>Re: Kralorelan afterlife
>Superb setup Peter. You led me by the nose all the
>way in the best leg-pulling in a looong time.
I wasn't really trying to leg-pull. I was primarily having fun in exploring how the Path of Immanent Mastery would view Kralori history and cosmos. Although what I said is not necessarily the truth (ie the Mandarins didn't do all the nasty things the cultists said they did), I do feel that the cultists will believe something along these lines.
ObTopic: I just remembered that the Cult of Immanent Mastery is also worshipped in Bliss in Ignorance. How did it get there? BoI was never part of the New Dragons Ring and the New Kingdom of Wisdom (ie BiI after it was conquered by the conservative exarchs) was allegedly anti-NDR. I don't see the current Kralori Government deliberately transplanting a heretical cult into BiI (where they have enough problems with fruitcake-and-gore cults).
IMO the PoIM was imported by the rulers of the Kingdom of Wisdom to strengthen their armed forces (against the Ten Thousand Maniacs as well as the False Dragons Ring). Instead of being the heretical cult in Kralorela proper, they would be the main cult of the Bliss in Ignorance military. Being Ignorants (Ignoramusi?), they know not that their magic is false draconism and see themselves as the loyal servants of the Mandarins of Bliss in Ignorance.
Chris Bell:
>A question in regards to Pelorian Rebellious Terminous... In Peloria,
>does he actually have worship, and a cult?
No, he is antiworshipped. He has no cult but his presense is felt within important Dara Happan Ceremonies. Likewise the Orlanthi acknowlege Yelm as the Emperor but do not worship him.
>IMO, the Lunars make use of various
>minor God-Learner techniques to subsume local deities into their
>pantheon and to change the nature of local gods so that they are more
>'politically correct.'
They don't use God Learner Techniques for the tricks that the God Learners did (such as rewriting the liturgies) in moulding the cults are aeons old and practiced everywhere.
>Again, I suppose this depends on whom's Myths you accept as Truth. My
>personal loyalties lie with Central Genertelan/Dragon Pass Myth, since
>it seems the most broad and all-encompassing
It is 'broad and all-encompassing' because it has been ruled at various times by Uz, Malkioni, Dragons and Pelorians. But just because it has had exposure to so many viewpoints does not mean that what is believed in Sartar about some place X or some god Y is the actual truth. Is the RW Indian mythology True because they have had contact with the Greeks, the Persians, the Chinese, the Arabs and the British?
>RELIGION IS REALITY. Therefore, Religion and Politics, for
>example, are utterly inseperable. If the Red Goddess did not approve,
>their would be no conquests in the name of the Lunar Empire.
The current rulers of the Lunar Empire says that Conquest is Mandated by the Red Goddess. There are people in Glorantha who worship the Red Moon and say that Conquest is Evil (the Arrolian Lunars for example). Yet both can display effective magic from the Red Goddess. Who is right?
>Gods are
>not constructs, they have free will and directly involve themselves in
>the lives of their worshippers.
This is the Orlanthi cosmological PoV and it is true for the Orlanthi. In other places of glorantha, people will view the gods in a different light (the Malkioni would believe the gods to be the exact opposite) and they are also right. But one cannot (or at least finds it difficult to) prove to the other that he or she is *wrong*.
A Malkioni who points out to the Orlanthi that Gods are constructs will be disbelieved at best. After all Orlanth spoke to the Orlanthi last windsday. Likewise when the Orlanthi insists that Gods have Free Will, the Malkioni will find it very difficult to scoff in disbelief. Who is right? It doesn't really matter for gaming in Glorantha IMO.
DC>> The Moon vs Air conflict is demonstrably not a universal
>> cosmological given - the Lunars are well disposed towards the cults of
>> Entekos and Molanni, and probably others.
>But Molanni and Entekos are Solar Air deities... Deities who have been
>subsumed and tamed by Solar Power (and later, Lunar Power.)
Entekos is not tamed by Yelm any more than Ernalda is tamed by Orlanth. In NW Peloria, Entekos is a powerful goddess in her own right and is not associated with the Yelm (solar) Cult. Yet that place has had quite friendly relations with the Yelmic Lords of Dara Happa and is quite peaceful under the Lunar Empire.
>Remember, in all the cases I know of, Moon is the *aggressor* against
>Storm.
Not True. The Battle of Falling Hills is a case in point.
>If the Lunars just hung out in Peloria and didn't bother anyone
The trouble is that there are Storm Worshippers in South Peloria. So do the Lunars have a free hand to suppress Orlanth there? What if the Dragon Pass Orlanthi aid their kin against the Lunars. Are they defying the Will of the Comity of All Gods in doing so? Where was the treaty that assigned Peloria to the Red Moon and Maniria to the Orlanthi? Religious disputes do not observe frontiers.
>As far as subjective vs objective again goes, it seems to me the reason
>why debate on this topic is so feirce here on the Digest is because none
>of us want our favorite Pantheons, and their views of Gloranthan
>Reality, to be 'false'.
Um, what is the favourite pantheon of the 'subjectivists' that they want so desperately to be true? The point about subjective myths is that no decision is made on the truthfulness of a pantheon's myth and philosophy but allows it to diverge from the myths believed by other cultures. What does it matter whether the Lunar Way is false or not? We want to know why the Lunars behave as they do.
An anecdote involving Wittgenstein may make this point clearer.
'Somebody once observed to the eminent philosopher
Wittgenstein how stupid medieval Europeans living
before the time of Copernicus must have been that
they could have looked at the Sky and thought the
sun was circling the earth. Surely a modicum of
astronomical good sense would have told them the
reverse was true. Wittgenstein is said to have
replied: "I agree. But I wonder what it would have
looked like if the sun _had_ been circling the earth."
The point is that it would look exactly the same.'
Jame's Burke: The Day the Universe Changed.
So whether Glorantha is really the warring battlefield of the Gods, the out-of-kilter World Machine or even the dismembered bodyparts of the Cosmic Dragon has no direct relevance on what some of the gloranthan cultures believe.
>Now, as there are any Gloranthas, which Glorantha serves
>your purposes best? For me, it's one where the Gods struggle for
>supremacy through their worshippers, and the Myths are re-enacted, and
>new ones created, in the struggle of the hero wars, as Myths and
>Cultures clash. A Glorantha where the Lunar Way is correct, and what
>the southerners call Orlanth is simply an aspect of Rebellious
>Terminous, may be better for some.
The trouble with this is that you end up presuming pretty wierd things for the published philosophy of the non-Orlanthi to be understandable. To assume that the Orlanthi view of gods is true for all pantheons means that the gods of other pantheons are either ignorant or lie to their own worshippers. For example, the mythology of Yelm knows not the Great Compromise which is believed by all other gods (according to the Orlanthi) - - is Yelm the virtuous Emperor lying to his worshippers? The Malkioni deny that other gods exist - is the Invisible God not omniscient?
End of Glorantha Digest V4 #488
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