Hearsay on the Humakti

From: Jeff Richard <jrichard_at_cnw.com>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 1997 09:46:09 -0800

During the perennial Humakt conversation, David Hall added the testimony of (presumably) Nick Brooke:
>NB: I'd play down the Arkat explanations of Humakt, purely because
hundreds
>of years have now passed and the truth of that is now lost in the current
>myths and legends. Today's myths of Humakt meet the needs of today's
>Orlanthi and Humakti - and today's myths don't mention Arkat!

Besides this being a clearly unexempted case of inadmissible hearsay (as per Federal Rules of Evidence, Rule 802), I think Nick missed my point of bringing up Humath-Arkat (or maybe he didn't miss it and I'm just misinterpreting things). Bringing up the cult's origins helps me put the role of "severance" into some sort of context - as well as it provides an unlying meaning to it. Today's (is that 1356 or 1621?) Orlanthi probably no longer use the Arkat myth to explain the meaning of "severance", but the myths they do use illustrate a similar meaning.

Of course that's just my approach to it. Humakt is not a culture god (which makes it sort of silly to even use the work "Humakti" - old traditions die hard I guess) and the Manirian-South Pelorian cults derived from Humath-Arkat are a diverse lot. Beyond a few basic "hidden truths" (e.g. 1. War requires sacrifices; and 2. Everything ends) that are revealed to the initiate (not by the priests but by the initiation itself), I suspect that there is quite a range with the very grim initiates in the Lismelder lands on one extreme.

Yours truly,

Jeff

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