From: Joerg Baumgartner (joe@sartar.toppoint.de)
Date: Fri 16 Jul 1993 - 09:15:09 EEST
Joerg again:
The argument that sorcery is skill based magic is not valid since Open Seas is a ritual spell, the skill used is ceremony. I'm seriously wondering why a magic system was assigned at all.
> Nice work on Kralorelan Ancestor worship. This of course brings in another
> Chinese parallel. More on Gloranthan parallels another time... Do we need
> 'most' adult Kralorelan citizens to be acolytes or just (for example) the
> matriarchs of families?
> To Joerg and Rob:
> There are at least two models which might apply in Glorantha:
> 1. Deities gain their power from worship and sacrifice, plus a relatively
> small amount of native power and any stolen power. It is possible to
> 'steal' another deity's worship (e.g., Sheng Seleris and the Red Emperor.)
> This model might be used by the Malkioni in explaining the pagan gods.
I view deities as having a certain amount of personal power (not only the characteristic!), the amount they had when achieving apotheosis if humans- become-deity, or their native powers inherited fromtheir divine parents, i.e. mastery of some runes and association in varying degree to the others. This makes them just stronger demons. To gain real power, they need the magic transferred to them by worship.
> 2. The greater deities have truly tremendous power, independent of worship,
> but are bound by the Compromise into using that power in set ways, except
> where free-willed mortals summon the deity's power into the world through
> sacrifice, or when directly confronting Chaos.
> Thus (for example), EVERY act of sex, every conception of new life, etc.
> is performed through the power of Uleria. Each such act is magical in
> itself but people are so used to it that they have become jaded. Similarly,
> each wind is caused by an air god, Flamal causes all plants to grow, etc.,
> but because they are bound to set patterns of exerting these powers we
> grow used to the miracles around us and call them 'mundane'. The gods
> may not interfere directly in mortal affairs but instead use proxies like
> Rune Priests, who exchange some of their own power to allow a bit of
> their god's power into the world.
You might as well say that every act of voluntary sex (I wouldn't include raping broos) is an unconscious form of Uleria worship, even though the magic transferred isn't measurable in MP. But then emotions have some inherent magic.
Natural phenomenons like winds, well, I'm not that certain. Certainly they happen under the domain of some deity or the other, but at least I see no conscious effort in them, rather an instinctive reaction to other actions. Very much a cause-action sequence.
> This is, I think, a common model among the more sophisticated (barbarian
> and civilized) theistic cultures. The gods are elevated to the status of
> the prime movers of the world.
Not the runes?
> Evidence for this view: The primal gods (Arachne Solara, Uleria, Trickster,
> maybe Earth Witch, Hykim & Mykih, Horned Man, a few other examples) seem
> not to need the usual cult structure to support the powers of their proxies.
I think the usual cult structure as presented in GoG is too rigid anyway. I have some problems with the mental acrobatics involved in the subcult thing for Orlanth in RoC, and I really can't apply the generalized Yelm write-up to any existing Gloranthan solar culture.
>>look at the different versions of gods scattered >>around Generatela
> In model (2) this is explained by saying that gods have many aspects and
> are bound by the compromise to not interfere in the Inner World unless invited
> by mortals, so the aspect known locally to the mortals colors how the
> god acts in that region.
Another puzzle there. Are the five Arkats to come aspcts of one now divine being?
__________________________.
> Re: Open Seas.
[ ... ]
> In any case, didn't Nochet once have a Bishop, so Dormal may well have
> been a Malkioni. If not, why did the Westerners accept him quite so readily?
> Indeed, why did Dormal sail West and not in some other direction.
I really wonder that he dared! Malkionism in Maniria is mostly of the Stygian heresy, and what I have heard about the Westerners, heretics are likely to be burned.
> Re: Kingship
> This has been a very interesting discussion on an anthropogically major
> subject! All I wish to say on this is that I think that it is the position of
> head of state that is important. For many cultures inheritance is important,
> but it is having, for example, a head to wear the crown of kingship that really
> matters and not so much whose head it is. In this I bow both to history, think
> of the English kings: Saxon, Norman, then more finely, Angevin, Plantagenet,
> Tudor, etc. or, better still, how Pepin the Short, while Mayor of Paris, deposed
> the Merovingian's, establishing the line that would be known as the
> Carolingians. I also bow to the greatest of all the GodLearners, the late Joseph
> Campbell-see "The Hero With A Thousand Faces", p.72, for a note on how it is
> the position and not the individual filling it that counts.
Well, the Germanic peoples in England chose their kings from several members of divine ancestry. I remember hearing in a history lecture about the problems the (Christian!) Mercian dynasty had with coming up with Odin in their ancestry, and William the Conqueror had a legitimate claim to the throne of England, while Harold the Saxon was only an elected minor noble - no wonder that he failed, would any follower of this theory think. Pippin the short carefully replaced one religious function (divine ancestry) with another (god-given kingship by the Pope salving his head, like it was custom among biblical jewish kings).
> For a Gloranthan example I, of course, turn westwards to Loskalm. The
> concept of King here could not be further from the dynastic model, and yet of
> the king(Genertela, Bk. 2, p11)
> "He is also the court of last resort, the poorest man's champion,
> and the sacrificial hero, ready to die in the ultimate rite of his
> religion."
Loskalmi kingship is of the heroical kind, like e.g. biblical David's claim to kingship after driving off the Philisters, combined with being salved king. Remember that a Hrestoli Lord has to be expert knight and expert Wizard, the theistic equuivalent would be the in RQ3 defunct status of Runelord/priest, or already a hero.
> This, from Malkioni! This is the stuff of kings. See the film "Excalibur".
I'd expect that Malkioni kings in general see themselves as kings by divine grace. In Orlanthi culture it's descent, not grace; this comes automatically, if in varying degrees.
> P.S. I guess that Richard the Lion Heart + Jerusalem (The Holy City)
> ====>
> Richard the Tiger-Hearted + Malkonwal (the Malkioni holy city).
Only that Jerusalem existed, while Malkonwal doesn't any more. (I think it was drowned with much of Seshnela, but there is no proof for that.) It was a fiction Richard wanted to realize.
BTW, while I have virtually no knowledge about tarot, I enjoy reading your discussion about it!
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--
-- Joerg Baumgartner joe@sartar.toppoint.de
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