> On the subject of Grimoires and their creation, I have a strong
> feeling that we are being sidetracked by a word that creates the
> wrong impression (such that progress in sorcery is about making magic
> books). Instead I want to describe them using a new word that will
> give us a better understanding of what it's all about.
>
> That word is Thesis.
>
> A sorcerer's thesis represents his personal understanding of the
> Cosmos. Initially he is taught one or two spells by his master and
> spends his apprenticeship trying to weave the spells into a thesis.
> Once he does so, he's no longer an apprentice but a fully fledged
> sorceror. He could try to invent spells to his thesis but these are
> the equivalent of lengthy scientific experiments that may not work.
> He is more likely to add already existing spells to his thesis, which
> is the equivalent of swotting up for an exam - once he casts the spell
> through his thesis, he's passed.
Personally, I think the idea has a goodly amount of merit, BUT -- I think that it might potentially only be applicable to certain sects of Malkionism where formal intellectualism is seen as the privileged pathway for access to God.
Certainly such sects can and do exist in Glorantha, and Sog City would prima facie appear to be a good place where such intellectual models of Malkionism might be dominant.
Nevertheless, some other sects of Malkionism might take a radically opposite approach as the proper pathway to God, such as for example by their members _divesting_ themselves of all personal and educationally-provided thought as being "limiting", and instead using charismatic meditational and/or divinational methods to link directly with God and his Saints etc outside any possibility even of a pseudo-university cursus whatsoever.
And of course, run-of-the-mill tradition-based magical methods, hedge wizardry, those_strange_women_who_live_up_the_hill_in_the_woods, etc would very often provide magic and a relationship with God as some sort of locally variable balance between totally uncreative rote learning and some measure of raw, individual magical talent that nevertheless never steps outside its rote bounds.
Whatever else, the descriptions of spells in the literature tend to designate them as being learned by rote, and furthermore that in 3rd Age Glorantha at least, the more creative forms of magic that you suggest (and that I myself cryptically alluded to in an earlier post) tend culturally to be taboo, evil things that the God Learners did in the Bad Old Days.
> Unlike standard grimoires, theses are not readily communicable.
> That's because they are full of private language and codes that only
> make sense to the sorceror and some sense to those that knew him
> best. To become clear to everybody requires that the sorceror
> generalize his understandings from the particulars.
>
> Like grimoires, theses are dedicated to a rune. (etc)
OTOH some of that seems like its been directly lifted from various general descriptions of sorcery that either have or have not been published, officially and otherwise. :)
> The aim of a wizard is similar to that of a sorceror to have a
> presence at a runic node and a grimoire named after him (or her).
> Instead of constructing a thesis, they aim to use their vast
> knowledge of revealed works to uncover an unrevealed work of the
> Invisible God. Wizards that discover such a manifestation and craft
> a spell from it become Venerable. Wizards that create a fully
> comprehensible grimoire from that manifestation become Blessed. The
> third step is of course Sainthood (but this is far from being the
> only path towards such).
Sounds good, but again I think that this would be applicable to SOME but NOT ALL sects and organisations of Malkionism/non-Malkionism.
It would for instance be wildly and radically divergent from the magical methods of the Traditionalist Knights of the Castle Coast for example, where chivalry, knightly conduct, parfit amor, quests, jousts, the feudal social order, the distress of damsels, and the manifestation of God's Will and his Love in the form of sacred relics that one goes out and quests for (in magical forests and elsewhere) would all be part of the very _basis_ of how they do magic instead of all that big-headed brainy zzaburi nonsense of foreign parts :)
Julian Lord
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