Sacred Time and Unity Against Chaos

From: Michael Raaterova <michael.raaterova.7033_at_student.uu.se>
Date: Sat, 24 Aug 1996 10:19:21 +0100


Saravan asks about Sacred Time.

I'd say that the Renewal is an intensely emotional or passionate experience. Every person participates fully in the rites (except those few that must tend other chores). The rites breath new Life/Love/Fertility into the world, and the Life rune is also Passion, so i think the rites are pretty engaging and 'mystic' in the sense of Unio Mystica.

Some themes for Sacred Time [spirit, infinity] is

  1. Grief and anger for the death of the (old) world, including a ceremonial trip to hell, where the remains of the world are found. [death, disorder]
  2. Dedication to rebuild it from the remains. The participants bind themselves with oaths of cooperation and sharing the burden, each doing their appointed, individually all-important tasks. [harmony, mastery]

(A possible way to do this part is to have the community recreate and or use all the runes, except chaos of course, for they are the building blocks of glorantha)

c) Rapture and joy when the world is completed again, filling the participants and their lands with Life and Passion, and the gods return to their places. [life, law]

It is a ritual of transformation and harmony.

>For the IFWW, does each person re-enact the IFWW at Sacred Time? If so does
>each person always win? Otherwise, there'd be quite a death toll each year
>I'd imagine. :-)

As i was the one most responsible for arguing that the IFWW is a Sacred Time rite, i feel the need to clarify my position, in the light of new knowledge.

The IFWW itself is not universal (being a Dragon Pass mystery), but it is a reflection of a universally acknowledged myth based on necessary cooperation and unity to defend the world against the forces of chaos, and recreating the world. I call this myth Unity Against Chaos, which is the basis of most of the unity myths out there.

I say it is universal, but it is celebrated differently everywhere. The Unity Against Chaos did not take place in the same time all over glorantha. The various unity myth battle took place at various places at various times.

As chaos tries to reclaim Glorantha every now and then, there are new Unities Against Chaos. Some of them have lesser spread, such as Arkat's UAC, when he collected bits and pieces of several cultures and peoples to be able to defeat Gbaji as his own version of the Last Person.

As i am skirting very close to Godlearnerism here, i will not dig myself deeper into it for the moment.

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