From: Stephen Martin (ilium@juno.com)
Date: Sat 16 Aug 1997 - 22:32:49 EEST
In answer to Alex' question about the Grand Cycle. This is all spelled
out in The Book of Drastic Resolutions, volume Prax, but I will
repeat/summarize it here.
Of the seven current planets, Lightfore, the Twinstars, and
Mastakos/Uleria have a Cycle of 1 year -- on the same day each year, they
are in the same place at the same hour.
Shargash/Tolat and Lokarnos/Wagon have Cycles of 2 years.
Entekos/Moskalf has a period of 31 years.
Artia has a period of 8 years. Note that she is invisible during Theyalan
Sacred Time, but she is still moving across the sky normally.
When the Boat Planet was in the sky, it also had a Cycle of 2 years.
The lowest common denominator of all these is 8 x 31 = 248.
Now, the Southpath has a complicated pattern which actually increases
BTW, I was unclear in my last post -- I propose that Shargash have a High
As for Tolat, if a pregnancy lasts a full Gloranthan year it would make
this, though Greg and I have not worked out the exact pattern. I
currently favor some multiple of 3 years, though something weirder, like
17 or 29, is certainly possible. The point is to make the path
predictable if you study the stars for long enough. As only thre Buseri
of Yuthuppa have (and possible some of the Kralorelans), no one else in
Glorantha has figured it out yet.
Holy Day only once every two years.
sense for the sexual event to take place only once every two years, at
least as far as an individual woman is concerned. Since outsiders
presumably know of this event, it would make sense for half the women to
_not_ participate each year. They would spend that night taking care of
children and old people, and guarding the other women involved in The
Rapture.
Alternately, is it possible that Tolat is actually recognized by them to
be a dual entity, a Man one year and a Woman the next? Tolat's being a
woman half the time would give a believable connection for them to
associate their menstruation with the planet (though just Tolat alone is
association enough, I think), and would give the women a break from being
pregnant nearly 100% of the time. Some of them at least.
As for other markers of the Grand Cycle, the Southpath is only one
possible source of a variable. A Pole Star wiggle of some kind would be
acceptable to me, or something to do with the tilting of the Dome. For
example, some people might believe that the tilting of the Dome is slowly
changing, and has been for millenia. They might believe the Great Winter
was caused simply be the fact that the Winter tilt was greater then (they
would then need a myth to explain why the Sun was gone, and why that was
unrelated to the Great Winter). Such a people might well believe that a
Great Summer would eventually follow, a time when the Summer tilt was
greater than the northern tilt is now. They might think that the Golden
Age was a time when the northern and southern tilts were exactly equal,
and hope for such a time to come again in the future.
Such a people should ideally be Genertelan. In fact, given that I think
the Kralorelans recognize the last Emperor before the Dawn as the current
Sun God, this seems like a belief some of the Kralorelans might hold. But
I could be wrong, as I don't really know a whole lot about them.
Still responding to Alex
>Another possibility is that such cycles _used_ to occur, and are still
>preserved by custom, though no longer Celestially True. For example, if
>the God Time Moon (TM) had a period of which which the (then) length of
>the year wasn't a multiple, a non-trivial "Great Year" would arise which
>might be associated with the length of term of Sacral Kingship, and the
>like.
This is actually an excellent point, and I think it is one which the
54 is 2 x 3 x 3 x 3. This would give a Great Cycle of 27 x 248 = 6696
Lunars claim as fact. They would likely tell that Rufelza's original
"period" in the Godtime was in fact seven days, which is why the Red Moon
has that period today. However, seven days does thus have a Cycle of 1
year, so that is no help. However, the Lunars might also claim that the
54 year Wane is also a prehistoric time marker.
years. I had hoped for something closer to 5000, but I could accept this
as the Buseri-accepted length of a Great Year. What we would need would
be some belief of the Buseri as to why the number 27 or 54 is part of the
pattern, since they would have come up with it in the Darkness.
Hm, given that the Southpath is sometimes called the Red Path, and I also
believe that some Gloranthans call it the Moonpath, perhaps the variation
of the Southpath should be in a 27 year cycle? This would be a source of
power for the Lunars for mastery of those planets. Note that there are
links between the Lunars and Artia (it is believed by some to be the
place from which the Red Goddess retrieved the Crimson Bat), and between
the Lunars and Twin Stars. And there are links between the Lunars and the
Shargash/Tolat planet -- see Enclosure and The Book of Drastic
Resolutions, volume Prax for details of these links.
Yeah, I am beginning to really like this -- I will have to suggest it to
Greg. As the Southpath variations are the only major factor of
Celestiology which have not been worked out, this would be a really
useful idea.
It would, of course, be a secret known only to the Buseri of Yuthuppa and
And, since Artia's cycle is 8 years, this would give a Cycle of the
a few others. And it could explain why the modern day Shargashi claim the
Red Goddess as the sister of Shargash -- since Shargash has a period of 2
years, a 27 year Southpath cycle would give him an actual Cycle of 54
years, identical to that of the Goddess.
Southpath planets of 8 x 27 = 216 years, certainly long enough for most
Gloranthan peoples to not have figured it out.
Cool. Thanks, Alex.
Stephen Martin
ilium@juno.com
- -----------------------------------------------
The Book of Drastic Resolutions
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