Greg has said as much. The GLs were right. Their methods worked.
>I always saw their downfall as the result of hybris, not
>incomprehension.
Greg has also said one day, the GLs' methods stopped working and the Gift Carriers of the Sending Gods started catching up with them. First the GLs were right. Then they were wrong. The universe changed the rules on them.
Carl refers to Simon Hibbs' speculation that Orlanth was once a mortal.
>This is (again) NOT EARTH! In Glorantha, why can't there really be
>gods?
If Orlanth was once a mortal but is now a god, how does that prove that there are no gods? After all, he is a god now, is he not? I think everyone on the list except for the Brithini among us will agree. The gods are demonstrably real, and demonstrably gods. And the Brithini's theories on the gods can be proven correct too. There are no gods, only the spiritual reflections of powerful humans and meaningful events.
In any case, I really like the story that Adam ascended to divinity through some means and eventually became the Judaic God. It means everybody has a chance to become divine. It's a real gnostic theory, albeit totally heretical to most modern branches of Judaism and Christianity. It denies nothing about the divinity of any of the gods, except that they were never ordinary, never mortal.
>I never said that religious practices didn't change, or that myth
>stories *as told* didn't change. I said that they're based on "real"
>events, not just human social needs.
Now I'll agree with you here. But I'd add a note that I believe that every worship service is a heroquest, and myths in Glorantha change to match the heroquests that have been performed on them. That's why you have cultural divergence on Glorantha, because of the cumulative actions of heroquestors on the mythical fabric of a locale. And that's how the pentans can see a fiery horseman when they look at the sun, while their kralorelan neighbors see a sphere of perfect radiance.
>Another point -- killing "The God of the Silver Feet" (identified by
>Sandy as Issaries) cut off all communications in Fronela. SInce
>nobody was expecting this but a tiny cabal, it wasn't a "belief
>effect". Issaries was *real* and a personification of communication.
>
>I assume the area was limited because of the Compromise=Arachne
>Solara's Web, which acts to prevent fundamental change to the nature
>of Glorantha.
Here's another theory that explains the same effect. Zzzabur had actually spent a lot of time unifying all the disparate communication spirits of Fronela into a single one in preparation for his spell that would destroy it. This was an act quite reminiscent of the GLs ancient unification of all the communication spirits of Theyala into "Issaries" (spare grain and desert tracker, et al) but for a different purpose. None of Snodal's cabal understood exactly how many lands the big Z had united with this meddling. When Snodal killed the God of the Silver Feet he stopped Zzzzzzzzzzabur's spell, with the unexpected (to him) side-effect that communication in a surprisingly huge area was immediately cut off.
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