[cough, cough, cough] My theory is...
First of all I propose that the trueism:
"I think therefore I am"
Questlines 2 - p.73:
AM: If the Lunars go out and eventually kill all the Orlanthi, so that no one worships Orlanth, and then they HeroQuest against Orlanth, will he cease to exist?
GS: Yes. He will not cease to have existed, but he could cease to exist.
I deduce from this that a god only exists within his worship-space. This seems to be in keeping with Gloranthan writings - if a god isn't worshipped somewhere he simply isn't there. The way that the worshipspace boundaries are determined exactly I'll leave for another discussion. The important thing for my argument here is that a God cannot jump into a person's head, who's never heard of him before, and say "Worship Me".
Part 1 of the God Learner secret is:
More strongly a God cannot affect the way that he is worshipped - i.e. the personification, or interpretation of whatever it is that he stands for. I quote again:
Questlines 2 - p.76:
GS: Because a god cannot tell a worshipper to go and do something. A god cannot say "You know, I'm really also a hunting god! Send me some hunting prayers!" [laughter] He can't do that. He's incapable of it. That's a human function.
AM: What about Divination? A priest could divine his god's potential.
GS: I don't quite believe in that [laughter]
AM: A god doesn't have the free will to want to change!
GS: That's right.
AM: He wants to keep on doing what he does!
GS: Well, he HAS to, by the terms of his BEING!
What exactly is his BEING? If a god cannot tell you he is there and cannot tell you what he stands for how do we know anything about him? There are two answers to this: manifestation and myth.
Manifestation:
If we use God Learner Runic classification, then there seem to be two concepts between runes and gods: ownership and association. Looking just at association, I believe that the manifestation is wholly accounted for by worship of associated gods. In other words, death, for example, only exists within the worship-space of all the death-rune associated gods. Anywhere where this isn't happening, nobody dies!
Imagine an island full of atheists* and no outside contact. Do they experience death, disease, wind (you know what I mean), do they even see the sun in the sky? I reckon not. If you think this situation too artificial and unlikely, consider a barren island (similar problem to: If a tree falls in a forest where no one can hear it, does it make a sound?).
[ *It might be interesting to imagine what such creatures could be - if Man is a manifestation of a man rune, and so on ]
This example is a bit extreme. I think it's quite common to see examples of areas of weak/strong worship being accompanied by weak/strong manifestations.
I think ownership of a rune extends this by saying that one particular god is essential in allowing the manifestation to take place anywhere. If he goes, the rune goes, and all gods associating themselves with that rune have got to drop it from their CV.
The God Learner runic system was an attempt to evaluate all possible manifestations. The next part of the God Learner secret is:
2) GOD predominates MANIFESTATION.
Furthermore, I think all manifestation is predominated by some god or another. If you could control the Gods, you could control Glorantha.
Next:
Manifestation tells us very little about a god - just something about the raw energy. Rune spells are part of this manifestation too. Details are provided by Myth.
Myths are tightly woven with the physical plane, and reflect the
cultural and spiritual needs of
the god's worshippers. Whether myth precedes "need" is a moot point -
the relationship is in any case symbiotic.
The collection of myths relating to a particular god, and the way those myths relate / solve problems in the physical world, will have a direct effect on the number and dedication of the god's worshippers. It's very unlikely to find someone willing to worship the wind just because it's there, rather they will worship it because of what it represents (to them). This represenation is communicated through myth.
If you've got a particularly bad set of myths then nobody is going to worship you. When that happens, that's curtains for the god. Part three of the secret:
3) MYTH predominates WORSHIP.
Looking at the relationship between myths and needs we can see similar things happening in our own world. This close binding means that earth myths change with "needs", in fact they seem to accomodate our "needs" only too well! If you're an atheist this wont seem too surprising - myths are just stories written by people with something (some concept) to sell.
The great difference with Glorantha is that "myths" appear to have a
life of their
own - at least there is an objective reality about them. They exists as
"things" in the Hero Plane, things which we can interact with, either to
re-inforce them or try to change them. Because of their objective
existence they have greater consistency in Glorantha than in our own
world - they are _stronger_, less open to interpretation. However, this
strength is also a weakness, since they provide a single point of attack
for anyone wanting to change them.
In our world I can change a myth as
much as I like, but unless I publish lots of books about it, talk about
it on TV, what have you, it isn't going to make any difference to other
people's version.
In Glorantha if you get at a myth, by HQing, and change it, it's going to change for everyone. Look at it another way, myths are _vulnerable_ to HeroQuests. Or part 4 of the God Learner Secret:
4) HEROQUEST predominates MYTH
Stick them all together and we get my theory for the God Learner Secret:
HEROQUEST predominates MYTH which predominates WORSHIP which predominates GOD which predominates MANIFESTATION.
In other words, not only:
"Through HeroQuests, you can change the world".
"Everything in the world may be changed through HeroQuests".
There is one last, and rather important, link in the chain which I wonder if the God Learners fully appreciated. I made the first part of the chain HEROQUEST without talking about who it is doing it. Be it man, troll, dragonewt or beast these things are manifestations (as I hinted earlier when I mentioned atheists). So:
5) MANIFESTATION predominates HEROQUEST
Questlines 2 - p.76:
AM: Can the worshippers of one religion, by their own worship, support their enemy god? Because [by] their own beliefs, while they're doing their ceremonies, they are helping to maintain their enemy?
GS: That's right.
Conversely, remove the enemy completely and you weaken your own case for worship (Lunars beware!).
This in itself makes Heroquesting a dangerous idea. It gets worse:
Another complication is the interelationship between the myths themselves. Myths are a web of stories about protagonists, whose characteristics are:
If you start tampering with this you are likely to cause a chain reaction to take place. Take an extreme example, if you Heroquest and change a myth so that Storm Bull ends up running away from chaos, then Storm Bull ends up being not quite the God he was and a whole lot of other myths need to adjust accordingly. In an extreme case such as this you might find a myth discarding Storm Bull altogether, and choosing Orlanth instead (say). When you Heroquested into that myth, things would have changed.
Now because a myth has a symbiotic relationship with culture, this is
going to change the
way a whole lot of people perceive the world and address their problems.
Luckily, this close association between myth and physical plane
stabilises things a bit, due to the natural human (creature)
conservativism about change. However two further possibilities exist:
that the system is chaotic (in the non-Broo sense), and that the system
has some gestalt consciousness.
I think one of these two possibilities could account for the demise of the God Learners.
They were probably quite happily playing around with the world, so to speak, by their various Heroquests, then one day either:
Well, that's it. I hope you've enjoyed reading my theories about it all. They are only theories, of course, but it's been fun to write.
Cheers
Richard
Richard Develyn (http://www.skaro.demon.co.uk)
End of The Glorantha Digest V5 #560
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