From: Martin Laurie (102541.3423@CompuServe.COM)
Date: Tue 12 Nov 1996 - 20:09:45 EET
Peter M says:
>> It's like saying
>>that Tolat knows of the City of Alkoth where he is worshipped but
>>hides this fact from the Amazons of Trowjang.
Nick E. replies:
> Maybe they've just never asked him about it. It's not as if he's going to
>volunteer heretical information like that.
Tolat isn't worshipped in Alkoth of course, its Shargash and Alkor. They are
similar gods in many ways but NOT the same thing at all..
IMO the planet Tolat/Shargash is a symbol of war with obvious parallels to our
own Mars which has been asscosiated with aspects of conflict in many seperate
cultures.
I think that a warrior culture sees the planet and says "Wow, look at that, its
red, the colour of blood and bigger than anything else - cool - that has to be
_our_ gods planet!". Within a solidified culture like Dara Happa this is
eventually accepted as fact but in another culture the same planet is
asscociated with _their_ war god eg in Trowjang its Tolat who bares many similar
traits to Shargash but is not the same thing as Shargash.
Nick, you are assuming that Gods are entities that have a conscious thought
process and though I used to think this also, I have to say, I think its a
flawed perspective. The more that comes out on Glorantha, the more its obvious
that priests and culture define a god, not the other way round.
Example:
A God Leanrer could say that Shargash, Zorak Zoran and Urox are all the same
deity due to their similarities:
(1). All three deities use primal violence as their method of overcoming the
power of chaos which works by tearing apart social structure very effectively -
these gods have worshippers who are so batty as to be immune to this - mostly.
(2). All three deities have myths about smashing a chaos deitiy into bits and
tearing him up: Shargash - Kazkurtum, Zorak Zoran - Krjalk, Urox - Wakboth.
(3). All three deities are primitively linked to fertility aspects as a
representation of the Death/Life cycle: Shargash - Biselensib, ZZ - Xiola Umbar,
Urox - Eiritha.
(4). All three dieities have a power that is the antithesis of their society yet
is subsumed within it: Shargash has Storm powers in a solar culture, ZZ has
fire powers in a Darkness culture and Urox does the ultimate bad thing in
Orlanthi society - ie a berserk is beyond any law other than that of physical
force.
So a GL could and probably did link these deities and maybe even gained abilites
in crossing among the three but their worshippers would laugh at you if you
tries to make that link as much as a Shargashi would smash your head in if you
told him that Shargash was also some womans god in a smelly jungle!
>>The appearance of an divine intellect which one can talk to is an
>>artifact of the worshippers IMO.
I agree with Peter here. If the Gods had divine intellect then they would be
much more proactive for their own goals. The whole compromise Myth is about
explaining to the Orlanthi people just exactly _why_ Orlanth doesn't come along
and blow the Orlanthi's foes up with great big Thunderbolts.
The same logic is used to explain why God in the RW Christian faiths doesn't
wander about saving people. In that case he's "giving" us "free will" so cannot
interfere but in Orlanths case the people already have free will and so the
deitiy they worship was bound to non-interference to _save_ them! Thus Orlanthi
take _pride_ in their gods lack of aid to them! He gives them power to do it
themselves!
Looking through Gloranthan history its pretty clear that all religions have
evolved a lot and all cultural deities follow the evolution of their cultures.
The Orlanth of 1620 is not the Orlanth of the "Dawn".
Martin Laurie
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