Re: The Nature of Gods, Myths and Heroquests
From: M.Hitchens@st.nepean.uws.edu.au (Michael Hitchens)
Date: 3 Nov 94 04:53:58 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6822
Lots of good questions, and in a convenient true/false format, too.
Note that there are no definite answers, just a lot of opinions. I look
forward to tallying the responses in tomorrow's Daily. Me, I'll give my
usual post-positivist spiel.
I know there was resentment at the bandwidth taken up recently by
the Elmal/Yelmalio debate but.....
The Elmal/Yelmalio thing is a rather contentious issue. My take is that
the Sun Domers were originally Sun-worshippers of some sort who
converted to Elmalism during the recolonization of their lands after the
Dragonkill War and who have only recently returned to their Sun pantheon
roots. No Godplane surgery involved, though Monrogh obviously deserves
some kind of award for excellence in propaganda and spin control.
[...]
Could anyone who believes [Elmal and Yelmalio are different] tell me
if worshippers who switched from Elmal to Yelmalio were visited by
Elmal's spirits of retribution?
I don't think so, or at at least not en masse, since the spirits are
controlled at least partially by the priesthood, and I think the priests
were the ones leading the conversion.
Some people try to say the question can not be answered. To those I
ask, why can not a Yelmalio Priest use divination to find out if the
Elmal worshippers are worshipping the same god? [...]
Why would they ask such a thing? The Elmali brutes obviously worship a
different god. Divination is for important stuff, like how many Luxites
can dance on the head of a pin.
Some people say the question should not be asked. To them I ask
again, if we do not understand the gods, how can we understand
Glorantha?
We can ask them, but the Gloranthans have better things to do. Except
for the God Learners, and look what happend to them. Seriously, I don't
think there are complete and consistent answers to all your questions --
that's why all this stuff is still interesting.
Conservative Dara Happans seem to be trying to deny that Yelmalio is
the son of Yelm. Does the fact that Yelmalio gets a sunspear from
Yelm (as per associate cults in his description in Sun County)
indicate that they have little chance of proving their point?
The Dara Happns don't have to prove anything -- those Sun Dome yokels
are obviously deluded. The Sun Domers' Yelmalio is clearly a pale
shadow of the real Emperor, since they, not being Dara Happan nobility,
are not qualified to see the true Light.
[...]
Just how useful is divination?
Quite useful, but remember that Gloranthans for the most part would not
even consider asking the kind of questions that you are asking here. If
they inadvertantly did, they would interpret the answers in a way
consistent with their beliefs.
Mythical truth is represented by the state of the godplane (YES/NO)
Yes, but: Representation is on of those tricky concepts whose meaning
and implications depend a lot on philosophical underpinnings. As far as
truth goes, I find that taking a Tarskian view on this is convenient.
(This is the kind of semantics that says "The sentence 'Snow is falling'
is true if and only if snow is falling.") So the truth, in this sense,
of mythical statements depends on the "state" of the Godplane. Myths
can be false (and fall more in the category of urban legend, I suppose)
if there is no correspondence between the mythic statement and the
Godplane.
The problem with this view (besides not knowing much about the Godplane
except through the myths), is that there is a feedback loop between myth
and the Godplane (Joe Heroquester gets taken by a myth, decides to do
something about it, changes the Godplane so that the meaning of the myth
is different, and so on.)
There is also the not inconsiderable twist that changing the Godplane
can change the mundane one, too. For example, one could heroquest to
prevent Grandfather Mortal from getting the first taste of Death; if you
were successful, no one would die anymore.
Glorantha's myths are continually being acted out on the Godplane.
(YES/NO)
No. To be pedantic: The Godplane is the events and their
interconnections that the myths talk about. I guess you could say that
the events are being continually acted out, in the sense that they are
just there and don't change by themselves.
These myths can be altered (via heroquesting) so what was the state
of the GodPlane yesterday may not be true today. (YES/NO)
No, but: The events and their connections can be altered via
heroquesting; the myths may follow.
For example, even if, for arguments sake, Elmal and Yelmalio were
originally different entities, could sufficient successful
heroquesting could "prove" that they were the same? (YES/NO)
I think the answer to this is no, and, in any case, only a God Learner
would want to do that. All the examples we have are of attributes being
transferred around and (in one famous case) entities being swapped
wholesale. So there appears to be a sort of "object identity" -- there
is a core identity to each deity that cannot be altered. The GLs tried
to find these core identities, but it didn't really work since the
attributes of the deities are generally more important than the deities
themselves.
Another example: everyone knows that Magasta led the seas into
jumping into the hole formed when the Spike exploded. [...] Could
I [...] prove that Humakt commanded and lead the fight of the water
spirits. Magasta may have been the chief of the water spirits, but
Humakt was the leader, Magasta just his lieutenant. (YES/NO)
Yes, but it would be very hard to do. Note there are easier ways to
acheive a similar effect: Emphasizing a particular aspect of the event
over others (I bet this is how it is for the Humakti anyway),
acceptance of false myths, etc. In this case, it is not entirely clear
that the Godplane does not already support your interpretation -- we
just don't know enough about the content of the events the myths talk
about except from the myths themselves.
Could I make this mythological truth for everyone, not just Humakti?
(YES/NO)
Yes, but it would be very, very hard to do. Not only do you have to
make it true, you also have to let everyone know that it is true and
convince them that it is worth believing this truth. War, conquest, and
Gift Carriers seem to be the usual techniques for doing this, though
there do appear to be magical and/or mythical shortcuts like the
Minarian Mind Removal. You can also alter the Godplane such that the
Mundane plane is affected, as in the Trollkin Curse, but that is really
big time.
If I did that, would it then have always been that way? (ie would
there be any perception that the previous myths were "wrong" when
they were written but now "we" have the correct ones.) (YES/NO)
Yes: Remember Dunham's (one of the many false Davids) famous quote:
"Don't believe all that Dara Happan propoganda. After all, it was
written down, and thus can't change with reality."
Can the myths (ie the state of the godplane) be altered other than
by heroquesting? (YES/NO)
The myths can be altered in any number of ways, since they are stories
and not that which the stories are about. Altering the Godplane is
heroquesting by definition. Though I suppose the void could be let in
and gobble things up, and also the Godplane seems to be heading towards
a heatdeath in the Fourth Age anyway.
Eg, if enough normal people believe, does it change? (it being the
mythical "truth" as represented by the god plane). (YES/NO)
Yes: that's part of the feedback relationship. A form of
heroquesting.
As I understand it, there seem to be two vitally different forms of
heroquesting, one where the participant simply re-enacts the actions
of the god, thereby reinforcing the current state. The other form
is a conscious attempt to *change* the state of the godplane. The
second form is much harder. Am I correct on these two points?
Yes. There are also the unintentional heroquests that sadistic GMs like
to inflict upon their players.
[...]
--David Gadbois
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