Toward Ecosophy

This afternoon I was reading regular commenter Robert Mathiesen's highly useful essay on Anglo-American occultist Emma Hardinge Britten, in preparation for a future essay over on the other blog.  Britten got some of her occult background from a gentleman she anonymizes under the label "Chevalier Louis de B---," and edited two books based on his ideas and writings. Robert identifies the mysterious Chevalier as Ernst Christian Ludwig von Bunsen (also known as Ernest de Bunsen), who also wrote several books on related subjects under his own name. 

Like a great many 19th century occultists -- Eliphas Lévi was another -- von Bunsen believed that magic, witchcraft, spiritualism, and prophecy were all among the effects of a force not known to science -- a force which surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.  Just about every writer on that subject had his or her own name for this force, and since I've read a lot of 19th century occultism I was used to terms such as animal magnetism, vril, od, orgone, ga-lama, and various other names. The term for the force that von Bunsen put at the head of his list, though, came as something of a surprise to me: 

Maga. 

Fans of the current US president will doubtless be amused and delighted by this, but I doubt they'll be surprised.