[Glorantha] Chaotics and Great Selves

"Malk Williams" <malk_at_malkavius.com>:

>> Is that because a Great Self is a dodgy Lunar concept not recognised by
>> anyone else?
>
>I thought it was a dodgy Simon Hibbsian term, coined to get around the fact
>that Soul, Spirit and Essence are all culture-specific in Glorantha, and
>therefore problematic to use in discussion. No?

I'm flattered, but it's a term I've come across in reading about Buddhism. I didn't introduce it to the Digest. I think Peter Metcalfe may hold that distinction and I think he knows a heck of a lot more about it than I do. I'm playing catch-up on mysticism in Glorantha as I basicaly disregarded it for a long time ntill I realised I had to get to grips with it to get anywhere understanding Lunar religion.

It, or something like it, is necessery for understanding mysticism because what the various cultures call the soul, or parts of the soul, or souls, are material things that are mutable, temporary and separable and therefore cannot be eternal. If beings have an eternal part, it isn't them. Transcendence is beyond the material, created world and so if it's possible to commune with or join with it, to do so there must be part of us that is not 'part of this world' in the way that breath manifestly is, for example.

Simon Hibbs Received on Mon 08 May 2006 - 13:14:59 EEST