This image came to me a while ago in meditation so powerful colourful and full of vitality, I was told it was to be called Mana…..
For me I was told Mana was all encompassing it was everything the moon the stars the universe, the land every flower tree and on it goes…………. So I painted, this is what came.
Below are some bits and pieces of what others state is Mana.
Mana and the human person
Huutia te rito o te harakeke, kei hea te koomako e ko? Kii mai ki ahau: He aha te mea nui o te ao? Maaku e kii atu: He tangata he tangata!
‘If you pluck out the heart of the flax bush, how can the bell bird sing? You ask me: What is the greatest reality of the universe? I reply: The human person!’
These are strong words, placing the human person above every other being in the created universe and they are heard frequently as the opening words in speeches. Yet with their reference to the singing of the bell bird they also expresses our fragility, our dependence on the other parts of creation.
A Maori way of expressing this worth of the human person is to speak of a person’s mana or power. We have already seen that mana and tapu are closely linked. Where tapu is the potentiality for power, mana is the actual power, the power itself.
The mana which is the actualization, the realization, of the tapu of the person, is threefold, mana tangata, power from people, mana whenua, power from the land and mana atua, power from our link with the spiritual powers. Each person has this threefold mana. (http://homepages.ihug.co.nz)
Spirit Force, Life Force, The Force, Mana, Prana, Spiritual Energy
Many see this as the all creating and destroying eternal force in the universe from which all life – whether biological or spirit comes from or departs to. Some call it the Creator, some see it as above any Creator or God/desses. Some call it a Supreme Being, others call it the Universe. Some call it “Energy” while others call it “Magic”. Some give it a consciousness while others see it as a energy field. Every religion, cult, belief system, form of spirituality and even alternative medicinal practices embrace and address it. It is seen as a variety of phenomena that is observed or experienced by some observers in a particular faith, spirituality, or religion. It is seen as the “energy” that is the life force that flows within and between all things. It is Life. It is the “breath of life”. It is seen as the continuum that unites body with the mind and spirit. It is what makes a animal be “alive”, or a plant “grow”, or a lightning bolt scream across the sky. It is the force behind gravity, science, and magic. Some see it as “vitality” or “vitalism”, “subtle bodies”, “qi”, “prana”, “mana”, or “kundalini”. Some say you can see this energy force as “vibrations”, “rays of light”, “fields”, or “auras”. It is the web of life that connects all life together. PRANA is the Sanskrit term for “vital life”. It comes from the roots “pra” meaning “to fill” and Latin “plenus” meaning “full”. It is seen as one of the five organs of vitality or sensation, as “breath”, “speech”, “sight”, “hearing”, and “thought”. It is the notion of the vital life sustaining force of all life and vital energy. Mana as a Oceanic term for the impersonal force or quality that lives within animals and inanimate objects. It is seen as the “stuff of which magic is formed” as well as the substance from which souls are made.(http://www.technogypsie.com/faerie/?p=29)
Mana ruled the underworld, which the Finns called Manala. The Romans knew her as a very ancient goddess Mana or Mania, governing the underground land of the long dead; the ancestral spirits called manes, her children. They went to the pit under the lapis manalis in the Forum, emerging to receive their offerings on the annual feast day of Maniac. It was on this occasion that the goddess Mania appeared wearing a fright mask, like the terrifying Crone-face Medusa or the Destroying Kali.
Death and madness were not Mania’s only aspects, however, in classical times, her “moon-madness” or “lunacy” was viewed as a revelation of the divine, which was to be received with gratitude. Socrates said, “The greatest of our blessings come to us through mania…Madness coming from (the deity) is superior to sanity of human origin.” In other words, Mana-Mania was the muse. The Gnostics believes that Mana is “the divine spirit in man”; and the Great Mana, or Mana of Glory, is “the highest godhead.” (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090204144013AAEOK1D)
Mania may be compared to Hindu ‘Maya,’ the Virgin Goddess whose name was “power,” and Arabic ‘Monat,’ the Virgin Goddess whose name was “fate”and who represented the Triple Moon. In archaic Europe, Mana was the Moon-mother who gave birth to the race of man–that is of woman, which is what man originally meant.
Mana or Mania became a common name for the Great Goddess as Creatress and Queen of Heaven (moon) because it was intimately connected with the mysterious powers of women, like the moon itself. Scandinavians called the Goddess’s sky-realm Manavegr, “the Moon’s Way.” Celts called it E-Mania, or Hy Many, the land ruled by the Triple Goddess. Sometimes it was Emain Macha, the moon-land of Mother Macha. Cormac’s Glossary. ( Alan G. Hefner)
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