Bell Digest vol09p06.txt

To: RuneQuest-Digest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM
From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM
Subject:  RuneQuest Digest Volume 9, no 6
Reply-To: RuneQuest-Digest-Editor@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM
Sender: Henk.Langeveld@Holland.Sun.COM

Contents:
		Nick Brooke	- Columbus Mercator
		Loren Miller	- Avatars of the gods
		Nick Brooke	- The Masks of God
		Ken Rolston	- Faith in Glorantha

Editorial:

	Some typical Gloranthan discussion of late, with heresy, mythology,
	and a question from Ken Rolston.

--
Henk Langeveld, Maintainer/Editor of the RuneQuest Digest and RuneQuest Daily
Submissions for the Daily to:		
for the Digest: 
Subscriptions and questions: 
Me: Henk.Langeveld@Holland.Sun.COM	

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From: 100270.337@CompuServe.COM (Nick Brooke)
Subject: Re: Mercator
Message-ID: <930916082123_100270.337_BHB40-1@CompuServe.COM>
Date: 16 Sep 93 08:21:23 GMT

Anbjorn Ragnarsson, Storm Voice of Orlanth is unfortunately confusing the 
defense of orthodoxy with propagation of heresy. If he would like to debate 
this matter further, I can give him the number of Mercartor's room in 
college (being sworn to the God of Truth, I could scarcely deny him this 
interesting factual snippet).

"The mer-things change, but we remain the same."
-- a God Learner afterlife belief (I think)

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From: MILLERL@wharton.upenn.edu (Loren J. Miller)
Subject: avatars of gods
Message-ID: <01H30RQPA55U8Y5ZE4@wharton.upenn.edu>
Date: 16 Sep 93 11:16:08 GMT

steve@psycho.demon.co.uk (Steve Thomas) writes, in response to Clay
and the Issaries question:
> I don't believe that changes just change themselves 
> (at least, not since the great compromise). 

Up to here I agree with you. The only changes that occur are at the
hands of HeroQuestors, and worshippers, which are the same thing...

> >Certainly avatars of the god existed at the fringe of the GL influence...
> 
> What is a god's "avatar" in a Gloranthan sense ? Some kind of super 
> cult spirit watching over the cult? If they're spirits they're probably too 
> weak, if gods, then their hands are tied by the Compromise. Anyway
> I think that 'certainly' is deeply overstating the case.

I wanted to find out if the god that was worshipped under a name in
one place necessarily had to be identical to the god that was
worshipped under the same name elsewhere, and how identical it might
be, so I asked Greg if an Ulerian priestess from Nochet were to travel
to, for instance, Vormain and visit one of the Ulerian temples there,
the ones that have a profoundly different vision of the granting of
pleasure that is reminiscent of the Hellraiser movies, and if she were
somehow able to survive the personality conflicts inspired by the
different views of the cult,  so if this Ulerian were
to visit the holy of holies in the Vormaini Uleria temple and pray
would she be able to get a divine spell back from Uleria? Greg said
yes, she would. The two temples would tell radically different
versions of Uleria's myths and the two goddesses would appear almost
completely dissimilar, yet they both connect to the same divine
source.

Using this theory the easiest way to define an avatar is as a mask of
a god, which has access to the true form of the god, but which is not
the true form of the god. Usually, this means that the version of the
god that we worship is obviously the true god, while the twisted
versions that the folks over the hill worship is merely an avatar.
They can't be the same, after all, because they don't have quite the
same myths. And they can't be all that different because our temples
work just like theirs, and when we are forced to visit them for the
tribal moot our priests can use their altars for proper worship
services. So it's obvious that they worship the true god, but through
a mask that distorts appearances slightly and makes the true god more
palatable to their perverse minds. Thus an avatar is like a mask.

Now if the preceeding definition of avatar is acceptable to you then
try chewing on this. Every worship service is a heroquest, and such
worship slowly changes the mythic landscape for a particular locale or
bloodline. Thus traditions develop and diverge, so that people worship
differently in different places. Another way to say the same thing: In
some places cultists worship an avatar and other places have chosen
different avatars, and so contradictions in myths are everywhere. In
fact, if a myth is extremely consistent across a huge range of lands
and cultures then it's almost sure proof of powerful, and RECENT,
GodLearner style meddling, or at best a well-organized mythic
maintenance squad within the cult, which is still pretty darn scary.

whoah,
+++++++++++++++++++++++23
Loren Miller            internet: MILLERL@wharton.upenn.edu
"Enough sound bites. Let's get to work."        -- Ross Perot sound bite

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From: 100270.337@CompuServe.COM (Nick Brooke)
Subject: The Masks of God
Message-ID: <930917091238_100270.337_BHB30-2@CompuServe.COM>
Date: 17 Sep 93 09:12:38 GMT

Clay Luther writes a damn' fine piece of fiction, IMHO!
I enjoyed it a lot: well-written and intriguing.
Wish I could write this well...
More of the same, please!

