From: Alex Ferguson (alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk)
Date: Tue 26 Apr 1994 - 23:46:16 EEST
Loren:
> Society itself was sacred and any progress in
> society, any initiation, was religious in nature.
> I think this is true, but more importantly I am 99.999% certain that
> it's true for Glorantha.
Well, "religious in nature" is broad target. Presumably, appropriate gods are invoked, say for Theyalan clans, Orlanth and the spirit of the founder, so it's religious in (at least) that sense.
> Now who is going to say "this initiation is to your culture, but that
> one is to your religion"?
Yes...
> They're both the product of the gods.
Yeeeeees...
> Any differentiation is artificial.
Woah. Only if cult and clan (tribe, skin, etc) are unitary, indivisable, etc. Now, I don't for a nanosecond deny there's a religious aspect to "cultural" initiation, or a cultural aspect to "religious" initiation. But: what I'm quibbling about, is to the general effect that I'm not convinced that for all Gloranthans, Initiation into their society is _necessarily_ coincident with Initiation into the full, active religious life of the community. And if it does, I'm not much impressed by the existing, or proposed rules for it.
> This is why I think that RQ/Glorantha needs to acknowledge the role of
> the culture/religion in initiation in addition to the individual cult.
> I still haven't seen acceptable rules proposals to do this, but I
> remain hopeful that it's possible and convinced that it is a good
> idea.
To do what, exactly? Wanna give some Gloranthasised examples of how you envisage the two interacting?
Alex.
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