>>> As very few >>> individuals with a seventh part (or the equivalent in another >>> culture's terminology) do reincarnate, I thought it rather >>> plausible to attribute the memories to the seventh part. >>> The more so as that is the "eternal, unchanging" part to >>> bring in eastern mystic thinking.
Alex:
>> But memories aren't eternal, they're very much temporal, and >> individuated. They seem much more of a 'small self' thing: >> my memories are in large part what makes me, _me_, as opposed >> to what makes We Us.
Nils again:
> Correct, so memories is probably a bad expression here. I'm
> not thinking of memories of what you had for breakfast and
> which was your first girlfriends favourite colour. Rather
> the memory of "your position in the universe".
But isn't the mytic's aim to shed all sense of position within the worldly? To me it seems that these memories are your inherited entanglements in the physical, non-transcendent world.
>> Would simple awakening the 7th portion in itself, if you shared >> no other portion, and had done nothing to re-identify with your >> 'old' ones, cause you to regain memories?
> Only if the 7th portion was awakaned in your past life as
> well.
I'm not arguing from the sources here, but from bellyfeel:
Isn't the Seventh Soul that of liberation, of avoiding the entanglements?
If so, why should that which frees you from the entanglements bind you to them again and again and again?
Isn't illumination the chance to shed "all that" and be your transcendent self instead?
Returning to the six-souls model of the Dara Happan creation myth: Shapes, Warmth, Beast don't seem to bear much individuality but define the species. The Birds seem to start awareness, the Shadow starts fears, and Fire starts the cognition.
In the Dara Happan model, memories of "your position in the universe" should be in one of the three latter parts, with the Shadow possibly the least likely candidate, unless the entanglements are placed here.
Remain Bird and Fire.
Does Bird carry the ambitions? Fire seems to contain the intellect (but not quite restricted to that role).
And how does this rhyme with ancestor worship like that of Duke Raus of Rhone? What parts would a Dara Happan witness recognize in the shades of the ancestors?
Warmth (Bijiif?) definitely has left them. Shape has gone, too, and I doubt any ancestors are contacted for the beast nature of mankind either.
This would leave Bird (gone to heaven?), Shadow, and Fire.
Good that the Orlanthi are less specific. Ok, so you can fragment someone's self into up to 49 pieces (at which point self-reassembly is deemed impossible, compare Orlanth's fight against Wakboth, KoS p.79). But if you encounter the walking dead or spirits, you know they are incomplete. You don't ask in which way.
When people are reborn after sufficient rest with their deity, they start with a new identity. (Ty Kora Tek is said to do the spiritual laundry...) Do the souls resting with the deity retain memories of their previous lives before the most recent one? I mean, more memories than while living, i.e. does my grandfather remember his term as chief of the Liornvuli when I meet him at Orlanth's stead? Or does my grandfather remember only what I trigger as memories, and could that other guy over there talking to the long lost chief of the Liornvuli talk to the soul of grandpa as well, in a Jurgen-like fashion?
Heroic reincarnation has been observed (although the most blatant cases coming to my mind are non-Orlanthi: Aronius Jaranthir, Jaldon and Belintar). Do Orlanthi heroes have Robert E. Howard-like flashbacks from earlier existance, like Conan could sometimes see memories of Kull of Atlantis? And how much can this be an issue for less heroic Orlanthi?
Powered by hypermail