white moon; god learning

From: Lemens, Chris <CNU!AUSTIN3!lemens_at_cnucorp.attmail.com>
Date: Tue, 07 Jan 1997 11:37:00 +0000


In answer to my questions about what happens if the White Moon fixes the hole in the sky in an end of age campaign, Stephen Martin suggests:

If the Sun is to become stationary, I think it is likely that all three moons (Red, Blue, and Yellow = Sun) must combine together to become the White Moon, which is of course the Perfect Sun of Godtime.

I like this a lot. Here's a problem: according to monomyth, Yelm was slain by Orlanth, which caused the lesser dankness, which caused the greater darkness in which the Spike exploded, which ended up in the Dawn with the yellow sun rising. At which point did the red and blue components get separated from the rest? Following this separation (whenever it happened), the red part seems to become separated from physical Glorantha because it required the seven mother quest to retrieve the deity that was never born and never died. We know the blue moon goddess' role in the seven mothers quest, but why would Yelm not have likewise assisted? From an Orlanthi view, one could say that the Compromise prevented it. From a lunar point of view, perhaps Yelm simply had a different role to fulfill. How would a solar explain it?

A side point: if the perfect sun of Godtime is recreated, would it not stop in the center of the sky, as it allegedly was in Godtime?


Different topic:
There has been lots of discussion of the interrelations of Yelm, Yelmalio, Elmal, and Lightfore (and their various varieties). Perhaps the unification of the sun gods was another incomplete GL project. They had gotten the sun gods into sufficient alignment that their worshipper make overlapping claims, but not yet to the point that their worshippers accepted them as identical entities. I would not the same linguistic similarities that another thread noted sometime back about Umath (Ur-math), Humakt (Ur-makt), Orlanth (Ur-lanth), and (most blatantly) Urox (Ur-ox). Likewise, we see that the biggest god of each group has "aspects" that could be the remains of formerly independent deities: Yelm the Elder, Orlanth Thunderous, etc. I wonder about the extent that GLs may have tried to do the same with Earth, Water, and Darkness deities. Earth seems to have had some manipulation.  "Ernalda" seems awfully far spread for an earth mother figure. I see nothing that I could chalk up to the GLs for water and earth. Their influence on Malkionism has been explained on someone's web page. (I forget whose, but it was excellent.) Perhaps they had similar projects to unify the shamanistic deities geographically (e.g. that dude who challenges shamans to be is all over the place) and with non-shamanistic pantheons (e.g. trickster and raven). One question is what was their ultimate goal?


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