sun and storm

From: Owen Jones <oj_at_maths.anu.edu.au>
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 15:19:07 +1000 (EST)

My thanks to Pam for her stuff on Yelm and Elmal. To test my new found understanding, I posed myself the following questions:

1. Who is/was the original Praxian sun god?
2. The Orlanthi seem happy to accept Storm Bull as a brother of Orlanth, and you get Storm Bull/Urox worshippers in Orlanthi societies. Do Praxians see Orlanth in the same way? That is, do they believe that the Storm Bull they worship is the same as the Storm Bull the Orlanthi worship?
3. If two cultures meet, and culture A decides their storm/sun god _is_ the same as the storm/sun god of culture B, but culture B decides that their god _is_not_ the same, what happens? If, later on, both cultures agree their gods are the same, do the gods merge at that point?

Other peoples answers would be gratefully received.

All this has led me to decide there can be no objective basis to any gods, with similarities between them occurring only because different peoples try and explain similar things with their gods (e.g. storm, the sun, chaos). If the gods existed before the myths that describe them, then they could not have played the different roles ascribed them by different cultures. Sandy's argument against pure subjectivity, namely that believing a god exists independently of its worshippers means that it then does, doesn't hold water because magic can only go so far in making belief reality. Belief can create and sustain a god, effect what it itself believes, but can't turn it into more than a big spirit. The great compromise is just one rationalisation for why the gods can't do more than they do.

I think I have also decided that the world really is round, and the moon is in geosyncronous orbit,

Cheers

Owen Jones
Centre for Maths and its Applications, School of Math. Sciences Australian National University, ACT 0200 Ph +61 6 249 2897 (office) 249 4552 (direct) Fax +61 6 249 4675 Web page http://wwwmaths.anu.edu.au/~oj/

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