From: Alex Ferguson (alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk)
Date: Sat 04 Jun 1994 - 09:53:53 EEST
> Alex mentions:
> >while I can believe Aeolian wizardry exists, I'm skeptical of it
> >being practiced en masse.
Sandy rules-lawyers:
> I haven't followed all the discussion on Aeolian wizardry,
> but surely only 9% of the Aeolian believers even _qualify_ for
> wizardry, no? (That's the percentage of randomly-generated humans who
> have a 10% magic bonus.)
What we're talking about is "sub-apprentice" use of wizardry (Joerg comes out in hives if I call it "sorcery" too often), in the main. As a "substitute" for cult spirit magic, as it were. I'm trying to bargain Joerg down from 75% uptake in Hendreiki cities. ;-/
(Regarding our discussion of this: does anyone know who the "four large tribes of civilised humans" of Heortland are? The Hendreiki. The Volsaxi. I get stuck there. I'm skeptical about the Kitori qualifying on any of the three counts, but that's still leave the missing fourth. Nor does there seem to be _room_ for them, since Heortland pretty much equals Hendreikiland plus Volsaxiland.)
> By the way, I deny being a Hrestoli simp except for the obvious fact
> that if I lived in Glorantha, I'd rather be a Hrestoli than a Rokari.
Case proven.
> HOWEVER, I'd rather have my PLAYERS be Rokari, when I'm running a RQ
> game.
Given Sandy's reputation as The Player's F[r]iend, case doubly proven. ;-)
> >I think the considerable majority of Hrestoli worship saints in this
> >way, but that many Rokari do not, regarding it as Stygianism by
> >other means.
> Having helped write the original Invisible God cult, I'd like
> to believe that the "standard form" saint cult is pretty common
> throughout Malkionism.
Well, do you accept that this sort of saint cult requires a manifest saint, and is as near as dammit a "theistic" type of cult? (Indeed, the distinction between Saintly Intervention and Divine Magic seems fairly thin, as I was saying to Joerg, and I actively sneer at this idea of the former not being dispellable. Hard to dispell, sure, especially as it's comparable to an N-point rune spell, stacked with a 1-point one-use rune spell...) Given this, I'd be surprised if there is anything like unanimity among the sects that this is compatible with the worship of One, Invisible, Transcendant God.
Furthermore, the alternative idea of saintly orders teaching special wizardly spells, and worshipping Invisible Saints is So Obvious it must be... eh, I'm not sure. Anyone buying "plausible"?
> However, there is one branch of your argument
> I'd like to explore much much more -- the possibility that the Rokari
> tend towards iconoclasm. Presumably, during one of these periodic
> fits, it's dangerous to even worship the saints in the traditional
> method.
Well, "traditional" pretty much equals "Hrestoli", after all, so there's no particular problem here. The whole Rokar movement might be such a "periodic fit". Sandy, meet Rokari lynch mob; mob, meet Sandy.
> I like the whole idea of Rokari iconoclasts, especially as a
> reaction on their part to preserve "true" Malkionism against the
> perceived threat of Stygianism and the Henotheist Church. Plus the
> many more heresies threatening the Rokari lands.
Exactly. If you really want "manifest" Saint worship to be near-universal, one could always say that it occurs in the state religion of Seshnela, and only the "front line, hard line" Rokari in the borderlands and Ralios are of the iconoclastic persuasion. (I had a notion regarding playing one of these types at HtWw1, which I trawled in front of Lewis, who didn't appear to bite...)
(Mind you, this needn't be _literal_ iconoclasm, since the issue is worship of a manifest entity, not a graven image. On the other hand, I'd not bet that they weren't correlated.)
> I believe that the Rokari say that
> >>humans are always committing sins because we are evil by nature.
> >I wonder why the Malkioni would beleive this.
> Beats me. Why do most Christian churches believe this?
Original sin. Or at least, that's the rationale, if not the reason.
> A likely possibility is that humans aren't innately
> evil -- instead, the World around us is evil, because it was
> corrupted during the Darkness.
Indeed, one of the reasons I suggested myself.
> >Whatever's wrong with just _starting_ a crusade? [as a penance]
> Nothing, if the penitent is a Lord, and the Wizard in charge
> has someone he thinks needs thwacking.
And here was me thinking I was joking...
> >But I'm sure many Hrestoli also consider that they'd be "saved by
> >grace"
> Rather than being "saved by grace", I prefer to think of it
> as "following your star", in which some Malkioni feel that as long as
> you're true to yourself, it doesn't much matter _what_ you do. Now,
> if you follow this theory to its logical extreme, you needn't even
> worship the IG to get to Solace. In fact, eventually it becomes a
> form of Universalism.
Well, of course, there are various shades on this: Don't have to worship the Invisible God, so everyone gets saved; don't have to worship, but do have to _believe_ (so even wicked or effectively apostate Westerners are okay, but pagans are still up Afterlife Creek); and of course the never-popular, have to believe the _right things_ in order to get Solace. (Hey, they may be bastards, but they're _our_ (sect's) bastards.)
> >Malkioni don't (apparently) appear to believe in Final Judgement of
> >any (wholesale) kind, so presumably you go to Solace (or not) as
> >soon as you die (or via purgatory, perhaps).
> Perhaps the purgatory consists of having to spend a time in
> the spirit world, or some pagan afterlife, or even being a ghost.
Sandy, if you pinch any more of the ideas I suggested in the original post, a Derivative Work lawsuit will be your reward in heaven. ;-) Actually, I'm not so sure any more about the lack of a Final Judgement; after all, Krymon's Scroll sounds pretty dashed apocalyptic. On the other hand, if the Saints haven't already Gone To Solace, it could be said to be rather indecent of them to be manifesting left, right, and centre, when they should be slightly dead, and waiting to be Judged.
> >The fact that many different peoples now agree that the
> >same entities appear in their myths is merely a reflection of the
> >lies and propaganda spread by the GLers
> There is absolutely no evidence that the same entities didn't
> appear in the myths before the GL
Perhaps not before the GLers, per se, but there is evidence that before the Dara Happans and Theyalans met up in the first age, DH myths didn't mention Orlanth, by any recognisable name, nor the Theyalans, Yelm. When they met up they "realized" each mentioned (and villainised) the other. Again, this could itself be either invention or discovery.
Given the amount of time that's been spent on this list discussing God Learner "identifications" of different deities, it seems fairly clear that the GLers did more of the same. Presumably it was they who "discovered" that Yelm = Somash, and all the other Dara Happa/Teshnos parallels, for example.
> (of course, there wouldn't be, even if Alex is right).
Before I go down in history as blindly asserting the above, please note that it was one of two diametrically-opposed "theories" which I suggested, without advocating either (more than the other). (This is someone's cue to decry the other theory, so I can Wakbothianly Advocate it, too...)
> But I do have at least one non-trivial bit of data
> supporting my theory that the Monomyth is a discovery, not an
> invention: Arkat, in heroquesting, noticed that he was able to go to
> the same place on different heroquests from different cults.
This may merely mean that Arkat did some of the inventing. In the "invention" theory, everyone is complicit: one lot of people "invent" the myths, another lot invent a conflation of them, a third believe the first two, worship them that way, and invent various rationales that that's how it's always been.
> >Con: destroyed a continent or so.
> The God Learners didn't destroy any continents, and would
> have prevented the damage if they could. Let's not blame the victims.
Okay, "necessitated the destruction of a continent or so".
Alex.
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