ON a recent weeknight, Flynn Michael walked through his Jedi academy, a dimly lighted room not in some galaxy far, far away, but rather in a rehearsal space overlooking a death star of traffic on Eighth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan.

“What time is it?” Mr. Michael yelled to the paired-off warriors wielding illuminated swords.

“Now!” responded these aspiring Jedi knights with nary a break in their battles.

“See?” Mr. Michael said. “They’re in the moment.”

The New York Jedi club meets here weekly. To an outsider, it might seem like stage-fighting with battery-powered lightsabers, but to Mr. Michael, it is aspiring righteous warriors communing with the Force, that energy that gives the Jedi his power and binds the galaxy. So what if the place attracts, as Mr. Michael said, “a bunch of ‘Star Wars’ dorks.”

“They come in geeks and go out Jedi warriors,” said Mr. Michael, a founder of the group and a self-ordained Jedi grandmaster.