Re: Simon Hibbs on Doraddi acolytes and "Origin of the Species" from R. Andrew Bean on 1994-12-01 (Glorantha Digest Vol 01)

From: R. Andrew Bean <ABEAN_at_GEEL.DWT.CSIRO.AU>
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 13:37:48 +1100 (EST)

Simon Hibbs says:
>Concerning Doraddi acolytes, I say :
>>> Acolytes would probably be best characterised as 'elders'.
>>Mubee, but I'm not entirely convinced. "Elders" would tend to be retired
>>chiefs, or Big Wheels on the council of women, I'd think. Becoming an
>>Acolyte seems not to be this restricted.
>How many ex-chiefs do you think an average tribe has? Is that the only
>way a male can become an elder? Elders should have considerable ritual
>importance, because they are closer to the ancestors. In fact, they are
>the ancestors of most of the tribe. I don't see that being old is much
>of a restriction.

I was reading an old Different Worlds article the other day that pointed out that even only a century ago typical life expectancies were 40 years old, and that number rapidly declined the further you went back through time. So the reason elders were always well respected was that they were the very luck few who remained alive to see their grandchildren. They actually had knowledge of how things were done previously and had experienced certain famous events that were almost mythic to those grandchildren already (and they may have occurred only 20 years ago to boot). There are no books out on the plains. They are relying on the oral tradition to pass on history and skills, etc.

For MGF most RQ games don't seem to have lots of child deaths from disease, etc. but there is plenty of violent death whether from your own people or other races, animals, accidents, etc. to keep average life expectancies low and populations down. So elders are well respected and important. However they arenot necessarily acolytes and likewise acolytes are not necessarilyelders (although they would often go hand in hand).

Also on human origins:
>Seriously, the orrigins of humans are very confusing. We have prety
>clear myths of the orrigins of the elder races, but nobody realay
>knows where humans come from. Perhaps they are just what is left
>over when you take something that has the man rune, and remove
>everything else.

The sun worshippers say humans were made from clay by the pre-eminent sun god. The Storm worshippers say that they are all children of the Storm gods "rape of"/"relationships with" various goddesses during the Storm Age. The Hsunchen say they are "damaged/weakened" beasts.

Personally I think Grandfather Mortal really just represents a model/mold for producing living life that spontaneously formed or devolved from the gods. A lot of gods/goddesses plugged material from their sphere of influence into this mold (out of pure curiousity because the world was young and everyone was still happy and carefree) and produced mortal bipedal life. As it turned out this lifeform (the man rune) was very successful at dominating the rest of the sphere of influence they were created from, and thus have the common preeminence we see today (opposable thumbs and large brains are very useful).

Obviously most of the myths we hear are shaped by the man-form's preconceptions so this is why we get a a godlet (Grandfather Mortal) coupling with so many "humanised" as opposed to anthropomorphic gods/goddesses.

What do you think?
Cheers, Andrew

End of Glorantha Digest V1 #32