From: David Cake (davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au)
Date: Wed 13 Nov 1996 - 04:56:55 EET
>WF is not the Orlanthi PoV. It is the God Learner PoV and reflects
>their experiences on the Heroplane.
YES!
I think the God Learners believed that the time before the dawn was
timeless. But this was because they had experienced it through heroquesting
- - they had experienced strange things with time when exploring the Godtime
myths.
The Godlearners ignored the records of other cultures who said that
there was time then because
a) they simply felt that no one had truly explored the heroplane and tried
to reconcile its time scale in the same way as they had - they were the
first to truly discover its timelessness.
and
b) the records of other cultures where, of course, based on their inferior
cultural prejudices and tradition, rather than God Learner rational
investigation.
and
c) to the Godlearners, what was experienced through heroquesting is far
more important than history anyway - they want to understand the way the
world works, not the way it was.
I think the Godlearners are wrong - but only in that they assume
that their heroquesting experiences of the heroplane reflected the mundane
life of the people alive then.
>You would get similar answers from a Praxian shaman. He would say that his
>people have always lived on the plains and always herded Eiritha's beasts.
Taking the Praxian example rather than the Orlanthi one, though
what I want say applies also to the Orlanthi, No. The Praxian shaman
believes that once Prax was fertile and green, and once animals and men
where not in the relationship they are now. He believes there was a time
before the Survival Covenant, a time when it was not necessary because
survival was easy. He believes Tada was alive once, even though he died in
the Godtime. And before Tada died, he did things. And before that, was
born. Telling him that Tada has always been dead would make no sense to
him.
Even in the extremely unlikely event that I agree that before the
Dawn Time was truly different, I certainly do not think anyone but the most
Godlearnerised believes it.
Just because a mythic event occurred in the Godtime according to
Godlearner cosmology does NOT mean that the people who believe that myth
are not able to conceive of a time before and after that event. A
Godlearner might theorise that their concept of time in the Godtime is
naive, but I don't think they'd pay him much attention.
>I'm
>certainly not proposing that the nature of a deity is understandable or
>immutable but I don't think it's entirely dependent on its worshippers
>either.
Agreed. But I think the God Learners thought the nature of a deity
was entirely dependent on its worshippers (or at least the heroquests and
myths of its worshippers).
The Lunars would probably say the God Learners understood the Gods
we know are only masks, but then failed to understand that the masks have
wearers.
Cheers
David
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