>Glorantha is fiction and a game world. People within Glorantha may
apply
>the word 'god' to very different realities, nothing against it. But I'm
>speaking as a RW person that whants to understand Glorantha. So I,
Sergio
>(not my PCs) need to know what is a god in Glorantha. And there are two
>different conceceptions of god, inspired by similar conceptions fo
godhood
>in the RW: the 'ancient' conception that we find in the Greek and Roman
>pantheons; the jewish conception that gave origin to cristianity and
>islamism.
>In game terms, this means two completely different sets of rules, and
two
>completely different understandings of what is a god in Glorantha.
>If I'm going to play in Glorantha, I need to know which are those
>differences and how they translate to different sets of game rules.
There's probably more than two RW approaches to the idea of a god.
This is one of those areas of discussion that really starts the fur
flying.
My opinion is that any RW approach to the divine may be applicable
somewhere in Glorantha by some culture, all being equally valid.
Doesn't answer your question of course but I think that's the way it
is.
>But I'm not looking at this question in-character. It's me, Sergio,
that's
>raising the question, not one of my PCs.
>And what I want to know is wheter I should look at gods as unpersonal
and
>natural or as personalities.
Depends on the culture involved.
>I'm not saying that there must be a one true answer. I live happily
with
>polysemic (does it exist as an English word?) words. We may apply the
word
>god to two realities, nothing against it. But I want to know they're
>different, and how.
My opinion again is that this all depends on the culture involved. For
example
the Tusk Riders worship a composite deity, The God of the Bloody Tusk,
made up of three separate components, a Silver Age hero, a dead pig
god,
and a Darkness Demon who looks like an aspect of Zorak Zoran. They get
magic from their god and worship "him" but he's not really a god.
>I (meaning Sergio, not my PC) want to know if Orlanth exists, or if it
is
>only a social representation of a natural phenomenum. Whichever is the
>case, I want to know what are the manifestations of Orlanth and how
they
>operate in game terms. The same aplies to the Invisible God.
In the case of Orlanth both are true in my opinion. There's some core
aspect
of Orlanth that "exists". His cult is very much a social
representation. My
feeling is that the divine is ultimately unknowable by mortals because
of
the differences between divine beings and mortals. (Try explaining
something
really complicated to a four year old and you'll see what I mean.
Mortals
in Glorantha are 4 year olds and the divine beings are the adults trying
to
explain things to them. Some communication goes on but there's a lot of
room for misunderstanding. That's why religions vary from place to
place).
My opinion is that when it comes to religion in Glorantha there are no wrong and right answers. Belief seems to produce results and following the ways of your fathers and mothers seem to be a safe path. However you can also forge new paths and find new ways to worship the same god though I think this is rarer.
The manifestations of Orlanth will vary from place to place and very
different cults might worship the same god under different guises. West
King
Storm of the Pentans may or may not be Orlanth under a different guise.
>Of course, it is possible to turn all magical systems into variants of
a
>single meta-system. Say, pantheon gods (Orlanthi, Yelmic, etc.) are
only
>super-spirits (or super-elementals); a mystic is a lesser spirit that
can
>gain the powers of godhood; etc.
I believe that this is actually the case and that you can approach gods
as
big spirits.
Basically what I am trying to say is that you're not going to find a
limited
number of definitions as to what "gods" are in Glorantha. All of them
are
going to be culturally based and all are going to be equally valid. Now
this doesn't mean that I don't think there are actually gods in
Glorantha,
I do. I just don't think there is any neat, clean way to define them.
"Orlanth"
exists BUT his exact nature/attributes are ultimately unknowable by
mortals. To really understand the nature of the divine you'd have to be
divine yourself. (This doesn't mean that a given culture won't believe
that they know everything about their gods, they probably do and they
may even be right).
I hope this is of some help. Basically if you want to define gods for
your
Glorantha you're going to have to do it yourself and arrive at something
you can be happy with.
Oliver D. Bernuetz
www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/realm/5545
bernuetz.oliver_at_cbsc.ic.gc.ca
End of The Glorantha Digest V6 #57
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