> I for one didn't think I was beating anyone over the head :-)
I dare say you weren't... As I said previously, it's a self-nominating category. :-/ So much for avoiding point-by-point bun-fights for once.
> Tolat/Shargash [...] was an obvious association to make.
If the people making the association have congruent beliefs about the deity "ruling" the planet, yes.
> It seems likely there is a Gloranthan myth to explain why women
> menstruate, and all I'm suggesting is that Tolat and/or Shargash
> ought to feature heavily in such a myth.
I don't necessarily disagree, I just think such a (possible) belief needs to be put into the right cultural context. It's unlikely to be a big hit among the Theyalans or the Pelandan-originated religions, for instance. There's a big difference between "there exists a menstruation myth such that ..." and "all menstruation myths ...", after all.
David Dunham says of astrology:
> I don't think it's popular among the other Orlanthi (though they
> undoubtedly watch for unusual portents, like suddenly moving stars or
> comets [does Glorantha have comets?]).
I'm sure it does. It's seems probable that they're regarded as a "Middle Air" phemonenon, rather than as Properly Celestial. Tackily showy, free-moving objects ought not to be in the Aetherial World, at least if the Dayzatari and Yelmies have anything to do with it. (Note that was also pretty much the RW mediaeval point of view.)
Stephen Martin says of the Stroke God (that's "Tolat/Shargash"):
> BTW, his 2-year Cycle indicates (to me) that his holy days would be on a
> 2-year cycle, resulting in one High Holy Day every two years, not every
> year. Has any of the SFC noticed this?
That'd be a bit rough on those poor sex-starved Trowjangi -- to say nothing of their neighbours. Another possibility is that the HHD is yearly, but either simply falls on a different day in alternate years, or has different connotations depending on whether the planet is in the sky or the underworld (or on the western horizon, descending, or the eastern, ascending).
> The problem with Gloranthan "astrology" is that all of the planets have
> too regular (and short) a period for it to work the same way as in the
> RW. Except for variations in the Southpath, there is a Grand Cycle every
> 248 years
There is? Which bodies have a co-period as long as this? I confess my brain hasn't quite woken up yet, at the crack of 3:30pm, and I haven't checked my sources, but this doesn't ring a bell.
> as opposed to the RW where it takes, what, 10,000 years? This
> is a big degree of difference in predictability.
There are a number of different such in the RW (Great Years, saronic cycles, yadda-yadda). I agree it is indeed a pity there aren't more of this type of thing in Glorantha, though I think it's still somewhat fixable, by Discovering that some bodies have non-quite-integral periods, or new components to celestial motion (we can't have a precession of the equinoxes, but we could have a Variable Wobble, say).
Another possibility is that such cycles _used_ to occur, and are still preserved by custom, though no longer Celestially True. For example, if the God Time Moon (TM) had a period of which which the (then) length of the year wasn't a multiple, a non-trivial "Great Year" would arise which might be associated with the length of term of Sacral Kingship, and the like. (The (alleged) significance of 7 and 19 year such terms in the RW are different approximations to the co-period of the lunar and solar cycle, that is, a number of (solar) years with a whole number of lunar months.)
Cheers,
Alex.
Powered by hypermail