Godly capabilities

From: Martin Laurie <102541.3423_at_CompuServe.COM>
Date: 12 Nov 96 13:09:45 EST


Peter M says:
>> It's like saying
>>that Tolat knows of the City of Alkoth where he is worshipped but
>>hides this fact from the Amazons of Trowjang.

Nick E. replies:
> Maybe they've just never asked him about it. It's not as if he's going to
>volunteer heretical information like that.

Tolat isn't worshipped in Alkoth of course, its Shargash and Alkor. They are similar gods in many ways but NOT the same thing at all..

IMO the planet Tolat/Shargash is a symbol of war with obvious parallels to our own Mars which has been asscosiated with aspects of conflict in many seperate cultures.

I think that a warrior culture sees the planet and says "Wow, look at that, its red, the colour of blood and bigger than anything else - cool - that has to be _our_ gods planet!". Within a solidified culture like Dara Happa this is eventually accepted as fact but in another culture the same planet is asscociated with _their_ war god eg in Trowjang its Tolat who bares many similar traits to Shargash but is not the same thing as Shargash.

Nick, you are assuming that Gods are entities that have a conscious thought process and though I used to think this also, I have to say, I think its a flawed perspective. The more that comes out on Glorantha, the more its obvious that priests and culture define a god, not the other way round.

Example:

A God Leanrer could say that Shargash, Zorak Zoran and Urox are all the same deity due to their similarities:

(1). All three deities use primal violence as their method of overcoming the power of chaos which works by tearing apart social structure very effectively - these gods have worshippers who are so batty as to be immune to this - mostly.

(2). All three deities have myths about smashing a chaos deitiy into bits and tearing him up: Shargash - Kazkurtum, Zorak Zoran - Krjalk, Urox - Wakboth.

(3). All three deities are primitively linked to fertility aspects as a representation of the Death/Life cycle: Shargash - Biselensib, ZZ - Xiola Umbar, Urox - Eiritha.

(4). All three dieities have a power that is the antithesis of their society yet is subsumed within it: Shargash has Storm powers in a solar culture, ZZ has fire powers in a Darkness culture and Urox does the ultimate bad thing in Orlanthi society - ie a berserk is beyond any law other than that of physical force.

So a GL could and probably did link these deities and maybe even gained abilites in crossing among the three but their worshippers would laugh at you if you tries to make that link as much as a Shargashi would smash your head in if you told him that Shargash was also some womans god in a smelly jungle!  

>>The appearance of an divine intellect which one can talk to is an
>>artifact of the worshippers IMO.

>Atheist!!! :)

I agree with Peter here. If the Gods had divine intellect then they would be much more proactive for their own goals. The whole compromise Myth is about explaining to the Orlanthi people just exactly _why_ Orlanth doesn't come along and blow the Orlanthi's foes up with great big Thunderbolts.

The same logic is used to explain why God in the RW Christian faiths doesn't wander about saving people. In that case he's "giving" us "free will" so cannot interfere but in Orlanths case the people already have free will and so the deitiy they worship was bound to non-interference to _save_ them! Thus Orlanthi take _pride_ in their gods lack of aid to them! He gives them power to do it themselves!

Looking through Gloranthan history its pretty clear that all religions have evolved a lot and all cultural deities follow the evolution of their cultures. The Orlanth of 1620 is not the Orlanth of the "Dawn".

Martin Laurie


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