PM>>What definition of science are you using? No RW scientist follows
>>these precepts. =
>
JL>OK, here's some ammo to use against me: I am not a scientist.
>(as if you hadn't already guessed.)
>
>Common sense definition: science is knowledge.
>
>Your move.
>
I consider myself a scientist (when I get paid), and science is more about confirming your ideas about the natural laws to get something. When your ideas are proven wrong, sometimes you will make new ones, but preconceived theories are the base of science.
Science is a model. Just that. And to build a model you need to suppose how things work.
Ian or Katts>Ah yes, but not among those most Orthodox of Westerners, the
Brithini.
>Malkion was a heretical Brithini, after all ...
Inmortality is the most anathema of spells to them, as a true brithini does not need them. I suspect you will suffer horrible tortures during all those long years you extended inmortality to...
[JL again]>Undigestible Glorantha Digest number 599 archived unread. Can any
one tel=
>l me what was in it?=
>
More early third age hammering with still more second age source tossing. Actually I liked it. It is fun to see how they try to reach a consensus only to change the subject of the argument.
And both convince me. Is that dangerous?
[JL]>Well, yes, but I meant what I said, albeit laconically.
>Gloranthan clan leaders, kings, generals, emperors,
>shopkeepers, ship captains and other practitioners of
>politics and economics surely take steps to ensure
>the best use of the magics that they or their assistants and
>subordinates command. IMO this invalidates many parallels
>one could be tempted to draw between RW pre-industrial economies
>and the magical economies of Glorantha.
Don't forget you are dealing with Religion and the Divine. Magic is only a fixed affair for the Brithini. For the rest, tradition and prejudice hold more weight. And anyway tradition and prejudice are 100% brithini too.
[NB]>Julian Lord follows up someone's mention in passing:
Hey, I've got a name (and I am not cited often).
I agree with Nick's views on Solace. Indeed, one of the charms of henotheism is that it offers many new spiritual helpers that will help you along. Maybe you don't make it into Solace in the first try, but a short stint in Zorakarkat legion of Demons and if you behave well, you will reach there, eventually. Unless the Green Lady decided to send you back to Glorantha for a rematch. Or Orland, who never leaves one of his own, offers you shelter in his camp until you are ready. And simple dissolution is too light for sinners, so they will suffer unspeakable tortures in hell before dissolving. Although if you are a Felstran who dies far from the lake your soul will become one of the sorrwful lakegulls, always crying their loss, and yearning for the waters. And the list goes on and on. Pick any country in Safelster and you will have at least twenty different takes of Solace.
[NW]>My theory is that Malkioni saints are rather like
>mahayana buddhist bodhisattvas, i.e. they have achieved
>Solace but chosen to remain "hovering" between the
>mundane world and Solace in order to help the remaining
>people to be good and virtuous so that they can also
>goto Solace upon death.
This has the added advantage that in the RW some bodhisattvas have been worshipped as gods, something that happens in henotheist lands too.
I take Saint to mean a human (or other mortal race) that has attained grace and still hangs on to help others reach Solace. That means that for some henotheists Orlanth, Ehilm and company were people in the far past who did great things and now are helping others. Nick stressed the humanocentric nature of Malkioni society in his gods essay, and that is IMO the most important feature of Malkionism. Everything was made for, or by, men. And a man will be saved or lost by his own merits, with a little help from his friends.
I like that human superiority complex, even if taken to the extreme it produced the God Learners, the ultimate human supremacists. There is something gratifying in being above the gods.
Jose (that's Dr. Ramos for you)
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