Dear Shanks: Many aborigines make fires by friction of wood on wood. Any "life force" involved in that?
I found a URl about "fire saw" and "bow drill":
http://www.primitiveways.com/pt-questions_fire.html

My older brother in Boy Scouts, was quite proficient with
the bow drill. He had a bow made from a curved sapling, strung with rawhide. The string was wrapped about a rod of yucca roughly octagonal cross section (to give bowstring good grip), the bottom end drilling into a red cedar board, with a notch to let hot charcoal resulting from friction, drop into tinder below. The top of the drill was held in a piece of soapstone the size of a pack of cards, with a socket ground in it. He could make a fire in less than a minute.

The method must be very old. Of course, the pressure on the upper end of the drill had to be considerable, and the bow had to be moved back and forth rapidly.