I'll only respond to certain points and save the more obscure ones for off-line debate (the Heavens thunder as the Gods of Hot Air clash again).
>Why? If [Yelmalio] was in his majority, why should he require any female
>to receive credentials?
Believe it or not, Joerg, but Adult Adoption for political benefit is known of and practiced in several parts of the world. The Samoans, Japanese, Romans and Chinese have all done it.
>Which might also have furthered an identification of Pelandan
>Daxdarius with Arkat's (and Maklaman's?) cult of Humakt by the
>time of Four Arrows of Light.
I don't think Daxdarius is a Humakt Cult. His style of fighting is more spears, hoplite warfare and bloody sacrifice than swords and duels.
Simon Phipp:
>Maybe [Yelm, Yelmalio and Ernalda] were not known to each other in Yelm's
>original lifetime, but after The First and Second Councils, The Emperor
>in the Orlanthi myth was permanently identified with Yelm, thus Ernalda,
>The Empress, was identified as Yelm's wife. Or do you think that 1600
>years of mythological research should be abandoned? Glorantha is a
>constantly-changing world, as I said before, and the mythologies are
>not fixed.
I'm sorry, but I'm getting quite confused here. Earlier I took your TOE of Yelmalio as being the *history* behind the diverse mythology of Yelmalio (worshipped among the Elves, Ostrich Riders and Orlanthi). If you believe that myth is not history (*if* I understand you here correctly), then why did you write up the various myths up as history?
To see if we're speaking on the same wavelength, let me pose a hypothetical question. If there is a cult of 'Yelmalio' among the Elves of Enkloso does this prove a) Yelmalio had migrated from Genertela to Pamaltela and back again in his diverse career or b) the cult was imported by somebody else and absorbed whatever native light hero cult there was?
The remainder of Simon's reply about Yelmalio appears to revert back to the revealed truth of 'mythological research'. I've not answered it (not because I can't!) but because I think that Simon's response to the hypothetical question above would be more informative than line-by-line replies.
[Caladra and Aurelion]
Simon had argued against the double cult stations as a sign of cult fusion by pointing out that C&A only had one Priesthood.
Me>>You've slipped up here, the Priesthood is shared between *two* people.
>Whoops, slipped up, dearie me. A single priesthood, a single status, but two
>people. A twin priesthood. If it reflected the structure of the deities, the
>female priest would be like Caladra and the male priest like Aurelion. This
>is clearly not the case,
But it *was* the case before the Founders *reformed* the cult and outlawed incest between the Twin Priests and 'restored' the egalitarian nature of the bond. There is a passage there which talks about the Priesthood being a typical Sky-Earth marriage before this.
>However, you can equally well argue that Orlanth, and the other powerful
>deities, have many hidden depths which have to be uncovered by HeroQuesting.
And a form of HeroQuesting is taking a cult practice from another cult and grafting it onto *your* god, revealing the 'hidden depths'. Which is what people who say that multiple stations is a sign of cult fusion have been arguing all along.
>Similarly, Yelmalio's complex history, mythology and philosophy
>could have been uncovered by Elves, Ostrich Riders, Horse Riders,
>Orlanthi, Dara Happans and others both independently and together.
But they could have quite easily been cults of several seperate Light Heroes who have been conflated over the ages.
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