>When a Storm-Voice calls upon Orlanth to strike a Rokari wizard with
>lightning, the wizard may - if he survives - attempt to explain the
>lightningbolt in terms that fits into his worldview, as seen in Gods
>of Glorantha. But I think that he misses the point. For a moment there
>reality changed and the Orlanth believed in by the Storm-Voice and his
>congregation was actually there and cast his lightning.
Peter Metcalfe replied:
> I don't think this is the case at all. Orlanth exists and is
> worshipped by the Orlanthi whether or not the Rokari believe that he
> does. I do not think that for the thunderbolt to work on the wizard,
> the Rokari has to believe that Storm Voice's world-view is right. The
> Rokari Wizard also gets into fights with other wizards for instance.
> How does he resist their spells? By believing Sorcery is wrong?
> 'Forgive me for I have sinned. In the Sorcerous battle with Ancalagon
> the Black, I have denied the existance of the Invisible God 32
> times...'
Firstly, I never meant that by casting a thunderbolt on the Wizard, the Priest would force the Wizard to adopt the Orlanthi world-view in any way. Nor did I mean that the effectiveness of the bolt would be in any way dependent on the beliefs of the target. The claim I made was basically that Magic in Glorantha can be described as the transformation of subjective reality into objective reality. The thunderbolt has achieved objective reality because of magic and because of this the beliefs of the wizard don't come into play at all. In the case of the two battling wizards nothing will probably occur that even has a chance of challenging the world-view of the participants, but even if it had, the effects of the sorcery would have been objectively real and the matter of belief hadn't come into question. The Wizard would have to resort to defensive magic and strength of spirit as usual, and not acts of disbelief.
Secondly, I believe that Orlanth has an existence independent of his worshippers too. But I'm not sure I would go as far as saying that this existence is purely objective since worshippers from different congregations, regions and cultures would encounter an Orlanth with qualities different from each other, if they would go to meet him on the god-plane. A Rokarian would probably meet something even more different. His existence, however, is because of magic. Over the ages worshippers has transformed their subjective ideas of a Stormgod into something that at the very least has mythological reality. (ie something that is quite real in Glorantha.) I'm pretty sure that he would continue to exist even if all of his worshippers would disappear, even if his possibilities to interact with the mundane world would be minimal. It would take other acts of magic to get rid of him completely.
> I think the solution viz-a-viz subjective world view/objective reality
> is to describe the World Views as having validity and/or potency. The
> Storm-Voice's interpretion of how the OtherWorld works is _potent_
> because he can call down thunderbolts. It works whether or not what
> he believes is objectively true. A real world analogy would be the
> alchemist's recipe for making phosphorous. The alchemist is ignorant
> of the real process that is occuring (ie chemistry) but his recipe
> _works_ nevertheless.
Ah, but what you call the real process is dependent on your subjective world-view. The alchemist's explanation on how phosphorous is made would even on Earth be as valid as your chemical explanation as long as it fits into his alchemical theory and this theory covers the things he wants to achieve with his alchemy. Of course he might want to change world-view when he sees how nifty things you can achieve with your chemistry. Objective reality in this case is only the actual result of the experiment. Any attempt to explain it lies within the subjective. It is my belief that Gloranthan magic can go further than this and objectify the explanation as well.
Martin Crim commented on the same text:
> That's a true (and easily grasped) example of a wider clash that fits
> into the "hsunchen luser" thread. "God is on the side of the larger
> batallions," Napolean Bonaparte once said, and one of the themes of
> Glorantha is the contest to see which worldview has the largest
> batallions.
Or rather the best magicians. Only among divine magic using cultures I think that this roughly equals the number of initiates. Of course the batallions help in doing away with enemy magicians...
Unfortunately references to previous threads doesn't help me much, since I'm just back after a few years without Internet-access. I still just have a mailbox so I can't ftp for previous digests yet. I just saw that magic was discussed and thought that I should add my two clacks worth of opinions.
/Jesper
... Quodcumque incedis sequitur mors corporis umbra. - --- Blue Wave/386 v2.21 [NR]
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