From: Nick Brooke (100270.337@CompuServe.COM)
Date: Sat 14 May 1994 - 12:37:54 EEST
I loved "Not Red Enough Ken" and the G.R.C.! We all need more time to work!
> MOB: No, no no! A citizen of the Empire *is*, in my view, automatically
> a lay member of the Cult of the Emperor.
Isn't that what I said? It's what I meant! "Citizen of the Lunar Empire" would be translated into God Learnerese as "Lay Member of the Red Emperor's cult". If there were any GL's alive to do it. Just means they *DO* say Amen (traitor!), offer up a pinch of incense on his altar when required, etc.
Here's an example of Emperor Worship in the real world, from a speech welcoming Diocletian to Milan:
: "As your divinity shone from the ridge of each of the Alps, a brighter : light shone over the whole of Italy and all who looked up were struck : with wonder and doubt as to whether the gods had risen to the mountains : or whether they had descended to earth from the sky. : "But as you came nearer, people began to recognise you. All the fields : were filled not only with men rushing to see you, but also by the herds : of cattle which abandoned their distant pastures and glades..."
Moo!
Presumably the audience at the time found this excessive adulation about as plausible as the Tory Party Conference's "spontaneous" standing ovations. Except in Glorantha, this kind of stuff really happens... (I loved Danny Boy's Byzantine/Lunar halo for Moonson in that mosaic in Tales #8, BTW).
I find the idea that all Malkioni saints are recognised and worshipped by all of the sects ludicrous, and will not countenance it. Under this logic, Mohammed would be a Christian Saint* (and, one presumes, a Jewish Prophet). Nothing wrong with following history to find out who believes what: each sect recognises every saint along the trunk of its common ancestry, but branches out on its own when the "heretical" point of divergence comes.
> P.S. I'll consider any flames and/or quibbling about side issues
> to signify agreement with the main point unless otherwise
> explicitly stated, OK?
I explicitly disagree with this attitude. If I choose not to address your main point, it does not mean that I accept it. Only a lawyer would state otherwise -- thus Cicero's fallacy, "dum silent, tacent" ("If the audience are sitting in stony silence, it means they agree with me"). Bollocks, then as now.
> I could probably be convinced of the necessity of a Malkioni
> Trinitarianism only if I were also convinced of the Trinity as a
> basic and powerful mythological concept.
The Mother Gata The Daughter Empress Earth The Holy Ghost Earth Witch
And, presumably on a pedestal*:
The Father Genert
Three members of the socially- and religiously-dominant sex, with a partner thrown in to act as generative role-model for the 'lesser half'.
PS: Back to Emperor Worship again. Everyone knows about July and August, but they're the month-names that have stood the test of time. In Cyprus, just a dozen years after Actium, the calendar months went: "Augustus, Agrippa, Livia, Octavia, Julia, Nero, Drusus, Aphrodite, Anchises, Rome, Aeneas, Capitol". Bit like Auld Newspeak... this kind of rubbish scuppered poor old Ovid's poetic calendar, though.
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