Illumination

From: Chris Pearce <cpearce_at_speed.intecom.com>
Date: Tue, 8 Aug 95 13:19:59 CDT


>>>If an illuminated chaotic tried to use truestone would it let them?

>>My guess is that the Illuminate would be able to use the Truestone. He
>>doesn't register as Chaotic by the Keen Senses of the Uroxi so how could
>>a dumb piece of rock know?

> The fact that it's a dumb piece of rock is exactly why I _would_ think it > would burn them. How is the rock supposed to know the chaotic is illuminated.

I think Glorantha is a world built to explore one big "what if," namely "What if the processes that mythologize historical legends actually *do* apotheosize the historical personae themselves?" As a result, mystical and philosophical viewpoints have physical effects in Glorantha.

This applies to illumination in the following manner. One tenet of Eastern mysticism is that the mind's habit of categorizing, of perceiving artificial boundaries between things, is a flawed manner of perceiving the world--that every person is everything and nothing at once.

This viewpoint no doubt has its own pitfalls, for I rather suspect the moment a Zen student suggests such a thing he'll get whacked across the head with an incense board.

But, in Glorantha, mystical and philosophical viewpoints have real effects. As a result, when spirits of reprisal show up to eat a wayward illuminate, when the illuminate instinctively goes "Why you spirits are just part of myself, for I am the universe. In fact, I don't even exist, nor do you. Everything simply is." the spirits, which exist as everything and nothing, have nothing and everything left to eat.

Via the same argument, I would say the illuminate who picks up a piece of Truestone is also protected. Names and boundaries provide a means for distinguishing differences. When the illuminate is everything and nothing, no boundary exists to which a named distinction can be applied. - --
Chris Pearce, cpearce_at_speed.intecom.com I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles and there were these bathing caps you could buy that had these kind of Fourth of July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue and I wasn't tempted to buy one but I was reminded that I had been avoiding the beach.


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