(Boy, that's a terrible drawn-out sentence, isn't it?)
No, it doesn't contradict. You're assuming that the Malkioni *know what they're doing*. Even in Glorantha, it's possible to have a deeply felt *incorrect* belief. Maybe for millenia the Malkioni have been praying to the Invisible God *and it has all been useless and futile*.
(Now, that paragraph has too many pseudo-italics.)
Another alternative, familiar to theologians, philosophers, Kabbalists, and Sufis: emanations. As I mentioned when I brought this whole thing up, lots of other people (again, starting in ancient Greece) were dissatisfied with the sort of disinterested, impersonal God proposed by Aristotle. Not that It didn't make sense, just that it wasn't interesting or useful to anyone but an intellectual or mystic.
So, the solution was that this perfect but inaccessible non-Being, in order to act in a world it wasn't part of (or closely connected to) emitted "emanations", and each emanation then emitted more emanations. Each "generation" of emanation was less perfect, more removed from the Ultimate, but by the same token more like us material beings, and thus more able and willing to act in the world.
The Gnostics believed, for instance, that the world had been made, not by God Itself, but by the "demiurge", an emanation of God which was much grosser and cruder, and thus could intervene in history.
(Okay, that part was obnoxiously and falsely intellectual, while
simultaneously probably distorting and oversimplifying complex
concepts.)
So, getting back to Glorantha, perhaps sophisticated Malkioni think that the Invisible God (an excellent description of the Aristotelean Prime Mover, or the god of the Islamic Faylasufs) emitted emanations, which do in fact answer prayers, while the IG wouldn't and couldn't.
This would lead to the Stygian Heresy, of course, since the pagan gods could be seen as these emanations or agents of the IG by less-sophisticated or less intellectual people.
Meanwhile, less educated Malkioni just pray to "God", never even hearing of these ideas. Perhaps raising questions like, "I thought the Invisible God didn't ever let Himself be seen. Why do you tell us to pray to Him?" would be tipoffs of a potential Wizard child?
Coming up next: the odd similarity between very "primitive" beliefs
about creation, and those of the most "civilized" folks.
- --
Assistant Sysop, GEnie's First and Fourth Science Fiction RoundTables
The SFRT page has moved AGAIN, to http://www.sfrt.com/sfrt1
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