That pesky little P.O.G. (or orgonite and how it works)
Very early into the story I introduce Melody to an item known as a 'pog' or p.o.g. or positive orgone generator. This device is based on a very real device that I have encountered in my own life - in fact, it is one of the things that spurred me to write this story and the books that will follow.
Orgonite is based on a discovery by Wilhelm Reich, called Orgone Energy, that he was able to produce and measure during his research in the early 1900s. This pioneer into occult research was persecuted by the FDA and subsequently imprisoned, his writings banned and burned, and died under incarceration -- which naturally, makes me even more curious about him and his discoveries than I might have been otherwise.
The concept and design of an orgone accumulator -- a device that collects orgone energy -- is completey his own. However, decades later, after tinkering with the idea of orgone accumulation, Don & Carol Croft came up with the idea for an energy transmuter, something we now call orgonite.
You see, the catch with an accumulator is that it will collect and store both positive and negative energies, which as you can deduce, could be either good or bad, depending on your outlook. In most cases, this would be bad. Reich's intended use for his accumulators was for the purpose of healing the human body, and as you can imagine, an accumulation of negative energy does the exact opposite of heal -- hence it's name: Deadly Orgone Energy, or DOR.
Don & Carol Croft came up with the idea of combining an accumulator (resin & metal matrix material) with an embedded quartz crystal point, thereby causing a transmutation to occur -- the piezo-electric quality of the quartz being the factor that causes the transmutation to occur. This is what we today refer to as orgonite.
Here is a really great aricle written by the lovely Spirit Science people that explains the theory of how orgonite functions: http://thespiritscience.net/2014/03/15/what-is-orgonite/
For the purpose of my story -- a portal fantasy -- it was clear from the beginning that I needed to use a method of energy transfer & storage for my characters to utilize in various ways. Orgonite was a natural choice for this for several reasons: 1) it's a real thing that exists, that readers can research and learn more about, 2) finding orgonite opened up a new world of 'magical possibility' to me and because of this it was something I wanted to share with people, 3) at least half of the people who are introduced to orgonite can actually feel the 'buzzing' of the piezeo-electric quartz as it's constricted by the matrix material -- thus validating the idea that a little cup-cake sized puck could actually, in the aetheric, pack a heckuva supernatural punch. :-)
If you would like to experiment with making orgonite, or at least holding a piece in your hand, you can find out more about it at the following links -- I encourage everyone who misses that sense of wonder from when they were small to give it a try:
To try some for free: http://www.humangiftingproject.com/
To learn to make your own and the importance of gifting: http://www.warriormatrix.com/