)
Nevermind that Bible have people gitting gud, doing good, and then get Ywha's blessing, and then do a lot better.

In Germanic Sagas, you end up with people Gitting Gud, and cleaving 10 men with some effort. For Comics, i only think i have seen Luther Strode even attempting to replicate that.
There is a lot of Gitting Gud, Bishounen, Superhuman feats in Sagas

And go fuck yourself.
Diety blessings predate El, Ywha or the Trinity.

That was the ancient Irish way of saying "he was lit."

Moxy, chutzpah, a certain je ne sais quoi.

>a certain je ne sais quoi

>And go fuck yourself.
>Diety blessings predate El, Ywha or the Trinity.

Maybe you should heed your own advice. That's two different people you're responding to here, and neither of us said otherwise. We were specifically discussing how this sort of thing works in a Christian context -- so your correction doesn't even apply..

Finnish mythology basically had stands.

In short, it was thought that each person had a guardian spirit sort of thing that could for example, warn them of impending danger, shield them from evil spirits and in case of shamans etc, would allow the shaman to communicate with the underworld and it's spirits.

>In short, it was thought that each person had a guardian spirit
I love that idea. What else could they do?
If you know of anywhere I could look for more information to steal it for a setting, please let me know.

Unfortunately I don't know if there is any info about this in English.
fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Väki_(mytologia)

fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luonto_(mytologia)

You may try to translate stuff from there.

Berserkers man, they had all the energy and power of a bear when in battle.

>Pope is generally not a faggot
Get a load of this Papist.

Your hat isn't cool, Martin Luther, you're not gonna win this argument until you upgrade your headgear.

The keyword here is "generally".
What happens when Pope is a faggot, is that he weakes Vaticans power, by letting people like Martin rail on him for being a complete faggot, on top of not unfaggoting his predecessors policies.

Also know as mojo.

You might be thinking of the second world war. Though the western front of world war one largely took place in France, the country wasn't formally occupied and was a victor in the war.

Here comes the Eternal Kra*t

Were swords from WW2 period better than those that were made by Masamune?

Vitalism.

The idea was tied to Indo-European religions tho as the ones being able to utilize it were thought of as blessed by the gods or children of the gods.

Same as in Hinduism where the chinks got their qi bullshit from.

Spirit. Different from soul, which is the inmortal mind, spirit is, well, a mystical form of will, like humour is a mystical form of biochemistry.

What does that mean?

I'm going to guess not; when Masamune made a sword he made it for one dude, WW2 Japan likely had to mass produce swords.

Any idea where to find more info about this stuff in Finish beyond wikipedia, seems rather interesting stuff.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutelary_deity

Literally means, I don't know what.

The image sorta misses the point.
It might say what the bend is suppose to behave, but it doesn't really specify metallurgy beyond that.
and Masamune had a small army of apprentices/helpers, and got paid enough to do a lot of work on each sword.
Kobuse on the other hand is mass produced, so any imperfections can pop up. And metal quality will be lower, but is still in high end range.

Like, the entire point is that Maru makes brittle blades. Because the shock has to absorb into the brittlest part of the steel.
And something like Kobuse is only really possible, due increased metallurgy, meaning Hagane isn't 300% brittle. Otherwise they would have to resort to something like Wariha Tetsu, to have a proper absorbing spine, at cost of cutting power.