>In mundane history one's neighbors gods are always devils (in fact the word
>'devil' comes to English from the Persions and is cognate with the Sanskrit
>word devi = god), so I don't see anything unusual about cross-cultural
>mythological influences.
Devil actually comes from Greek 'Diabolis' (according to Websters) and is also the source of the Arabic 'Iblis' the Quranic Devil. I posted something similar to what you wrote of in Sci.arcaeology.mental and got corrected for it. The parallel is true though, it's just that Devil isn't a relation. But another word (which would be the equivalent of angel) also exhibits the same pattern:
The words are
Persian Ahura Daeva Indian Asura Deva
Ahura/Asura is good in the Persian tradition (Ahura Mazda: God of Light, also angels) and bad in the Indian Tradition. Deva is good in India and Daeva is bad in Iran. Obviously the two branches of the Indo-Iranians didn't like each other very much.
Klaus Ole Kristiansen:
Writes a very good piece on perception of the colours of the Rainbow.
>I don't know for sure, but I think it a safe bet that the seven
>colors of the rainbow come from the seven colors of the spectrum,
>which again come from Newton's obsession with the number seven.
Ah, so this is where Indigo came from.
>(This has nothing
>to do with rainbows, but it will never cease to amaze me that
>to the English speaking word, pink is a seperate color rather
>than a shade of red.)
It wasn't until the eighteenth century, IIRC. The word actually comes from Cantonese according to a book review in a Scientific American - the dictionaries give the earliest usage as being dutch and confess they are unable to find it's origin. The Book was about an experiment of cultural perception of colour. It reported that people were able to distinguish between colours irrespective of whether they had words for it or not (take a look in a Paint Catalogue). I try and dig up the reference, if anybody wants it...
>As for the deep color inside the violet, you might try this party
>game some time: put a sheet of white paper on a wall. Use a grid
>or prism to project a spectrum on it. Now have each participant
>mark the edges of the visible spectrum with a pencil. The border
>between visible and invisible light is a very individual thing.
It would be even larger if you had glass corneas. The retina is sensitive to UV spectrum. The cornea blocks it, to sharpen the focus of the eye in percieving colour. Read Red Script on a Blue Background and you'll see what I mean. It will be even worse with UV. I wonder if some gloranthan humans can see in UV and are blind to Red?
Pam Carlson:
>It's a splendid idea, but does anyone really believe in Yelm's Godtime
>Empire? Might it have been carried or rooted in the Pentan horse nomads?
As far as I'm aware, the Horse Nomads never penetrated into Brithos nor the East Isles. Furthermore the Elf perception of the Green Age as a time of peace does not owe much to Horse nomads. The Sun ruled over the Surface World in the Old Days is perhaps the best that can be said to please everybodies PoV.
>...
>But there's a lot of Glranthan history before them, and some areas did not
>have a lot of GL contact. (Peloria, peasant Heortland...)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Heortland and God forgot ruled by the Zistorites of Machine City?
>>I suppose some Ralian Barbarians, for
>>example, have tales about the Evil Emperor Malkion who was killed and thus
>>his cult sucks because his worshippers can do no true magic (only false
>>sorcery). Of course they would then have to explain why Orlanth went into
>>Hell and brought back the Sun.
>He went to bring back Ernalda tha earthmother, of course, to make the land
>fertile again. To do so, he had to make peace with the EE. (Deal peacefully
>with the Authority Figure. This is not easy for an Orlanthi.)
An excellent and elegant explaination. Obviously where the Adryami get the idea of the Secret Quest of the Lightbringers (to bring back Flamal).
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #67
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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