Magic clarification

From: Nick Brooke <100270.337_at_compuserve.com>
Date: 21 Mar 96 03:00:45 EST


I wrote:

>> Some things are "magical" in Glorantha which we would say were psychological >> or intangible in the real world.

Nick Fortune wrote:

> While I wouldn't dispute there being a major psychological element here, I
> can't see this as purely psychological.

So we agree about that, then: in Glorantha, they're magical.



Peter Metcalfe writes:

> It's my belief that the Seshnegi and Loskalmi view the God Learners as
> being those who came to power after the death of Emperor Miglos.

Nah, nah, nah... unless you mean that this is when they became seen as "God Learners" in the bad, modern sense (in which case you could be quite correct). IMHO, to a Westerner, the name "God Learners" at first meant that these were pious and wise Church Father types who Learned about God through their techniques of comparative scriptural analysis and other methods, enough to define the modern Malkioni mainstream scriptural corpus and doctrines of the Invisible God, but that later on the SAME PEOPLE became the idolatrous, blaspheming, decadent, luxury-loving, corrupt demon-worshipping sorcerers who were handily overthrown by the Wrath of God. It's the Western doctrine of degeneration over time, in an acute form: you'd lose this neat link to the Western way of seeing the world if you stressed that the Church Fathers were always pure and wonderful, the God Learners always evil and manipulative. Cf. my Brief History of Malkionism for more.



Sandy writes:

> Take a shaman away from his homeland and the spirits he knows, and he is
> far weaker than a priest, who in turn is weaker than a sorcerer (whose magic
> is pretty much effective everywhere)...

... except, of course, in Greydog Village, where visiting sorcerers (and, indeed, visiting furriners who *might* be sorcerers) are tarred and feathered (to make them into imitation Ducks) and then thrown into Delecti's Swamp.

BTW, a coincidence that pleased all of us here at the Megacorp: the "Sorcerous Views" (aka "What We Do To Sorcerers") article in Tales #13 was farmed out to four different folk to write; all three of the articles which disliked Sorcerers said that they had "evil eyes" (or some such formula). For me, that makes it true.



Nick

Powered by hypermail