Since my first encounter with a lightsaber I was fascinated by the idea of this weapon. I must have been about 6 years old when I saw a lightsaber for the first time on a movie poster of the original Star Wars movie. It happened on my daily walk to elementary school. And guess what — I came late that day.

It seems there are a lot of people out there on the internet who share this fascination. Search for “lightsaber” and you fall down a rabbit hole that has no bottom. There are expensive collectible replicas and artfully crafted custom sabers. People write software to add lightsaber effects to their home videos, then film duel choreographies in their backyards. There are scientific papers analyzing the physics of a lightsaber blade, and there are people building dangerous laser devices trying to make one real. The BBC reported on injuries from lightsaber mock duels. At the time of writing, Google returned 4.3 million hits on the keyword “lightsaber.” The fascination is not niche. It is everywhere.

So where does this persistent buzz come from?

Part of the answer is hidden in the origins of Star Wars itself. George Lucas did not just borrow from samurai films and Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey. He read Carlos Castaneda — the anthropologist (or con artist, depending on who you ask) who wrote about his encounters with Don Juan Matus, a Yaqui Indian shaman in the Sonoran desert. In Castaneda’s Tales of Power, Don Juan speaks of a “life force” that flows through all living things. Lucas took that idea and made it the spiritual core of his universe. The Force. Obi-Wan Kenobi evolved from a samurai archetype into something closer to Don Juan — a man with mysterious powers who mentors the young hero. Yoda’s “Luminous beings are we” echoes Don Juan’s own words. Even the word “ally” — “My ally is the Force” — comes straight from Castaneda’s vocabulary.

Whether Don Juan was real or invented does not matter. The ideas were real enough to electrify millions.

And that is the point. The attractiveness of the lightsaber comes from the fact that it is a combination of ancient values and modern technology. A return to times when humankind was surrounded by mystery and somehow “connected to the force.” We are living in a scientific-technical world of increasing complexity and we are paying a high price for it. Society operates under the false conclusion that because modern science can explain a lot of things, in reverse, things that can’t be explained by science are either non-existent or worthless. Everything outside the scientific paradigm is devalued into insignificance. Little space is left for “real magic” in our lives and it gives a lot of us the dumb feeling of something missing.

The lightsaber is future technology based on the elegance and simplicity of ancient times, wielded by people who are connected to something greater than themselves. That is why a 6-year-old stands frozen in front of a movie poster. That is why grown adults build laser devices in their garages and write scientific papers about plasma blades. The longing is real. The weapon is just the symbol.

As Obi-Wan Kenobi puts it:

This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or as random as a blaster. An elegant weapon for a more civilized time.

May the Force be with you …

Comments from the original post

XuTeHan — December 28, 2007:

As at the web page http://jnaudin.free.fr/vpexp/index.htm you will find out that a toroidal coil is able to be used to push ions/electricity along a pole, well my idea is to put electrodes across the face of the toroidal coil and pump very high voltage across the gap/centre/face of the coil with the result that the toroidal coil will push this electric arc out and away from the face. This could be used to create a LightSaber!

Ryduh — April 14, 2009:

I believe lightsabers though for this elegant, futuristic, weapon for a more “civilized” time yeah if we had these the world would probly come to an end but shit, making these weapons is definitely possible.

Argamonius — November 10, 2010:

I agree with the arc design […] Imagine a hydrogen-oxygen torch with a 3-4’ flame […] now add to that a circular ring of gas vents at the base of the torch, expelling highly charged (positive) ion gas under extreme velocity […] This design would theoretically provide several effects: It would react to any other positive or diamagnetic charge as though it were solid; It would have a burning temp of around 10-15k deg; It would ‘bounce’ off of another similarly charged saber; It would be naturally blueish.

Originally published on titusz.de in 2006.