From: Simon Hibbs (simonh@msi-uk.com)
Date: Mon 06 Jul 1998 - 11:58:00 EEST
Julian Lord :
>A more useful
>parallel might be Ancient Egyptian, as a Golden Age ideogrammatic
script. It would
>strike me as being particularly useful for communicating magical
concepts. On the
>offside, I wouldn't see it as being particularly useful for conveying
the Mystery
>of the Invisible God (what sort of ideogram would one use to represent
>Invisibility?
But as you say yourself, this is irrelevent to the Brithini who do not
accept the invisible god. Arguing that written Brithini must be able to
represent a concept used by foreigners many millenia after the
development of the script seems bizzare. From a Brithini point of view,
surely that's their problem?
Although I find the idea that Brithini be ideogramatic appealing, I am
strongly drawn towards Hebrew as a real world analog. I am sure the
Brithini associate each letter in thier alphabet with a number and have
performed fabulously complex numerological interpretations of the Laws
of malkion, which of course are prefect and so in some mystical way
describes the perfect world as it was during the Kingdom of Logic. If
only they could reverse engineer the magical matrix embedded in the
text, they could create a ceremony that would reassert the rule of law
on the world, driving out all imperfection.
On the Great Mantongue and Spirit Speech debate :
I'm sure many cultures in Glorantha have myths of the creation of
mankind, when of course everyone spoke the same language. None of these
cultures have the same myths of the creation of mankind, and none of
them agree what this orriginal language was called. In fact many such as
the Kralori, Dara Happans and Brithini certainly claim that in fact
their language is the orriginal human tongue, or at least a very close
descendent of it. In fact I'm sure they each have heroquests which prove
they are correct. Of course none of these languages are even remotely
similar to each other.
Spirit Speech and mantongue, if they ever existed in Glorantha, were
probably God Learner theories. I wouldn't put it past them to
hypothesise the esxistence of such languages, then invent analogs of
them through a process of cross-cultural synthesis and then try and
assert that their versions are correct. They would become a God Learner
Trade Talk for the Spirit Plane and the Hero Plane respectively.
The question of the objective existence of such languages is a matter of
pure speculation and conjecture. I don't believe it's possible to create
a theory that fits every culture's myths. If these languages ever
existed they certainly don't now. Any spectulation on the subject
without refference to a specific culture's mythology is therefore
spurious, IMHO.
Simon Hibbs
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