>> If [Lodril] was the god of peasants, what magics do you think he should >> have?
> Let's see,
> Power over the earth and for growing crops comes from the women (who
> seem to be utterly absent from all the Lodril-earth-god arguments).
Dara Happa, for your information, happens to be a patriarchal society. Female deities are intentionally secondary to Lodril. If Lodril wasn't able to have power over the earth, the peasants would worship someone who could.
> Male god of Fire, strength and earthly joys seems quite useful and
> spiritually fulfilling to me.
The issue is what use they would have in the everyday challenges a farmer faces in Dara Happa. Throwing fireballs and indulging in earthly pleasures don't help a great deal.
> Fire is a _huge_ deal in low tech
> societies, and the smithing aspects seem quite telling for what is
> considered men's work.
So the average Lodrili's contribution to farming life is smithing and lighting fires? Doesn't seem very helpful considering that smithing is expensive and practioced only by a few.
> The approach to plowing would seem to come
> more from smithing and technology, and indeed opening furrows as per
> the usual sexual metaphor,
Except that the majority of Lodrili grow rice in paddy fields which doesn't need plows.
> Lighting and controlling fires.
And how does lighting fires help in making the Pelorian farmer's life easier?
> Keeping the fields warm incase of frost.
Something useful only once or twice a year.
> Male fertility.
Most men can have kids. I'm not sure why the Lodrili need special help in this area.
> Most importantly, having a
> member of the Solar Pantheon who left his lofty perch, and come down
> to live with the Hoi Polloi, giving the vast majority of the people a
> spiritual link to the fires of life.
If he doesn't help out around the place then there's no much point in worshiping him, I would have thought.
> That's not enough for the male peasants god?
No, it's not. You seem to be justifying the magic in the cults compendium as being all that is needed for Lodril without wondering what a farmer might look for in Lodril.
--Peter Metcalfe
Powered by hypermail