Pieces, Bits

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From: Hughes, John (NAT) (JohnP.Hughes@dva.gov.au)
Date: Thu 14 Sep 2000 - 02:47:51 EEST

Heys folks

Some short, sharp shocks over my morning cuppa....

URBAN WHITE RURAL

In my boondocks naivety (I'm from canbraaa ya know), I described Glorantha
in a previous post as a "western, male urban" mythology. Apparently in some
political and academic circles, this is as near a conjuration of evil and
unwholesome vileness as you're ever likely to get. (Dead Whites Males and
all that). No pejorative sense was implied, it was simply a description of
our creative corpus. In case you haven't noticed, I happen to love the
place. (I do worry some times about our 'boys club' mentality, but vey, I
married a Lunar vingan who is known to quote 'violence is always an option'
with a manic grin in our discussions of household finances).

EDUCATING AND 'SELLING' BRIDES

If you're using the top down 'marriage as an exchange of women between clans
to build alliances' model (and though it always has to be balanced with the
view 'from the ground', it has a certain utility) then it is still good
sense to educate and invest in your daughters. Why? Because if women are a
commodity, they're a valuable commodity. The bridewealth for a lawspeaker or
priestess is going to be much higher than for an uneducated sheep girl.
Clans with a reputation for providing fair and skilled brides will be sought
out as allies, and will attract same.

Personally, I don't think its an issue. The status of women is extremely
high in Heortling society, women have substantial personal wealth and
political clout, and in my campaigns at least, its the Ernaldans who are
usually running the clan anyway.

Matt:

>It's a similar situation to the good ol' Trobriand Islanders (wasn't it? or
>was it Sumatra?) where property nominally descends from a deceased man to
>his sister's sons. Fathers want to see their sons succeed, so they
transfer
>much of it to their own sons during their lifetime.

It's a universal characteristic of any matrilineal society, of which the
Trobrianders are certainly one. In a matrilineal system, a man's investment
is in his sister's children (who have the same clan identity as he has)
rather than his own children, who have his wife's clan identity. Therefore
marriage and families tend to take very different forms, and mean very
different things. Divorce is common, a women depends on her brothers more
than her husband, and 'uncles' (Mothers brothers) are as important or more
important to a child than their pater.
 

RTFM AND BIBLICAL INERRANCY

David:

> Alex Ferguson has not RTFM:
>
> > As for the sources cited: KoDP offers only 'statistical evidence'
> > of this, so far as I'm aware (i.e., "I've never seen a male Uraldan
> > in KoDP"),
>
> It's in the manual, p. 52: "Males can't attempt the Ernalda or Uralda
> quests." That's statistics with no outliers.
>
Is your all a Solar 'all' (99%), an Orlanthi 'all' (85%), or a Lunar 'all'
(51%). In a society where men can give birth, I find this dogged exclusivity
more than a bit suspect.

NOT OWNING YOUR LAND

Darvall:
  
>And then there is the example of the Oz Aborigines (pull me up if I'm
>well off beam here John) in which IIRC a bloodline has the right to the
>use of a site but one or more others may well be its custodians. Owning
>a communal bit of grazing or hunting some distance from home & not
>shared by the other dwellers in your building is far from odd. Applying
>the same rules to spades, or worse spears, may well be.

Yip. You're talking about 'owners' and 'managers', a feature of Arnhem Land
and Central Desert patriclans. Aboriginal 'owners' may have no practical
interest in their land and never visit there. 'Managers' do not own the
land, but are responsible for all ceremony upon it, and for its magical
fertility. Both groups consult regularly. This is in the context of
songlines - ceremonial ancestral walkways that extend for thousands of
miles. Apart from the distances involved, the analogy to godtime heroquests
is very close indeed. Participants *become* the ancestors and recreate the
dreamtime (godtime) journey, meeting all sorts of strange creatures and
recreating the magical fertility of the land.

While the social and technological systems are very different, there may be
Heortling analogies in rites to temples, pilgrimage paths, and their
attendant ceremonies. If real world analogies hold, then even in a strongly
patrilineal Heortling clan, many rights, rites and gifts will be passed
along matrilineal lines.

GLORANTHA THE OPERA

Andrew waxes lyrical on opera.

Confession time: The Pan Book of Opera has been one of my prime plot source
references for over a decade. Definitely worth investigation.

Olympics? What Olympics?

Cheers

John

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