On 19/03/2013, at 6:41 AM, Chris Lemens <chrislemens_at_...> wrote:
> Now more:
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> There are presumably lots of kinds of animism and my take on it is throughly muddled with how I see Praxians, so I am not sure how much fo this reflects animism and how much reflects Praxians.
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> The Praxian landscape is alive with spirits and other beings. Their lands are a particularly thin part of the cosmos. You can slip into the hero plane in some places without intention or ritual. And ghosts can sometimes come the other way.
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> But just because the landscape is alive does not mean that the landscape is friendly. The wastes, in particular, have suffered and are twisted for it. I personally think that the cactus forest is the twisted remnant of a much greater forest; after all, we know that there were white elves in the garden. The cacti can't be terribly happy spirits much of the time. They may remember what was lost, if only distantly.
Absolutely. There are many ghosts
> Not all the spirits are landscape spirits, though they might be tied to the landscape. There were an awfully large number of non-human races in Genert's Garden and Tada's khanate. Some appear to be extinct; even those who are not are too few to spend the time placating the ghosts of their many dead ancestors. So you may encouter many more (than "usual," if you will) spirits that are neither ghosts of your own ancestors nor embodied natural spirits.
For example, the relative prevalence of the Cannibal Cult in Prax, IMO, comes not from any particular cultural predilection to cannibalism, but simply because Prax is a region where it is relatively common to find: an area where the borders to the spirit plane are a little weak; where these areas can not easily be avoided (as they often coincide with essential water or food sources etc); where there are many ghosts; and the ghosts are not ancestors or otherwise easily negotiated with by normal shamanic means. As a result, a tradition, even a relatively awful one, that allows dealing with hostile alien ghosts is valued. The Ghost Darters, similarly, though their methods are very different, are also a group whose focus is on dealing with alien ghosts etc - in their case, by direct attack. In most of Glorantha, even in areas that teem with hostile ghosts, the local shamans are usually able to deal with them by established methods. For example, the forests of Erigia contain many angry Aldryami spirits, but the shamans of the Char-Un are able to defeat them (indeed, the Aldryami ghosts exist because the magic of the Char-Un shamans was able to comprehensively defeat that of the Aldryami). In the Wastes, the teeming ghosts often predate the Waha tradition entirely, and so Waha shamans are reduced to the most primitive methods of placation, or direct attack.
> I think that chaos creatures are mostly soulless and spiritless, so the wastes are not plagued by ghosts of choas creatures. If you disagree with my premise, then you could also say that one of Waha's many feats was to appoint Daka Fal to be khan of the dead. (Waha talks big. I can't imagine he had much to do with actually separating the living from the dead. But he's happy to let someone else do the work and take some of the credit. And he must have some something to sign on to the event that others call the great compromise, the dawn, and the beginning of time.)
I think that there is a different ancestor to the relative lack of chaos spirits in the Wastes - they are swept up into the Eternal Battle, and either destroyed or become part of the battle.
> Many of the spirits Praxians encounter daily are small spirits that are not particularly hostile, but have to be placated. This may require nearly no effort. Make a sign, say a word, bow your head as you pass, that kind of thing. Others may require something greater and may give something in return (other than simply not interfering). In times of need these small spirits can be cajoled, bribed, or forced to help those who know about them.
Absolutely. Spirits of plants, dry rivers, animal ghosts, etc. Most are minor and just need rituals and taboos to be followed to avoid angering them. A spirit of a dead predator, for example, normally might need to just be avoided or not angered by 'stealing' his prey, but on occasion might be bribed or forced into attacking an enemy.
> Because the plaines are so full of spirits, selecting a place for a ritual is really important. You can't just light your ceremonial fire anywhere. You might piss off the local. Because of that, even many small rituals begin with the departure and finish with the return. These are simple, in-world steps that remove the celebrants to prepared sacred ground. They journey there can be important. So, well before an important ritual, an elder may tell a story about a journey that everyone -- especially the youngsters -- should keep in mind as they go to and from.
