Thinking about it, the Pasifika term "mana" has been ganked really badly by Western fantasy to mean "magical electric charge" and it... doesn't really mean that Again, because ancient peoples didn't draw this modern divide between "magic" and "non-magic" kinds of "power"https://twitter.com/arthur_affect/status/1302402100341559296 …
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A person having "mana" just means having "power" Being physically beautiful is a form of mana, being from an aristocratic family is mana, being physically wealthy is mana As well as the kind of mana that comes from being "gifted" in some harder-to-explain way
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Replying to @arthur_affect
Mana is also used in the Old Testament to describe heaven sent sustenance (when Jews were in Exodus) so maybe this is etymological convergence
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Replying to @arthur_affect
You’re probably right,I was imagining a writer struggling with a deadline who needed a word to describe something that doesn’t exist in English or reality and using one language’s word and mixing it with another language’s word to create a English new word.
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Replying to @neilyashinsky @arthur_affect
If you have specific knowledge or evidence I’m missing then my bad (full stop). I don’t know anything about Pasifika. I was just commenting on my understanding of the term mana from my understanding of its use and fantasy and my limited perspective of language.
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Replying to @neilyashinsky @arthur_affect
As a resource constraint mechanism Biblical mana works like fantasy gaming mana. You get a certain amount each day, you cannot store it for use tomorrow, and when it’s gone for the day it’s gone. That’s what I was trying to say.
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The fantasy game "mana" definitely comes from the Pacific Islander use of "mana" where it's a word for "power" or "sacredness", kind of like "qi" from Chinese (a particular sacred location is said to have "mana", as is a great leader)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @neilyashinsky
The Bible word is spelled "manna" and is a coincidental homonym
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