____________
Loren wrote:

> I wanted to find out if the god that was worshipped under a name in
> one place necessarily had to be identical to the god that was wor-
> shipped under the same name elsewhere, and how identical it might be...

Hey, so did I! Except that 'cos I'd started out by knocking the Cult of 
Orlanth as "about as useful a concept as the Cult of Dyaus-Pitar", I got a 
real-world answer about priests of Jupiter, Zeus, etc. What Greg said to 
me:

| I love sneering "The Cult of Dyaus-Pitar" as a comparison. But if I
| can push that comparison a little bit to help: a worshipper of Zeus
| could go to a Temple of Jupiter, and probably get the majority of his
| rune spells back there. He could go to a temple of Indra, and get some
| too. But only the broadest type of spells, like Thunder and Rain, and
| some of the royal prerogative spells. But he couldn't go to a temple
| of Typhon/Set and get a spell, even though it is a storm god. Just too
| different.

Now that means that you got more from it than I did, 'cos you asked the 
Gloranthan Question. But I'm not sure we should ask about "the god that was 
worshipped under the same name elsewhere."  It begs the question...     
^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^
Y'know, it's like the self-centred way that some early Christians used to 
say all pagan religion had prefigured their own myths. Or the Conquistadors 
saying that Aztec religion was a diabolical parody of Christianity. Or (my 
favourite) good old Herodotus, the Father of History and a *fascinating* 
author, writing about the gods worshipped by foreigners:

: "The only gods the Scythians worship are Hestia (their chief deity),
: Zeus, and Earth (whom they believe to be the wife of Zeus), and, as
: deities of secondary importance, Apollo, Celestial Aphrodite, Heracles,
: and Ares. These are recognized by the entire nation; the Royal Scythians
: also offer sacrifice to Poseidon. In the Scythian language, Hestia is
: *Tabiti*, Zeus (very properly, in my opinion) *Papaeus*, Earth *Api*,
: Apollo *Oetosyrus*, Aphrodite *Argimpasa*, Poseidon *Thagimasidas*."

If the Scythians could recognise their religion in this, I'd be surprised! 
But that's probably what we RuneQuesters are doing when we blandly label 
any storm-worshipping barbarian folk as "Orlanthi" or sun-worshipping 
civilised folk as "Yelmic". We have these oh-so-dandy name-labels that we 
can slap onto the different deities and make them appear very cohesive 
indeed.

Sometimes the similarities are real: there was a common Orlanthi root 
culture thousands of years ago that spread over all Genertela. Sometimes 
they're due to cross-cultural pollination (lots of this in the Pelorian 
Mythology we're working on at the moment). But writing up the "Orlanthi 
Religion" is like writing up "Cults of the Indo-Europeans": an academic, 
not a practical exercise. (But a *very* interesting academic one: anyone 
else on this list a fan of Dumezil?)

I'm not sure that there is (or should be) a *certain* way of finding out 
whether two gods are one and the same (i.e. via a HeroQuest, or any cult 
secret other than the discredited RuneQuest Sight). As with those virtuous 
Arkati Illuminates, you get more fun out of the doubts and uncertainties.

Note that (per KoS p.246) at rituals, while a lay member can "watch what is 
going on, they never participate in the magic, and never get to see 
anything other than the mundane results of the rites." Unless you're a God 
Learner, you'd have to become an initiate of the cult (and obtain your own 
personal connection to the god worshipped) in order to "see him" through a 
worship service; even then, how would you know if he was the same guy or 
not? {see below for more}

> Would she be able to get a divine spell back from Uleria? Greg said
> yes, she would. The two temples would tell radically different
> versions of Uleria's myths and the two goddesses would appear almost
> completely dissimilar, yet they both connect to the same divine source.

That's more or less where I got to with him. But in Glorantha, Uleria is 
certainly *the* most omnipresent goddess imaginable, so I don't know about 
the practical applicability of this. I tried Greg on a Wenelian worshipper 
of the Boar God trying to renew his Berserk spells in a Storm Bull temple; 
and there, he said,

| He *might* be able to get his berserker spell at a Storm Bull temple.
| But probably not. This is not an archetypal function: it is a specific
| function. The fact that both are berserkers is not enough to link them.
| But of course, if the priests were smart, maybe did some heroquesting
| to discover/make links, then your boar guys might be recognized as
| Storm Bull the Boar!

