The power-concept is the earliest form of a concept of God among primitives, and is an image which has undergone countless variations in the course of history:
In the Old Testament the magic power glows in the burning bush and in the countenance of Moses
CW7 ¶ 108In the Gospels it descends with the Holy Ghost in the form of fiery tongues from heaven
CW7 ¶ 108In Heraclitus it appears as world energy, as “ever-living fire”
CW7 ¶ 108Among the Persians it is the fiery glow of haoma, divine grace
CW7 ¶ 108Among the Stoics it is the original heat, the power of fate
CW7 ¶ 108In medieval legend it appears as the aura or halo, and it flares up like a flame from the roof of the hut in which the saint lies in ecstasy
CW7 ¶ 108In their visions the saints behold the sun of this power, the plenitude of its light. According to the old view, the soul itself is this power; in the idea of the soul's immortality there is implicit its conservation, and in the Buddhist and primitive notion of metempsychosistransmigration of soulsis implicit its unlimited changeability together with its constant preservation
CW7 ¶ 108