Rumors of Orlanth's death much exaggerated; the Myth Poll.

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From: Jonas Schiott (jonas.schiott@vinga.hum.gu.se)
Date: Wed 02 Nov 1994 - 20:37:32 EET


First some brief comments.

Alex:

OK, you got the last word in this round of Illumination, but that's just because I agree with you. :-) In general, at least. And splitting hairs just clogs up too much bandwidth.

Erik S:

While we're on the subject of waste - please don't quote a whole page of text only to say "I agree". In fact, don't quote more than a few lines if you can at all help it. I'm sure you've already been flamed in private about this, but I want to make an example of you for the other newbies. ;-)

Richard O. asks:

>Are the Lunars right when they say that they have defeated
>Orlanth when they nab Whitewall, or is this just Moonie PR?

I think we went over this a few months ago? The general idea seems to be that it's partly propaganda, partly a local problem. Orlanth will be defeated (for the time being) in _Dragon_Pass_ when and if the Lunars take Whitewall.
Some would say that DP is the most important place in Orlanthi mythology, and thus this event should have repercussions all through the barbarian belt. But others strenuously argue for local variations of the cult, where there are no myths about DP geography (like Kero Fin ;-)). A lot of people even seem intent on revising the whole pantheon - for instance we learn in Codex #2 that Ernalda isn't worshipped in Fronela, and David D. doesn't want her in Ralios, so obviously she's just some minor Manirian godling :->. I seem to have digressed a little, hope it answered your question anyway...

Michael Hitchens:

>Some people seem to be of the opinion that Elmal and Yelmalio are the same
>entity, some say they are not. Could anyone who believes they are not

Speaking. Not that I'm fanatical about it, but the way you put your question it touches on one of my areas of interest.

>tell me
>if worshippers who switched from Elmal to Yelmalio were visited by Elmal's
>spirits of retribution?

No, they weren't. IMHO, of course.

>If they were not, why not?

Because they _believed_ it was the same entity. Thus they were free from the feelings of betrayal and guilt that the spirits use to find their victims. For an explanation of this theory, take a look at the scenario "The Light of Subere" (by Dag Olausson and yours truly - now do you see why I brought up the subject :-)?) which was posted through the digest recently (I don't know if it's archived yet, though...). This theory seems to have gained a lot of acceptance since I first proposed it (for instance, I noticed some off-hand references to it on the RQ4 list a few days ago), so I feel pretty confident in expanding its field of explanation :-).

>why
>can not a Yelmalio Priest use divination to find out if the Elmal worshippers
>are worshipping the same god?

Because this is a question about mythology, not history. Gods, not knowing much about Time, make lousy historians. I think I'll rant on about this for a while: I have noticed that some people on this list take the viewpoint of the gods (hubris, if you ask me ;-)) to be the privileged one. Essentially, if I understand their arguments correctly, they want history to be just as malleable as myth is, saying that changes in myths can retro-actively change what happened historically. This is a good way to duck out of doing the historical research, but a bad way to maintain cohesiveness in the world - in fact, it could be argued that these mythologizers are agents of Chaos!:-) It _is_ true, BTW, that changes in myth change what happens _outside_ of history, and this might have some repercussions on what goes on inside (at the moment of the change). And while it doesn't actually change the past, it does make history rather opaque: what _really_ happened is only accessible to disembodied timeless alien observers like ourselves.

>just what are the gods exactly? Nonexistent? Schizophrenic?
>Do they exist as identifiable entities at all? Are they completely at the
>mercy of their worshippers?

He. The answer to all of these questions is _yes_. And no... maybe.

>Just WHAT are the gods??

OK, OK, cool down. The real answer is that we won't know until Greg tells us, and there's not much chance of that happening.

Then there's your questionnare.

>Myths and Heroquests: [...]

YES to all of them, up till:

>Could I make this mythological truth for everyone, not just Humakti?

Hmm, I would say NO.

>Can the myths (ie the state of the godplane) be altered other than by
>heroquesting?

A tricky one. It doesn't look that way. Not directly, anyway. I would say that if enough people believe something, a Hero will rise from the ranks to make an attempt at 'proving' it.

>Am I correct on these two points? [the two types of HQ]

Absolutely.

>Does anyone agree with me that the God Learners seem to be winning? The
>myths of all cultures seem to be evolving towards each other into the
>mono-myth.

Ummm, maybe. Most of the evolution took place _during_ the GL's period, I would think. The rest is a result of a natural process of cultures trying to understand each other. Which of course means that the GLs had the basic idea right, they just took it to unhealthy extremes. 

(      Jonas Schiott                                   )
(      Institutionen for Ide- och lardomshistoria      )
(      Goteborgs Universitet                           )

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