Re: Horse Hsunchen; summoning enemy deities

From: David Dunham <dunham_at_pensee.com>
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 1996 22:43:34 -0800


Sandy Petersen wrote

> Hunter-gatherers who evolve into nomad
> herders will evolve down a different path, but the result will still
> be the loss of Hsunchen characteristics -- just as the
> possibly-Hsunchen Praxian tribes, and the certainly-Hsunchen Pent
> horse nomads have lost almost all trace of this.

I hadn't realized the Pelorian horse nomads (from Nivorah) who eventually were driven into Pent had been hsunchen. This doesn't seem to be corroborated by stories like Hyalor Horsebreaker, and the myths/history in Glorious ReAscent of Yelm, Fortunate Succession, and Entekosiad.

A possible solution is that they had to stop being Hsunchen a very long time ago, though it seems this must have happened well before the Darkness otherwise we'd have stories of it happening (the way we do with the Vustrians of Ralios, who supposedly stopped being horse Hsunchen during the Darkness).

From _The White Goddess_ by Robert Graves: "In ancient times, once a god's secret name had been discovered, the enemies of his people could do destructive magic against them with it. The Romans made a regular practice of discovering the secret names of enemy gods and summoning them to Rome with seductive promises, a process technically known as _elicio_. Josephs in his _Contra Apionem_ quotes an account of a magic ceremony of this sort carried out at Jerusalem in the second century B.C. at the instance of King Alexander Janaeus the Maccabee; the god summoned was the Edomite Ass-god of Dora, near Hebron. Livy (v. 21) gives the formula used to summon the Juno of Veii to Rome, and Diodorus Siculus (xvii, 41) writes that the Tyrians used to chain up their statues as a precaution. Naturally, the Romans, like the Jews, hid the secret name of their own guardian-deity with extraordinary care; nevertheless one Qunitus Valerius Soranus, a Sabine, was put to death in late Republican times for divulging it irresponsibly."

Perhaps this is the reason why Shargash is chained in Alkoth?


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