Simon Bray <101635.32_at_compuserve.com> mentioned Maran Gor:
his little note lit a bulb over my head <pop> and prompted some very
interesting thoughts about Maran Gor and the knights of Carmania. We know
that Maran Gor is one of the most popular cults for the warrior caste, but
it simply didn't make sense for men to worship a woman's revenge cult as
is. I had always kind of gotten stuck there, but Simon seems to have
greased me up and let me slip on through.
- Maran Gor is related to the earth shakers, the giant lizards (dinosaurs)
that wander through Carmania during its temperate seasons. This cult was
invaluable during the ancient wars against Dara Happa and their gazzimites.
The Maran Gor cult is somehow associated with whatever group trains and
rides these monsters, and often rides them into war.
- Maran Gor has some powers to create earthquakes and to deaden the
fertility of the land. But how does this anti-fertility power manifest in
its worshippers, especially if they are men? The answer is plain. There is
an initiation ritual in the Carmanian Maran Gor cult, necessary for some
level of the hierarchy, in which the candidate must castrate himself with
a blade blessed by Humakt (another associate cult). The leaders of Maran
Gor are not men, they are eunuchs, and by castrating themselves and causing
themselves to bleed between the legs, symbolically they have become like
women. Neither men nor women but partaking of both... they have passed
outside the caste structure and the laws of Balance no longer apply to
them. The bloody horrors inflicted upon enemies by victorious Maran Gor
warriors were at the heart of the widespread fear of the old Carmanian
Empire.
Another other Maran Gor ideas?
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Loren Miller <loren_at_wharton.upenn.edu>
Applying computer technology is as easy as finding the right
wrench to hammer in the right screw.