Reincarnation

From: TERRA INCOGNITA <inarsus-ferilt-z_at_mrg.biglobe.ne.jp>
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2004 01:50:09 +0900

My concern is mainly Kralorela, for souls (spirits? essences?) Kralori stays in Summerland Heaven while contemporary emperors stay inside of Middleworld and they might continue reincarnation until their patron emperor finally apotheosized. For RW difference of Orthodox Paramita sect and Vajarayana sect, its main concern is how to accelerate (speed up) spiritual development in Middleworld, if you want to continue the development in next life, you might want to preserve your memory somehow in the middleworld. But if your boddhisattiva (dragon emperors) promise you Liberation while you spend only your life with good deeds,
you might not need to do so.

>

> It's a plot idea - a lover, hated enemy or good friend from a
> previous life turns up with unfinished business and complicates
> current relationships. Finding out what and why can be a whole
> series of sessions.

IMHO, Concept of Samsara makes people fatalists and (in a sense) optimistic to future, for death is not a simple end, but an another start. Most of faceless ancestors are not past people, but eventually come back to home....they might not want to change the circumstance of life even if they are in unhappy status, for this consequence of previous life. It might not be so pleasant idea for Orlanthi who want to change world and Coming of Hurricane.....perhaps such people want to destroy previous life memory as some kind of evil spirit / entrapment of ancestor.

In Gloranthan Sense of Reincarnation, it seems that certainly previous lives and later lives are limited to bloodline of the subject person, so aside from sinners (who committed atrocity in their point of view....but I think with lack of such kind of great entity like Animist Culture, without an entity like Orlanth who teaches what is good and what is bad. Such people don't know the concept of metaphysical morality, as trolls (though I don't think Jamuz sides with such Sandy's opinion) might not have it.) so most of them don't experience life of salmon or stag in the poem of Taliesin, I suppose most of Gloranthan people have only vague theory of this open-end cycle.

(In RW animism, Natural and Animal Spirit equal to Human Spirit and there is no difference, on the contrary of Jewish bible stresses distance between animals and humanity, along with the similar distance of humanity and God....I am not sure how such awareness of equality to nature relates to the worldview.)

Teshnos is exception because it seems that its concept is perfectly contained inside of Verenelans and its Chal's religion concentrates on its systemised concept.

> I think it's based more on Celtic ideas of
> re-incarnation than Buddist ones.

We don't know enough about Celtic Religion before Christians destroyed it. Some of poems of Taliesin and Amargin might hint such concept behind the Christianized cover.....

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/175.html

<<I have been a blue salmon,
I have been a dog, a stag, a roebuck on the mountain, A stock, a spade, an axe in the hand,
A stallion, a bull, a buck,
I was reaped and placed in an oven;
I fell to the ground when I was being roasted And a hen swallowed me.
For nine nights was I in her crop.
I have been dead, I have been alive.
I am Taliesin.>>

If you bored with perpetual cycle of rebirth and want to escape from it, you might want to seek apotheosis and to hide in the God Plane. (Though that is not safest place for heroes sometimes control even border of life and death.) Monotheists offer you relatively easy escape (though other people might call it Void and Entropy), dragonewts offer another, but difficult route.

TI

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End of Glorantha Digest

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