From: adrian@odin.no
Date: Wed 30 Aug 1995 - 18:59:11 EEST
Pam Carlson and Jeff Richard have made comments asking why there should be
consistency in the myths of different Gloranthan cultural/religious groups.
I would like to offer the following exchange
God Learner : "Excuse me Mr Orlanth worshipper, why does the sun go down each
evening?"
Orlanthi : "Because Orlanth killed him after an arguement, and then with some
friends rescued him from hell. But because Yelm was once dead he now spends
half his time in hell and half his time in the sky".
GL : "Ah, so you believe Orlanth killed Yelm too."
O : "Uh, yeah thats what I said."
GL: "Would it suprise you to know that other cultures in the
world also believe this?"
O : "No, It's true!"
In my opinion the religious myths of Glorantha are legends. They are based on
So when these stories are related the nature of the central characters is always
something that happened. The events occurred outside time and on another plane,
making them hard to comprehend and harder still to organise into a rigid
chronology, but they happened. The variations in the legends/myth are due to
the 1600 + years of recorded time, during which various groups have had time to
change the names of the involved parties, change the sequence of events,
change some of the aspects of the gods involved and otherwise adapt the legend
so that it becomes more relevant to their current environment.
fixed, the story involves the sun and the wind, if the most isolated Orlanthi
group in the world had never, ever encountered a person from Dara Happa they
would still feature the sun as the evil emperor.
Adrian White
------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Fri 13 Jun 2003 - 16:27:02 EEST