Orgone Energy: Some People Still Believe In It

Entropy is the tendency towards disorder within our universe. According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the entropy of a closed system never decreases. This means that, eventually, the universe will be completely disordered. Think nothing but individual protons and photons stretching out for eternity with no solid mass anywhere in all of creation.

Kind of depressing, I guess.

Orgone energy was proposed in the 1930s by Wilhelm Reich as a counter to the force of entropy. This type of energy was said to be a form of "life energy" that springs from human libido. Yes, you read that correctly. Anyway, it doesn't exist.

Orgone energy was claimed to exhibit similar properties to magnetic fields except for replacing ferrous materials with organic materials. Reich believed that orgone energy flowed across the Earth and could be disturbed by natural phenomena. He believed it was attracted to organic material and transmitted by metallic materials. Also, organic material in an orgone energy field would emit a blue glow that could only be seen under a microscope.

Also, the only one that could see it was Wilhelm Reich.

No one ever successfully reproduced any of his experiments. It is believed that he may have originally seen a blue glow when observing a radium-contaminated soil sample and incorrectly concluded that this was life-force energy rather than the moderately dangerous alpha radiation that was actually being emitted.

Freud's psychoanalytic theory heavily influenced Reich, and it showed in his work. He believed that subtle influences in human actions could be traced back to their life energy. Reich believed that mental neuroses were because of imbalances in life energy. Orgone energy was often used to explain situations where scientific theory was currently lacking.

Naturally, the next leap of logic would be collecting life energy to heal people. Reich developed "orgone collectors" that he used in his experiments. Eventually, he would be shut down by the FDA for attempting to use this quackery in medicine.

Despite being shut down by the FDA and shunned by the medical community, the belief in Orgone could not be stopped. It has continued in popular culture and has been adopted in many alternative medical communities, such as Reiki healing and Vitalism. Above, you can see a picture of some orgone healing pendant. Despite being debunked before anyone reading this article was born, we still see things like this being bought and sold in stores. That particular orgone healing crystal is supposed to ward away EMF radiation, purify the atmosphere, and convert negative energy into positive energy. Don't let the poorly inlaid wire fool you; this thing is definitely, totally not a scam. They even "tested it with a pendulum" to ensure it was emitting orgone energy.

Go figure. Some people will buy anything.