White Moon and Food for thought from Truls Parsson on 1995-02-23 (Glorantha Digest Vol 01)

From: Truls Parsson <Truls.Parsson_at_eua.ericsson.se>
Date: Thu, 23 Feb 95 10:10:53 +0100

Sandy states:

(About the white moon)

> But there HAS been. It rose once, during the Godtime. Its
>existence is thus known across a wide range of cultures. Though of
>course there's plenty of cultures who don't know about it.

I've not seen this anywhere. Granted I only have a few of the books. So could some tell me were this is stated. My sources (mainly GoG and G:CotHW) implies that the white moon is about to rise for the first time. The prophecies says rise not rise again or return which would be the logical words if the lunars knew the white moon had been up once. But as the white moon has already been in the sky one wonders why this is not in the prophecy or am I just misintepreting things.

> Yelm passes through the Gates of Dusk every night and through
>hell. He _obviously_ takes all his entourage with him to the
>afterlife. I strongly submit that he is the Solar psychopomp. In
>fact, in the East Isles, this is his primary function.

Earlier you mentioned the White moon as the psychopomp of the East Isles now you say this is Yelm's primary function. Do they share this duty or does it depend upon which part of the isles you come from. Or is there some other explanation?

I said:

>> I would use people > animals > fish > plants

Alex replies:

>This is the sort of value-ranking modern veggies would use (and modern
>persons in general would tend to agree with, whatever phylla they
>scoff in practice), but don't necessary reflect the priorities of
>religious-minded pre-modern societies. Here, considerations of ritual
>purity and self denial are likely to be (at least) as important as
>abstract moral notions of cruelty and animal welfare (never mind
>"rights").

There are two reasons for this order.

Likeness to people. It is harder to hurt or eat something that is similar to you. Thus fish are easier to kill than cats.
Emotions, it is easier to build up a emotional contact with an animal than a fish. Also animals can scream in pain or run in fear. It is harder to kill something that shows emotions.

As far as I know all history examples follow this "general" guideline. As for cults one should remember that cult members are humans too (unless they are elves,trolls,... of course) and thus are biased towards what humans consider natural. Cults might single out somethings for special treatment but that would probably only include single or small group of animals/fish/plants. Don't eat barracuds (Tsankth).

-Truls

End of Glorantha Digest V1 #173