>I believe that elves do have some Divine cults, such as High King Elf,
>Babeester Gor, Arroin, Yelmalio, some others. And, I believe that some
>elven shamans can provide access to Spirit Magics of appropriate type.
>But, most elves would primarily be involved in Aldrya only, and so would
>not use these to any great extent.
Now, my contention is that Aldrya is a source of Divine Magic, Spirit Magic (through the normal means available to cult with shamans etc.) AND unique elven magics. It doesn't really matter if elven castings of Food Song are really just spirit magic - elven castings of speedary, or extinguish, are.
>I deny the existence of a Cult of Aldrya among elves. I deny that elven
>Divine spells exist for Tanglethicket, Plant Eye/Spy, Accelerate Growth,
>Create/Animate War Tree, or (for that matter) Grow Bloodvine or Grow
>Poisonthorn Arrow (both of which I printed in The Book of Drastic
>Resolutions, Volume Chaos).
I think that Accelerate Growth, Tanglethicket, etc. are divine magic. In any case the Aldrya cult certainly teaches divine magic - you try and skirt it by saying that all the spells that are obviously divine magic are part of the High King Elf cult, but its not true - all the aspects of the Aldrya cult have access to true divine magic without question. But I also think that Accelerate Growth is divine magic, with perhaps a minor twist. And Tanglethicket, Plant Spy, etc are a combination of Divine Magic and elven magical techniques. If you can't talk to the trees, you probably can't create a proper Tanglethicket or properly understand the impressions from a Plant Spy. But if you can't cast the divine magic, you can't convince a Tanglethicket seed to grow to maturity in seconds, or communicate telepathically with your Plant Spy over large distances. OK, so its not exactly the same as someone elses divine magic - but they are still contacting the divine being and getting it to manifest its powers. They are something not quite the same as normal human divine magic - but I don't think they are different enough to be thought of as something completely different either.
>On Hero Plane Maps -- Greg does have a set of Godtime maps of Glorantha,
>which could be used as templates for some parts of the Hero Plane/God
>Plane.
Once you start talking about the hero plane in a different time, it all starts to get a bit complex - suffice to say that these maps represent a particular culture/ set of paths through the heroplane, and I wouldn't ever want to rely on someone elses map. Geographical directions roughly correspond to many paths, though. But many of the important places in the heroplane are on no map.
Back to the merged cult thing
>Actually, I seriously disagree with this. The concept of a "shamanic
>cult", such as the hsunchen deities, is a misnomer, IMO. Telmor is no
>more a Divine Cult than is Aldrya, though it differs in a different way,
>of course.
bollocks, I cry. Not only is shamanic cult not a misnomer at all, divine cults are descended from shamanic cults.
The shamans of Telmor travel onto the spirit plane, and meet Telmor and his servants. Well, they meet wolvish spiritual beings of great power anyway. They talk to these divine wolves, and the wolves teach the little humans wolf secrets in return for worship (or at least, performing the correct ceremonies with them, and doing their will, which amounts to the same thing).
>They have a type of magic which
>differs. A long time ago there was an article in Dragon magazine about
>Beast Cults, giving progressive abilities at higher levels of initiation
>- -- animal empathy, appearance of the animal, speak with animals, call
>animals, transform into animals, etc. I think it would make more sense
>for the hsunchen to gain this type of ability.
Presuming that you side with Alex and I on the 'hsunchen are humans too' question (I seem to recall you did), hsunchen are human beings most of the time. They transform only when touched by the divine - when the magic is on them. They may also learn some secrets from the spirit wolves, sure - and some of these secrets may be best represented by a means other than spells.
>I think this is true of other shamanic cults -- because they have _only_
>shamans, they are not Divine cults, and should have something other than
>Divine magic.
Ah, I think exactly the opposite - all that stuff about shamans and priests having nothing in common from RQ3 magic book is rubbish, shamans definately deal with divine magic. I am very pleased that GOG blurred the distinction as much as it did. And to me its obvious that a spirit cult is a larval cult, and shamans are the primary way that such new cults come into existence. Shamans not only use divine magic, they invented it.
How Magic Works
The way I see it is this. There is the Otherworld, source of all magic power. Going there completely physically is very difficult, and damn dangerous. A few people do it every now and then, they are called heroes. But long ago, humans learnt (were taught by the Horned God according to most cultures) a magical trick that allowed them to send their spirits into the Otherworld while keeping their body fairly safe. Either way, once you are in the Otherworld, you can contact the gods and the lesser spirits. The Gods and the Spirits know magical tricks (spirit magic) and are able to access the divine powers of the universe (divine magic). They are able to give humans access to these divine powers once met - once the humans have met the gods and learnt their magics, they can perform ceremonies to bring the gods to them again, and repartake of their divine power.
OK, so that is how cults form. Spirit cults, mainly. But what happens after that?
Initially, shamans are the centre of worship - they are able to travel and meet the gods for the first time, and lead the worship ceremonies that keep the link to the god alive in between. The shamans run the cult because without them, it would never have been created, and if something goes wrong and they lose contact with the god, the shaman is needed to put things right. Besides, you need the shamans around because one single deity can't possibly do everything.
But if a god becomes large enough that the god always has worshippers, many worshippers, and large numbers of worshippers can be assembled often, a few things happen. For a start, the god gives a whole lot more magic to his worshippers. Pretty soon, a single god can do almost everything his worshippers want, or at least enough for a decent life. And just learning the single gods magic takes up pretty much all the time you have, along with maintaining all the religious infrastructure (like large congregations, many friendly spirits connected to the cult, etc). And these guys who only know the gods magic become important. These are your acolytes. Becoming a shaman is still pretty cool, but its also a lot more dangerous.
But eventually some societies become organised enough that their religions start to become quite organised and reliable. Why do they need shamans? The god grants all the magic you need, between the god and the friendly other gods. The god has a bunch of friendly spirits that you can summon with his magic, so you don't need to travel to the Otherworld yourself to find them. And being a shaman is dangerous and scary - the guys attract trouble, they don't act like normal people anymore, etc. Pretty soon looking like a priest seems a much better deal than being a shaman, and not much after that being a shaman starts to seem not just a bad idea, but suspect and dangerous. Then you have priesthood.
>In the case of the cults which include shamans in addition to priests,
>the shamans seem to represent an older version of the cult, as it were --
>both Waha shamans and Pamalt shamans seem, to me, to be a holdover from
>the Grey Age, when the gods were just getting started.
Older, yes. But that doesn't mean outdated. The shamans are still around because they do heaps of other magic stuff that the other guys can't do. The Waha cult isn't like the Orlanth cult - it has reasonably limited magic, the other spirits of the area are all dangerous and hostile, etc. The Waha tribe in Prax that didn't have a shaman would get its ass kicked! This is obvious in Nomad Gods (just got Les Dieux Nomades last night, BTW - very nice). 'Civilised' societies aren't like that - they have subdued all spiritual opposition, and their cults are multi-faceted enough to serve all their spiritual needs, you don't need shamans to go out and fight the plague spirits because you have deities that have ways of combating them, etc.
Pamaltela is different - IMHO they still have shamans because of their approach to life, though it amounts to the same thing. They have not crushed all the opposing spirits because they don't believe in fighting as the solution to all problems - so the shamans are important because there are many beings that Pamalt must deal with one to one. Its the same thing, but its the whole Doraddi aren't civilised because they don't want to be thing again. More info on Doraddi shamans on my web page.
Cheers
David
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