One school, lead by Sandy, seems to feel that they are full-blown personalities with likes and dislikes and habits, and they are fully independant of their worshippers. If nobody worshipped them, then they would still exist and they would still have the same personality.
Another school seems to think that the gods have no existance whatsoever. They are created when enough people decide to believe in them. And they only exist by drawing upon the belief (and the MP and POW) of their worshippers. They are some sort of divine parasite that feeds on their worshippers.
There also seem to be some compromise schools of thought. These suggest that the core power of the god must be a real thing but the god may be a product of the worshippers, i.e. the sun will exist whether anyone worships it or not, but Yelm only exists as long as people worship the sun.
It seems to me that the Sandy faction are Theyalans. The parasite faction are Malkioni (the Invisible God is real, but all the false gods are parasites). The compromisers are representative of the dangerous philosophies of the Lunars or God Learners or other obscure groups.
The important point is that all these different viewpoints can be held by people who actually live in Glorantha. Whatever the ultimate reality of gods in Glorantha may be, it must be possible for intelligent and reasonable people living in Glorantha to experience the Divine in such a way that they can disagree with each other this much.
Those of us who only study Glorantha from the outside may have to be content with the fact that we will never know what the nature of Gloranthan gods is, but we can know how they interact with the people of Glorantha. And I feel that the people are what is important. So when you are playing or game-mastering, don't worry about whether Orlanth is real, or false, or an anthropomorphic projection onto a runic archetype, or whatever else someone may have speculated. If you are playing an Orlanthi, then he is real and eternal; if you are playing a Hrestoli then he is a demonic, soul-eating, falsehood.
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