From: Daniel McCluskey (Volt Computer) (a-daniem@microsoft.com)
Date: Wed 29 Jul 1998 - 20:40:49 EEST
"The Nature of the Gods" is a terrifying thread ;-) that usually
But I'm not looking at this question in-character. It's me, Sergio,
degenerates into pages and pages of heated (yet completely opaque)
argument... but I just can't leave it alone entirely.
that's
raising the question, not one of my PCs.
And what I want to know is wheter I should look at gods as
unpersonal and
natural or as personalities.
I think that there is a sort of uncertainty relationship between the gods
"personality" and "symbolic" aspects. Like a particle's location and
momentum in the real world, The Gods in glorantha Have personality. And
are also Impersonal Natural Forces. The more knowlege you have about one,
however the less about the other. Thus a Malkioni sees and manipulates only
the Runic forces of Storm, while the Kolating bargains with the Spirits of
the Wind. Each specializes in one "property" of the god, and cannot know
the other.
>From our (RW) perspective, we know that both views are "true" in glorantha:
the gods/forces respond to worship and manipulation in remarkably similar
ways. We can't define exactly the Personality and Powers of a god in (IMO)
exactly the same way that you cannot know exactly where an electron is AND
how fast it is going. When a Gloranthan worships a "god" they see a
powerfull independant being with a distinct personality. When a Gloranthan
studies sorcery, they see an impersonal collection of powers obeying complex
but deterministic laws.
so MY answer to your question would be simply:
"yes"
They are both Natural Forces AND Powerful Beings. But people in glorantha
can only experience them as one or the other. (except maybe Illuminates and
Mystics -- the illuminate would say "they are both, AND neither" and the
mystic would say "they seem to be one, or the other, but it is all an
illusion")
danm
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