Yes and no. Under pantheon initiation, one can pretty much worship all deities within a pantheon without breaking ties to any of the others. Most Sartarites of the 1600's are initiates of Orlanth/Barntar. Some know the secrets of Orlanth/Vingkot (Adventurous/warrior), while others are also initates of Orlanth/Umathsson (Thunderer), or Orlanth/Goodvoice (Issaries), etc. Many men will participate in the rituals of many of these aspects of Orlanth. When the Lunars crack down, banning the violent rituals of "Orlanth the Murderer" (Adventurer/warrior), the men who just claim to be Barntar worshippers are left alone. (Everybody loves Barntar, Bulltamer and Ploughman.) So now the Orlanth/warrior rituals must be held in secret.
I think the spirits of reprisal would attack only if you switched pantheons, and then only if you were within your own culture. (That is, had a priest pissed off at you enough to send the spirits.)
>RW parralel, it's one thing to switch from Catholic to Episcipalion, but
another to go from Luthern to Hindu, no?
But it's not such a big deal to go from Hindu to Lutheran. Don't confuse the western, monotheistic "ours is the only right way" model with all religions.
Welcome Ian! Another Glornathophile is always appreciated.
I never thought of her as an actual spider, nor really associated with arachnids in any way. The "spider" part is a metaphor, because the sunspider spins the webs that hold the world together. In that aspect, she may be similar or the same as Glorantha or Ginna Jar.
MOB - good stuff on the Mandarins!
>Certainly gods have existence apart from their worshippers in some
meaningful sense. There is a sun, and the sun is a very important thing
in
the real world. So the sun is a very important power in the heroplane.
and...
>Was the land literally ruled by the sun god, who ruled over the land from his
court in the
heavens? Or was the land ruled by sun worshippers, who were able to make
manifest the power of their god, and visit him in his court in the sky
in a
heroquest?
I think the answer is that, practically, sun worshipping mortals ruled the area, harnessing the magics of the sun god. But this is recorded as mythic events, because most history is remembered orally, and people have a flair for embellishment and the artful. But, if in a ritual you journey to the hero/god plane, you can meet and interact with those gods as entities. Only once there, you often find yourself stuck in the same paths they are.
Another possibilty David omitted was that the land may not have been united under a single ruler at all, but a later scholar wrote the history to make the ancestors and gods of his employer look good. Hammurabi had it done, why not Khordavu?
> Doesn't mean gods aren't real. Just means they aren't sentient the way
people are, at least not anymore.
Right on.
Pam
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