I didn't intend to imply that the elves thought that fire, stone and earth were bad. They are forces of regeneration _EXACTLY_ as Harald suggests. To the elves, everything is a cycle: water and fire, earth and stone, light and darkness, life and death. They're extremely dualistic.
Water, light and earth are the children of the Grower. They give life. Fire, stone and darkness are the children of the Taker. They take life. But, there is nothing implictly evil in this, for the life that is taken will always be reborn again. In fact, it is necessary that life be taken so that new growth can occur. If there is a perfect balance between Grower and Taker, then the world is in harmony, and all is well.
There _IS_ something outside of this system, but it's not stone (or sterile ground), but rather chaos. Chaos takes without giving. It destroys forever. It is utter oblivion which totally disrupts the sacred cycle of life.
I don't think that elves have a *real* hatred of trolls and dwarves. Some do, no doubt, but I'm sure that most of them see those races as the necessary children of darkness and stone, who do their jobs. Sure, many elves will happily kill trolls and dwarves, to help preserve growth, but that doesn't mean they hate them.
[On the naming of Yelmalio]:
>I'm not convinced of this. If you compare the name Yelmalio to
>the elven names in Elder Secrets, you don't see that much
>similarity. (You don't see that much consistency, either; but
>certainly no -io endings.) Furthermore, Yelmalio is clearly a
>derivation from Yelm and/or Elmal, which are undeniably human
>names for the sun god.
This is an explanation that might have convinced me. Yelmalio does not look like a typical elven name, while Hurril is closer. In actuality, there's really no consistancy between _ANY_ of the elven names given in ES. I tried to make sense of them a few months ago, and it was clear that they were just a mishmash of gibberish. A shame.
However, I don't put any faith in the argument that Yelmalio is clearly derivative from Yelm and Elmal. We _know_ that widely distanced places have different names for similar gods. We can blame some of this similarity on the Godlearners, who combined and mutilated countless myths. Yet, in places where the myths (apparently) haven't been combined, we still see similarities. Looking at the similarity between the words Yelm and Elmal makes that clear. I have always taken for granted in Glorantha that names for similar gods are similar. This goes back to another current discussion.
(1) Gods might be just names given to mythical archetypes in different cultures. All stories are different, and there are no connections between them. Only when cultures have come together are myths inter-related. If this is the case, there is no reason to expect names for the same archetype to have any similarities across cultures.
(2) Gods might have been actual people: heroes, kings, peasants and warriors who walked the world in the ages now consigned to myth. Myths and religion are based upon very real, but distant, events of the past. There are inter-relations between the myths of different cultures because they are based on these same things.
Now, personally, I buy (2), since we have seen definite cases where different cultures recognised the same myths even before they met:
"The Theyalans recognized that Yelm, the Dara Happan Great God, was the manifestation of their own Emperor, an enemy of Orlanth." -KoS, pg. 196
I guess we kind of see this in TGRoY as well, since that entire book was written just as extensive contact with the Orlanthi was starting, and so the Dara Happan myths are relatively pristine.
On the other hand, I haven't seen enough proof to say without a doubt that (2) is correct, and that's kind of unfortunate, because it's darned difficult to explain the myths of Glorantha when you're not sure how they were actually derived.
[On the Orlanthi getting the Sun God from the Elves]:
>This very pointedly doesn't say what the elf god's name was.
>Presumably the author would have said that Yelmalio was the name of the god
>known to the elves, rather than being the same as the god known to the elves,
>if that was what he meant..
Quite possibly. Quite possibly.
[On the god Arroin]:
>I should explain that, by "Arroin," I mean one of the two roots
>of the composite cult which the Godlearners created and called
>Chalana Arroy(n).
Chalana Arroy as a composite cult? interesting. I'd always just assumed that Chalana was an Arroin worshipper who made a big enough name for herself that people started to worship her as a god. Chalana the Arroin.
[On HKE]:
>High King Elf I didn't include because the official cult write-up
>makes it a subcult of Aldrya, and I didn't want to confuse
>things. Certainly, in a mythic sense, they are associates.
Absolutely. I realized after I sent my note that in the current Aldrya cult writeup, it's quite sufficient to associate Aldrya to get HKE. But then, the Aldrya cult combines what the elves probably recognise as a _NUMBER_ of totally different cults.
[On Yelorna as a Sun God]:
>>I actually think that this role is adequatelly covered by
>>Yelorna in the third age.
>
>Beg pardon? Yelorna, with its anti-male bias, was the sun god of
>the politically incorrect animal nomads? I must be
What I meant was that Yelorna fulfilled the role of the light that existed during the darkness. I don't really know who they say rose after the Dawn, since they contend that Yamsur is still dead.
Shannon
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