From: Alex Ferguson (alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk)
Date: Tue 31 May 1994 - 22:45:19 EEST
Boris:
> In X-RQ-ID: 4101, Alex Ferguson types:
> >What I claim is that people don't worship (in a committed way, as opposed > >to in a "lay membership" fashion), all of a pantheon, or anything much > >like all. Rather, I think most people worship one god, or in some cases, > >a "tight group" of local significance. This is why I think the existing > >model of initiation is preferable to Joerg's.
> This, I think, is my basic problem with your argument. It seems to me
> that, from a cosmological viewpoint, there is less difference between
> initiation to three gods (or seven) and initiation to twenty (or even 1000)
> than there is between initiation to only one god and initiation to three.
Philosophically this is partly true, but cults are not wholly philosophical contructs. All six (sic) of the Seven Mothers are connected by a single, key mythic event, which is not true for whole pantheons. The Orlanth pantheon is a pretty fuzzy affair anyway, only really being defined in terms of gods one _might_ worship, not a collection one _must_, even in the loosest sense.
> If you can connect to more than one god with a single initiation, then
> the exact number more than one is a minor point. And it has been shown
> on Glorantha that you *can* connect to more than one deity with a single
> initiation.
How could you apply the Seven Mothers model to Joerg's "Orlanth's Stead"? (Big house -- personally I think "the Storm Tribe" would be closer, if you really want to avoid the P-word). One temple with 250 shrines, each offering a single spell to every member of the clan? The Seven Mothers is not a "pantheon" type cult (a la Joerg), by any stretch of the imagination: its cult does not subsume its members', structurally or magically, nor does it supplant them as institutions.
> So, q.e.d. pantheon initiation (given my stated assumption)
> is possible in a Gloranthan millieu.
This is taking a liberty or several with mathematical induction, not to say use of "QED".
> In the current rules, there are *only* two states of initiation, lay and
> initiate (lumping all the acolytes/priests/lords in with initiates for this
> discussion). This begs the question, what is the iniatory status *relative
> to Ernalda* of all of the Orlanthi, Uroxi, etc. taking part in an Ernaldan
> High Holy Day service. They are not initiated to Ernalda, neither are they
> just lay members, as they participate much more fully. Yes, they are
> associates, but unless we call "associate" a third initiatory state, this
> is just handwaving.
Hardly. They are necessarily initiates, otherwise they'd not be "associates". You suggest that they must have some special initiatory status in the cult of Ernalda, or some such concept, and then generalise this in such a way to defeat your own original point, about associate worship: what role do "Low Initiates" take in the rituals? Initiates of associate cults have a clearly defined role to play (if any), so I don't accept this comparison.
> And if we *do* make associate another state of
> initiation, well then fine, I'll also call this a low initiate and I am
> satisfied. And if Alex (or anyone) asks me to what are they initiated
> that is associated with all the rest, well, I have shown above that one
> may initiate to many deities with a single initiation; one initiates to the
> "gods of my ancestors", i.e. the clan's gods.
This is two arguments in one: that one could initiate to a cult associated with every other, and/or that one could do so into a cult which is itself a composite of all the other gods of the clan. Depending on the structure envisaged for the second, or the nature of the association in the first, this might turn out to be much the same thing. However, I don't think you can construct an argument that this is possible in a general way, without considering who the gods are, and their relationship. I don't believe that because there is someone in the clan who worships Humakt, someone else Chalana Arroy, and a third person Babeester Gor, that there is necessarily, or even likelily, to be a cult associated to all of them, or a cult incorporating elements of the worship of all three.
> And if that is still
> unsatisfactory, they I suppose the clan wyter will do. It would be
> associated to all of the other deities worshipped by the clan, n'est pas?
I doubt it: the clan spirit is effectively a subcult of the founder's cult, to wit Orlanth, who isn't associated with every deity in his pantheon. However, ignoring the sophistry-ridden "proof", I find this suggestion, in concrete terms, preferable to Joerg's essentially open-ended approach to pantheon initiation. (Please fight over the copyright on the term quietly in the corner. <g>) If a person is a member of a particular cult, albeit a non-standard, composite one, we can at least posit an appropriate cult structure, and consider which cults it _should_ be associated to in a particular clan, without having to dispose of cultic initiation, as such.
> Now, to bring this, so to speak, back to earth, and the real reason *why* I
> want to do this, is that it enables me to GM better. I have the refugee
> survivors of a clan that has just arrived in the Rubble from Sartar; there
> are a number of different gods that this clan worships, but with over half
> the clan dead (that's why they're refugees), they are too few to provide
> any magic to my PCs unless most of the clan members take part in most of
> the worship services.
This is not inherently implausible: this is the kind of "fudged" cult I proposed earlier. I think there's a limit to how ad hoc these groupings can get, without seriously compromising any magical effectiveness they have. After all, you can't hold a worship ceremony to suit any arbitary combination of half a dozen gods from the Orlanth pantheon: there aren't enough myths for all the permutations.
> Thinking about this, it makes sense for most clans,
> and so that's why I speculated on the general case.
It only makes sense for most clans, from a pragmatic point of view, if you deliberately set up the rules (or if you prefer, "envisage the magical ecology") in such a way that they benefit from it. I don't see any reason to suppose that having a clan full of flexi-worshippers gets better results than each being initiated to their own god; in fact, quite the reverse.
More importantly, I don't think it makes more sense from the point of view of how worshippers take part in rituals, as I've said before.
> And now, we (i.e. my
> players and myself) can have fun roleplaying the different PCs & NPCs
> taking part in each other's worship, which opens up many, many roleplaying
> possibilities.
Which you have anyway, in a way that makes more conceptual sense to me, with associate (in its present meaning) worship.
Alex.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Fri 10 Oct 2003 - 01:34:43 EEST