But according to Vithelans, they knew of sorcery due to the Martalak and the others challenging Vith during the Creation Cycle.
To me, at least, this "difference" in mythic timing doesn't really matter - as both events happened before the beginning of linear Time.
I suppose it does matter if your a God-Learner, though, and your
trying to manipulate the myth...
-Santo
aum shanti shanti shantih.
"The world is like the impression left by the telling of a story." -
from the Yoga Vāsiṣṭha
On Sun, Feb 17, 2013 at 9:51 PM, David Cake <dave_at_...> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 15/02/2013, at 4:54 PM, Peter Metcalfe metcalph_at_...>
> wrote:
>
>> On 2/14/2013 6:38 PM, David Cake wrote:
>>> Yeah, but only roughly. It only makes the point stronger in any case -
>>> in Eastern myth, they claim that they knew of sorcerers, priests and
>>> shamans more or less before there were even people. (contrast with the
>>> Western myths, in which Danmalastan has only sorcery users within its
>>> borders, and their first contact with spirits is a Big Deal and very
>>> confronting and disruptive.)
>>
>> That's true, they do. But Vithelan mythology shows signs of being
>> worked over to support the philosophy rather than the philosophy
>> proceeding from an interpretation of mythical events.
>
> Absolutely.
>
>> For example Mashunasan interprets the Gods War as a sequence of five
>> Cosmic Wars that are also mental states that the mystic must undergo to
>> become enlightened. The parallels between this and the five stages of
>> God in Malkioni philosophy are rather close (even more so when the
>> fivefold cosmology is unknown to the Mostali) that leads me to suspect
>> the Easterners learned of it from the Malkioni, thought it useful and
>> embedded it within their cosmology.
>
> Without speculating as to which came first, the 'ages of the world
> corresponds to philosophical ideas' schema does certainly suggest that the
> Eastern mythic cycle is not to be taken too much as literal history.
>
> I still think the basic point I was originally making, that the three other
> forms of magic appear to have been present in the East and part of Eastern
> mythology for a very long time, is uneffected. If the East really learnt of
> sorcery only from Viymorni or Kachasti explorers in the Late Golden Age,
> rather than (as they might claim if we literally accept the myths of the
> Vith cycle) sorcery having been present since some time in the Cosmic
> Cycle/Green Age, it doesn't make much difference - the point is, long long
> before the dawn sorcery was already very much an accepted part of Eastern
> myth and a known form of magic there (and the same goes for shamanism and
> divine magic).
> Regards
> David
>
>
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