Continuing from above: if one Wenelian says, "I think that Storm Bull god 
you hear so many people talking about is probably just a foreign way of 
worshipping the Great Boar", and he becomes a Storm Bull initiate to find 
out, is he discovering a link that already existed, or making a link that 
never was, before? He takes his belief with him into the cult; at the 
rituals, he'll try to "see through" the bull-horns and bull-masks the 
cultists are wearing and look for similarities with his own tusky stuff.

He could succeed (in mundane terms): he could convince himself that he's 
right. He could perhaps succeed (in a HeroQuest): he could definitively 
"discover" that the two gods are the same (of course, this is a personal 
religious experience, thus not definitive in any global sense). He might 
even become a cult hero, if he can find a way of showing anyone else what 
he's learned, and have them believe him. Then the Boar Cult will get 
stories of how their god gored the Devil, and go on to higher and better 
things.

> Using this theory the easiest way to define an avatar is as a mask of
> a god, which has access to the true form of the god, but which is not
> the true form of the god. Usually, this means that the version of the
> god that we worship is obviously the true god...

This is nicely put. We know that we worship God properly: we know stories 
about him that other people don't tell as well; our statue looks more like 
him; the weapon he carries is different; our Thunderer's voice is more 
booming and resonant...

> They can't be all that different because our temples work just like
> theirs...

Or, at least, very similarly. We have different subcult shrines, different 
associate cults, maybe even slightly different Spirit and Rune magic. 
Within a rules framework, some things can easily be "bent" to differentiate 
between local temples. I'd encourage this, to get people thinking.

> Every worship service is a heroquest, and such worship slowly changes 
> the mythic landscape for a particular locale or bloodline. Thus tradi-
> tions develop and diverge, so that people worship differently in diff-
> erent places...

YES! YES! You are *so* right in what you say. Hurrah for common sense!

> If a myth is extremely consistent across a huge range of lands and 
> cultures then it's almost sure proof of powerful, and RECENT, God 
> Learner style meddling, or at best a well-organized mythic mainten- 
> ance squad within the cult, which is still pretty darn scary.

Yup. Best modern example is the Lunar Empire: p.d.s. to me!

Back to what Greg said about archetypal v. specific functions. If we want a 
single, simple, Gloranthan way of applying this stuff, it could be to draw 
a distinction between the Greater Gods (Rune-owners) and all the other 
ones. All gods with the Storm Rune are, in some ways, similar to Orlanth, 
because Orlanth has "made that Rune his own". So the Great Big Gods are the 
primal archetypes; the smaller ones are spin-offs and local variants (as we 
would expect).

A god who kicks in Chaos (the Bull) and a god who kicks in people who upset 
the Women of the Woods (the Boar) aren't *quite* the same, but researching 
their origins is too God Learner-ish a thing for me to want to do right 
now.

End story: there is as much mythical divergence in Glorantha as in the real 
world. Some things change, some stay the same. God Learners and others can 
muck around with existing myths, build new ones, recognise common themes, 
etc. But the historical trend is broadly towards evolution to meet local 
needs, and divergence from common origins.

Unplayable, I know.

Feedback, please!

====
Nick
====

"After all, Zeus the Werewolf was still Zeus."
-- Greg Stafford

--------------------

From: kenrolston@aol.com
Subject: Faith in Glorantha
Message-ID: <9309191201.tn57610@aol.com>
Date: 19 Sep 93 16:01:06 GMT

I've been wondering about the nature of faith in Glorantha.

Since the gods are manifest -- or at least as inferentially empirical as lots
of modern physics -- there is no issue of faith in the existence of gods.

The issue of faith in Glorantha is  -- are the gods telling the truth?

Also, in tolerant polytheistic Gloranthan societies, there is also the issue
of faith in the moral goodness of the god -- that is, not just whether you
accept his commandments and myths as truth, but whether you "prefer" a god's
moral vision enough to become his initiate. Given the spirits of retribution
of cults, it appears that choosing a different god than the one you were born
has a modest, though significant, personal cost. Is it significant for a
Gloranthan character's story when we learn he has, for example, forsaken the
worship of Orlanth for Chalana Arroy? Or, more dramatically, when he
foresakes the worship of Orlanth for Seven Mothers?

I ask for views on these questions because I'm playing with short stories in
glorantha, and I feel I have no real sense of the religious feeling attached
to the Gloranthan cults. Certainly part of the problem is not knowing
polytheism firsthand. Another is my sense that, since the cult is a game
mechanic, it is insufficiently fleshed out to provide a guide to a common
person's interest in participation in a cult's myths, prescriptions, and
activities.

I note also that I am prejudiced against heroic roleplaying by inclination.
My characters and campaigns are uniformly low-level and focused on everyday
folk (hobbits, if you will) caught up in the affairs of the Big People. I
admire the flavor of epic mythic speculation occasioned by the Gloranthan
setting, but it rarely has much bearing on the things going on in my gaming
world.

Ken Rolston