Me:
>>I propose the Mhystic (and possibly illuminating) trigram E-L-M as the
>>functional name of the Sun God/s.
>How do you fit Somash into it, tho?
Do you really think the Lhankor Mhystics would include the insignificant sun god of a people whose idea of a meaningful life centers around pondering the fluff in their bellybyttons?
Inclusion of Somash would utterly break the beatiful simplicity of the trigram, and thus Somash must be insignificant and unworthy of consideration, as the trigram is obviously true. Perhaps Somash is the illusion of a Sun God.
Carl Fink:
Me:
>>It Is True As Long As You Believe It Is.
>if your first sentence is true, all is futile, all is chaos.
Now, why would all be futile and chaos just because you believe something to be true? Belief creates meaningfulness and orderliness. If you don't believe *anything* all is futile and chaos.
My statement does not in any way deny that there exists a One Truth or Truth Beyond Mortal Ken. It only means that gloranthans, limited beings that they are, will never reach that Truth. They'll have to settle for what they *believe* is the Truth. If you don't believe something to be true, all that remains is futility and chaos.
Belief create their perception of Glorantha and their interpretation of the structure of the world. In Glorantha, make-believe is the very foundation of the world. The mundane plane is the result of the made-beliefs and the myth-languages.
>Clearly no human understands fully the nature and history of
>Glorantha. However, I maintain that there is a meaningful answer to
>the question: "Did Orlanth really kill the Sun God and bring on the
>Darkness?"
I hope you mean that no *Gloranthan creature* fully understands the nature and history of Glorantha? A RW human most certainly can fully understand Glorantha. It is a fictive creation after all, and i can have total control and understanding of my Glorantha.
I don't think there can be a single universal meaningful answer to your question. If the answer is to be even slightly meaningful, the person asking the question must at least be aware of that particular myth. For those who are aware of variants of the myth and believe it, there are lots of different, equally meaningful, answers. For those who believe that particular myth there could be a single meaningful answer.
If i answer your question and say "yes [no], Orlanth really did [not] kill the Sun God and did [not] bring on the darkness," the answer will be True As Long As You Believe It Is.
From a Gloranthan viewpoint there are as many Truths as there are creatures who believe in them. From a RW viewpoint there are as many Truths about Glorantha as there are Glorantha-fans who believe in them.
The production of meaning demands an interpretating subject. You have to specify *for whom* the question and the answer is to be meaningful. Otherwise it is void of meaning.
If you want to have Universal Truths in your Glorantha, it really is up to you. But just because there are some universal phenomena in Glorantha (the Dawn and IFWW and stuff like that) doesn't necessarily mean that there is a single answer that can explain them to everyone.
I won't discuss this topic on the digest no longer, as it is non-productive and boring. We can only agree to disagree.
Credo vero.
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