it was as much his own life force as it is the "medicine" in his amulet, or the mana emanating from his chief... the first demonstrable conception of an all-pervading spiritual force.
This passage establishes the amulet as the primary material locus of mana in archaic religious consciousness, making it equivalent to an externalized projection of personal life force — the earliest form of the God-image.
, The Shadow of a Figure of Light, 2024thesis