Places are incredibly important, IMO. Many many spirits can only be contacted at a particular place, and many more only at a particular kind of place (like a cave, or a creek bed, or near a particular kind of plant).
> In rituals, I see a lot of dancing, drumming, and chanting. The Praxian's main great spirits -- excepting maybe Horned Man -- are limited in scope. To me, that means that celebrants have to do a lot of work in their rituals. Maybe something simpler works elsewhere, but the natural powers others can draw on are diminished in the wastes. Or, worse yet, you may draw on something you wish you had not.
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> Praxian shamans can be terrifyingly powerful, simply because of how many spirits they can know. But the broader their knowledge, the more behaviors they will have to adopt to avoid angering or alienating those spirits.
And the knowledge of those additional spirits is often controlled by spirit societies, or otherwise by powerful shamans that may not be from the same tribe. The process of acquiring wide knowledge of Praxian spirits may erode tribal identity. It is also very difficult to know a truly comprehensive range of Praxian spirits, as the spirit societies guard their knowledge from the other societies. To participate in multiple societies is truly unusual - though a truly great shaman may be able to. That is not to say that there are not shamans who are strongly identified with their tribe, and travel with the tribe most of the time - but they are also the shamans with the most limited knowledge of spirits, focused on the Waha tradition.
> There will certainly be some spirits that they are simply powerful enough to control. But relying on brute strength with a hostile spirit makes it a bad plan to call on that spirit in a time of dire need. So I think that they look for mutually beneficial relationships.
Absolutely. I agree that placation and exchange is very important in Praxian magic.
> And because some spirits' needs are inexplicable, so are some of the things that shamans do. These constrains are one of the many reasons why shamans can be personally powerful, but rarely exercise political power.
I think there is also a degree to which the Khans and Queens hold power inside the tribal context, but the interconnections between the tribes are mostly maintained by the spirit societies, that are controlled by the shamans. The shamans, to some degree, substitute subtle power across the tribes for overt power within the tribes. And those who have power within the spirit societies are often likely to find themselves being drawn out of the tribal context - they often have to travel separate to the tribes, and maintain secrets from them. The spirit societies in some ways act as a safety valve - for those who might otherwise challenge the power of the Khan or Queen, the spirit societies offer them an alternate path - but one that removes them from the tribal context so they never actually challenge.
> As I said before, travelling the trails is an in-world heroquest that sometimes traverses parts of the hero plane. There are at least two different sets of path through parts of Prax and the wastes: the roads of Ronance and the trails of Waha. I believe that many Waha trails overlay Ronance roads. One of the reasons is that the Waha trails also form part of Arachne Solara's web that has held the universe together since time began. Although the wastes are a particularly thin part of the universe, the nomads' continual travel across those paths has strengthened the web where it was thinnest (at least, before Nysalor came along -- maybe somewhere else is thinner now).
While I absolutely don't want to push this comparison too far, the idea of Australian Aboriginal songlines might be a useful comparison. These form long known pathways across the landscape (often hundreds, even low thousands, of kilometres), and as you follow the path from one site to another, you are also following a particular mythic narrative from station to station (sometimes crossing and intersecting stories at major landmarks). Only someone who has travelled the whole length and participated in ceremonies all along its length might know the full secrets of the myth. Learning a heroquest path thus requires a significant journey, and often interacting with the territory of other groups.
> I think that the roads and trails also relate to an earlier conflict, between the giants and the dragons. There are dragons in Dragon Pass and in Kralorela. It boggles the mind that there are none in between. So what happened to them? Well, there are definitely giants in between those two groups of dragons, which gives me a strong hint. I suspect that the Ronance roads overlay what used tobe dragon newt magical roads.
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> IMG, this goes further: The roads now help suppress the draconic elements of the landscape, including much of the water. A big exception is the Wicked Writher, who continually breaks free. Note that, when Waha wrestles the serpents, he follows in the path of the giants who fought them before. This is a recurring theme in my conception of Prax.
I think that is an insightful idea.
It explains the secrecy of the Serpent Dancers tradition, if they are more or less interacting with entities that are opponents of Waha.
Cheers
David
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