One thing I've been pondering recently is the divergence of our 'real world'
with Glorantha. This came up before in regards to Gloranthan materialism, but
not in a fully explicated fashion.
1) If the gods are apparent and mundane (i.e. not miraculous as Hume has it),
religion is an obvious route; -but- here's where I have trouble. Religion in
whatever culture in Earth is a faith/belief structure, sometimes incorporating
a systemic attempt to explain the world and sometimes being more a philosophy.
The crucial division between religious faith and world-view is that the first
is obviously a 'leap of faith' lacking a firm foundation in anything observed,
possibly inculcated by cultural stuff, or possibly self-derived... but in
Glorantha, the initiate has good reason to believe in the god. There is no
struggle between common sense and spiritual desires... they are one and the
same.
How is this not antiethical to the 'mystery' inherent in religious belief? I
ask this because the model for Cults in Glorantha is obviously Earthly
religions and sects. But there (on Earth) the religions most relevent to
Glorantha, the magical religions, exist on the knife-edge of unknowable and
visible. Take Voodoo for an example, where the startling and the secret are
infused with both mundane trickery (herbal, etc.) and real belief.
I guess in a sense the Godplane and stories provide such things, but there
still remains the problem of dividing the believer from the casual
participant. Systemizing a vision quest, for example, may deprive the
experience of its unique and irrational qualities.
2) Magic in Glorantha is very available. In a sense, Spirit or Battle Magic is
almost a magic of gadgets. Yet Gloranthan society is still in our sense
primitive. Assumptions, tacitly, have been made that the average person is
poor and that lifespans are short. This is a carryover from the Bronze age
milieu, but is this accurate for such a magically adept society? Why shouldn't
the average farmer or city prole be as convenience-wealthy as Western poor
(TVs, toilets, sanitary water, etc.)?
These are just some ideas that were troubling me, and I thought I'd masticate
them in public here. Moo.
Jeff Erwin