Another test of the web-reply format, this one stripping the new Yahoo attribution system because it looks really glitchy. Naturally this turned into one of my heretical and wrongheaded rants so if it's lost, the gods are smiling on good people and frowning on the bad.
--- In WorldofGlorantha_at_yahoogroups.com, <worldofglorantha@yahoogroups.com> [David Dunham] wrote
> Maybe it's the other way around? There needed to be seven Lightbringers because of prior mythological tradition.
I love this, but in that event, what prior mythological tradition were the people (pre- or post-Harmast) drawing on that required a heptad?
It's an exciting notion that Harmast's innovation was not in simply daring to emulate the extant lightbringer myth (ritual heroquesting) but in actively creating it (experimental heroquesting) out of "what tools and weapons he could ... friends and others along the way." I always considered him something of an ur-reactionary by heroquest standards, that guy who goes back to recover the oldest of the old ways.
Of course that's a little naive but sometimes the texts don't spell everything out.
So if Harmast was drawing on prior mythological tradition to construct a Lightbringer myth, my initial suspicion is that the women of Esrolia let certain secrets slip that he -- with his rare experience of so many of said women -- could put together in an Orlanthi context and apply their secret seven (itself a sister of the Pelandan finger system) to the then-vanishing men's mythology and (re)construct the story. As the twists and turns in that sentence indicate, I like that idea a lot.
Where else could it have come from?
As you note elsewhere, Garundyer has "seven" storms. Are these seven lightbringers? I don't think so. None of those people are storms with the exception of Orlanth himself, so Garundyer's heptad is probably something more in the line of the mystical seven winds. (Did Harmast draw on vague reservoirs of Larnsti inspiration when putting his heptad together? Maybe. Although again I would consider all the lightbringers "of the storm tribe" but "an Orlanthi all" (85%) not actually storm gods.)
Do the seven storms/winds have any profound resonance with the seven fingers, seven brothers for seven brides? I like it. It seems a little too easy and raises hard questions about Entekos and Doburdun that I'm not equipped to answer right now. (Entekosiad Is Hard.) But it's in the mix.
Is there something pre-lightbringer in the tribal ring structure that Harmast or his successors translated to their seven-sided understanding of how many people god needs to get things done? I always thought the early seven-member rings of the Broken Council were imported from primordial Theyalan practice, so this is another way to go. But in that event, what mythic reason was there for seven people on the ring in the first place? I like this too.
There's the elemental cycle of the theyalan week, which seems to have been brought by the Council missionaries to Peloria also. EDIT Those missionaries were of course "Lightbringers" even then, so what does this mean here? Was the ur-LBQ actually the way they structured their mission parties to "spread the good news," in which case they may have gone out in seven-member teams?
Did Harmast simply break on through to the mythic world by sheer force of desperation and religious virtuosity, and then he or the people who came after him tidied up by formalizing our familiar heptad? Maybe, sure. At least we can rule out Hrelar Amari influences here (before or after) because if that was the factor, we'd have nine lightbringers and maybe nine mothers today.
Maybe an arcane lunar influence? If there was some pre-Rufelzan non-Pelandan system of seven that the God Learners were familiar with it, they have not left me their notes. Possibly there was a pre-Rufelzan lunar current running through the Dorastan civilization -- cyclical evolution of light and darkness squelched once they "agreed" that [Nysalor] would be a *bright* god -- but differentiating that from the seven-member council/tribal ring is hard, and anyway how would that stuff come down to Harmast?
Whatever the root source, as far as I know the God Learners seem pretty confident that seven was always important to the Theyalans and is primarily important (in their era) in a Theyalan context. By the time they roll on stage, the finger goddesses are buried deep enough to require future reconstruction and the Esrolians seem more interested in trinities and implied quadrangles, the square earth rune with her corners.
Now moving forward in time, I know people have speculated endlessly and productively about whether the Mothers drew on the existing structures of LBQ magic to get their conspiracy done. I don't recall the question ever being asked in reverse: how was the 7M cult complex *engineered* as a replacement for LB within provincial society?
Obviously it's a lot easier for missionaries to agree with upland savages that yes, it takes seven people to save the world -- but the specific seven people were actually these particular seven people, not Orlanth and all those old clouds. And they were people like you once, so draw inspiration from their deeds and so on and so forth.
Maybe in the early wanes there were four mothers, or ten, or six. The moon may even have cycled differently before somebody realized seven was the best number. Still so much we don't know. Still so many questions to ask. At least we know that by the reconstructed 1620s, there are seven statues in the temples and children in lunar families can rattle them all off by name.
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