Re: Rebuttals and Divine Realities

From: Joerg Baumgartner <joe_at_toppoint.de>
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 97 20:50 MET


Andrew Joelson SIGHed about
>Martin Laurie:
>> Prove it! You say Storm Bull blasted the Devil at the block - thats just
>> how the locals explain the Block! It happens all the time in the RW.....

> Sigh. Go attend the rituals of the Storm Bull cult during any
>Sacred Time and you will see it with your own eyes (if you are sufficiently
>religeously enlightened).

You mean stone drunk...

Seriously, I don't believe that the story happened the way the Storm Bull cultists reenact it. IMO there was a native deity - Waha or Orani - who fought that fight.

Did you ever wonder why Waha cultist marries Eiritha cultist in Praxian society, and not Storm Bull cultist marries Eiritha cultist? I have the nasty suspicion that the invader god who entered Prax in 35 ST (according to Cults of Prax) was Storm Bull, not Humath-Arkat (for quite simple chronological reasons). After some time during the First Age, Beast Storm had merged with Founder Father, and Storm Bull had become native, and replaced Waha or Orani in the mythical husband role.

>The God Plane is sufficiently divorced from the
>mundane that it appears timeless to us. A Storm Khan can perform the same
>ritual year after year, and see the same event over and over again. Sort
>of like picking up a book several times and turning to the same page.

I happen to do this, now and then, frex with KoS, and now and again I perceive different inflections in the text, sometimes radically altering the factual information.

> It is my understanding that as one becomes more learned in cultic
>lore, one becomes better able to see & intereact with the Gods & the God
>Plane.

One's own conception of the God Plane, or the cult's perception. If the God Plane is an extension of the Hero Plane, it is about subjective reality rather than objective reality. At least if you follow one of the permutations of Campbell's quest for the elixier etc.

>Example: A bunch of Orlanthi are going to perform the ceremonial re-
>enactment of Orlanth's Dance Contest vs Yelm. [...]

Nice description, and in no way dependant on an objective reality in the God Plane.

> This is where analogies to the Real World break down. My own
>personal religeous beliefs would no doubt be a good deal less ambivalent
>if I could see directly into the GodPlane several times a year....

I believe that this is depending on the way I attend at ceremonies, about as much as the way the ceremonies deal with the mysteries. It's up to the worshipper how deeply to enter the mysteries, and how intense to experience the otherworldly aspects.

> You are flying off on a tangent. The point of my statement was that
>the world changed, at or around the Dawn.

As it did at the end of each Age of the World. Ask Carmanian historians when the Second Age ended, and how the world was changed... Which is to say: there was not necessarily a general change all over the world with the way gods and mortal people interacted. I'm not at all sure that the Pamaltelans changed the way they worshipped their gods, Old Gods or younger ones, at the Dawn.


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