Saints, Apes & Magic

From: owner-glorantha_at_hops.wharton.upenn.edu
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 1996 11:34:29 +0000 (GMT)

Catholic Saints can intercede with the Creator for the souls of clients and simultaneously help them in their daily lives. Mind you I think that saints are a remenant of theism rather than one of the things that makes Malkionism unique. Also I don't know about saints being mystics. Just folks who got shot full of arrows/had their breasts torn off by the Vadeli/Pagans/Brithini for their religious beliefs.

> As for the Lesser Logicals 'apeing' the Brithini way, I'm uncertain
> if the Brithini had much contact with monkeys or apes for the slur
> to arise.

Well despite their complete lack of contact with simians of any kind medieval scholastics still managed to arrive at the same idea.

Martin wrote:
> RuneQuest magic is to real magic (whether Earth or Gloranthan) as a
> high tech baby doll that talks, cries, and wets is to a real baby.

Too true, especially the emphasis on the Cartesian spirit/physical dichotomy. OTOH as someone who has been trying to design an historically accurate magic system for sometime let me assure you that magic is a very intangible concept. A lot of what we call magic is the application of non-Newtonian physics. Even "real" magic (occult virtues and supernatural intervention) is hard to nail down. An occult virtue isn't so occult if every one knows about it...
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Andrew Behan

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