Re: Orlanth is a Toilet

From: David Cake <dave_at_ovRdjePXBwWbMEQc9ZyneNslC9VkBFCEFxnepmXXsEkQ4Pvg_gfyuzpzrpD3pjlN7Bur_os>
Date: Sun, 20 May 2007 11:05:59 +0930


At 5:03 PM -0700 19/5/07, Roderick and Ellen Robertson wrote:
>...But not in the way you're probably thinking.
>
>Having little to do while mowing today, it came to me that the worship of
>Orlanth & Ernalda (thats is, the HW/HQ version with men & women's worship
>seperate) is really like public restrooms (in the US). we have seperate
>facilities based on gender, and woe betide the man who walks into the lady's
>room accidently! Unisex bathrooms are rare (Hmm, Heler?), and only the most
>desparate emergency will induce a lady to use the men's john (like, 7th
>inning stretch at a ballbark with 'way too few lady's rooms).
>
>I'm not sure how far this analogy will stretch...
	Not far at all.
	In that toilets are a tiny bit of life, a single gender 
division for a few specific biological functions -- whereas Orlanth is a god of everything, a god for the whole of life.

        Now, if we were talking about businesses that had entirely segregated flaws for different functions, it would be an OK analogy - but that sort of thing went out in the 1950s.

>I also had a thought about the "Vinga gets mad if you get pregnant"
>dilemma - How about, upon entering the seriously tomboy version of Vinga
>(ie, not the Red lady who's just out for revenge, but the "I wanna be a
>full-time fighter" ones) you have to take an oath to Vinga not to get
>pregnant - no mention of *how* you will achieve this goal, but just "I swear
>I won't get Pregnant". Now, the Vingan is free to satisfy her desires any
>way she wants, but in the event she *does* get preggers, Vinga gets mad
>because *the worshipper broke an oath*, not just because she got pregnant.

        I don't think it really pleases anyone. You then just end up with the same questions, rephrased differently. Instead of saying 'So, why does Vingas divine will say that...' replaced with 'So, why does Vingas divine will say worshippers should swear an oath that.....'.

        It makes a bit of an out for a hypothetical group who want to have BOTH Vingans that suffer divine wrath from pregnancy and those that don't, I guess - you could presume that in some areas they swear the oath, and in others they don't, and Vinga doesn't care much about the oath in the first place, but enforces it anyway. Which would be wacky, and answers a question no one is asking.

        But I'm afraid you don't answer the question people are asking - such as why is a cult comprised entirely of women who have undergone Ernaldan initiation seen as more cut off from Ernalda than any other female cult? Why does Vinga alone have a myth that its worshippers AREN'T supposed to follow?

        The whole 'Vinga forbids her worshippers to follow her own myth' thing seems to me to more odd the more I think about it. Even if you grant the myth (which is granting a lot) it makes no sense. Sure, if you grant the myth Vinga made a mistake. Does Orlanth forbid his worshippers to kill Yelmites, because that turned out to be a big mistake? Does Yelmalio forbid his worshippers to go to the Hill of Gold because he got the crap beaten out of him? If a deity makes a mistake and undergoes a trial, it seems much more usual for the myth to be used as a path out for a worshipper who gets into that particular kind of trouble, rather than the basis for a taboo.

	Cheers
		David



           

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