Bell Digest v940923p3

From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RQ Digest Maintainer)
To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Daily automated RQ-Digest)
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Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Fri, 23 Sep 1994, part 3
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From: alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk (Alex Ferguson)
Subject: Yet Ymore Yelmalio.
Message-ID: <9409230542.AA04517@hawaii.dcs.gla.ac.uk>
Date: 23 Sep 94 05:42:59 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6346


Peter Metcalfe hopes to get the Last word on Yelmalio, and get in a few(?)
sly digs in the process:
> Even though whole cultures may change their position on what really 
> matters in their world view, I do not believe that a change in the 
> myths praticed by a culture forces a change in the god.

If the magic of the religion changes, if the myths change, if the rituals
change, then if one asserts that the god is completely unchanged by all
this, then one is surely abstracting the concept to the point of meaningless.
On the specific point in hand, yes, I believe you could (re?)gain Yelmalio's
fire powers by a (huge) heroquest.  Argumentum ad authoratatum available
upon request.

> >The gods form a confluent term reduction system?

> This is trite goobledigook.  Please rephrase in standard english.  I 
> cannot understand the point you are making here.

It's a brave man who brands something trite while admitting he doesn't
understand it.  (Let's just say I was being ironical about one's chances
about proving things about gods, internally to Glorantha.)

> >>[Invisble Orlanth]

> >Whichever way you slice it, they believe in a relationship between
> >the two {Orlanth = invisible God} which would not be accepted elsewhere 
> >(like Loskalm, or Sartar). Which of them is wrong, and why does their 
> >magic still work?

> Their magic works because of the mythic energy poured into creating the 
> myth.  I believe it was created within time.  The spirit they have created 
> by the creation of the myth and which they now worship is the secret of 
> 'Orlanths' enlightenment.  

Which seems quite different from what you started off saying.  Myths are
fixed, except when they change?  As to whether Invisible God is a
"different" god from either/both Orlanth, and the Invisible God: well, this
is where we came in, isn't it?

> >Obviously no priest is going to stand up and boldfacedly tell his
> >congregation that they'd been worshipping the wrong god, let's switch to
> >a new one.  That doesn't mean that either i) he's right, in some one true
> >cosmological sense; or ii) that he won't later deny any identity, when
> >others persist in worshipping the "wrong" god.

> So Martin Luther and Jan Huss were not worshipping Jesus Christ when they 
> made their doctrinal changes?

Other than that they would (I would imagine) have said they were worshipping
God, rather than J.C., this straw man seems to be off-track enough to safely
ignore.

> >In any case, I don't think the typical Sartarite has a great working
> >knowledge of God Learnerism, so it would hardly be the insult of choice.

> See Orlanth and the Machine God in KoS for the average Orlanthi belief 
> and view of God Learners.

And what link would an Orlanthi make between this myth, and someone saying
"let's worship Yelmalio, the true sun god"?  None, I posit.

> >You can quibble about what you can do to an arbitrary person,
> >worshipper or not, but there's a clearly stated further restriction
> >about what you can't do to worshippers of the "same" god.  

> So you can't use divination to find out which scummy priest has murdered
> the High priest?

No, go look up the rules.  The restriction on divination is that a god
knows what his worshippers know, and not what "different" god's worshippers
know.  So by reductionist thinking, one could use this as a test for
God Object Identity.  (And no, I'm not saying this would be a good thing
to do, before I attract an out-of-context flame.)

> Surely Zorak Zorani can use whatever Runespells they like when fighting 
> each other.

Again, that isn't the restriction I was referring to.

> > >>[The dissension in the Elmali clans]

> >The Yelmalio cult, please, if you would.  They're arguing about things like
> >whether (Y)Elmal(io) is the son of Yelm, whether one should have shrines to
> >Yelm in the temples, etc.  These are ultimately Dara Happan idea, yes, but
> >hardly require that one has door-to-door salesmen from the Antirius cult.

> If they didn't have missionaries from Dara happa then how did the trouble 
> come about?

There are other solar cults than Antirius, for one thing.  Secondly,
contact between the two cultures does not imply missionary work.  The
very fact that Yelmites get Sunspear and Elmali don't is enough to be
going on with.

> >If you mean that Elmali as such still exist, this is also Greg Stafford's
> >interpretation.  

> What my interpretation of the story was that strife wracked the 
> Elmali clans until Monrogh came back with a version that proved 
> acceptable to all: Yelmalio (not too Dara Happan, not too Wimpy).

If this were the case, why go to all the bother of kicking them out into
the Phorthan's Land Sun Dome temple?  Note that the Enhyli are referred to
as the "Elmal clan" in KoS, so this isn't the Alex I suggested it might be,
it's a Greg.  (Not that I'm suggesting it should be Compulsory to believe
this, in any case.  I know that Sandy, for one, has adopted a (different)
No Elmali solution, and good luck to 'im.)

Alex.

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From: alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk (Alex Ferguson)
Subject: The man with no p.
Message-ID: <9409230545.AA04525@hawaii.dcs.gla.ac.uk>
Date: 23 Sep 94 05:45:07 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6347


Nick Eden on reconsiling Greg and the Psych Psquad:
> Then again Cambell and Jung believed in what they wrote about, and I 
> don't think Greg's theology is the sort that says because an 
> anthropologist worked it out it is therefore false.

I think that belief in a theory about belief is a bit too meta for me (and
that's saying something.)  I know Greg shamelessly pinches lots of J&C
ideas, but if I understand them all correctly, they differ according to
whether the Invisible World is "real" (I know, what do we mean by...),
or whether we should just humour it by pretending it is.  Well, humour
our psyches by pretending it is, if ya wanna get picky.

Alex.

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From: henkl@aft-ms (Henk Langeveld - Sun Nederland)
Subject: Re: Frozen blood of the Gods...
Message-ID: <9409230644.AA10007@yelm.Holland.Sun.COM>
Date: 23 Sep 94 07:44:50 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6348

(George Winter)
>P.S. Someone was saying that TS was the frozen blood of gods, I have always
>seen it refered to as a piece of the Spike.

That's what crystals are...  Truestone == LAW == Spike.
-- 
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oK[]	|	RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM
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