Identifying gods

From: Sergio Mascarenhas <sermasalmeida_at_mail.telepac.pt>
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1998 10:16:40 +0100


Peter Metcalfe:

Corrects me about RW identification of gods:

> But this sort of thing did happen in the Real World. In classical
> times, the Indians were said by the Greeks to have worshipped
> Dionysus (Krishna), the Germans were said by Tacitus to have
> worshipped Mercury (Wotan), Hercules (Donar) and Mars (Tiu).
> There was a sense of 'when in Rome, live as the Romans do'
> which operated then as opposed to the scholarly approach of the
> christians which tended to emphasize the differences.
>
> FWIW Kahar is not a Godling but a powerful storm god whose
> actions sank a major part of Vithela. Balumbasta is the Doraddi
> Father of the Mountains.

So, we can also find this two patterns in Glorantha: cultures that incorporate foreign religions by assimilating them to their native religions; cultures that, as you say, emphasize the differences. I would tend to think that the lunars are on the first field, and the Orlanthi on the second.

Yet, there is a problem in Glorantha that people don't face in the RW: magic actually works in Glorantha. IMO that means that it's much harder to assimilate two disparate gods into a single entity. After all, in Glorantha a person can contact his god and establish a personal link with him; and can identify its magical manifestations. It will be obvious to any Orlanth initiate that belonging to the Orlanth community is not the same as belonging to the Kahar community, and that both worships provide different magical benefits that are not interchangeable.

Let me provide an example of what I mean: the USA army, the British army, the Russian army or the Portuguese army ar all armies. They have similar structures and functions. But we cannot assimilate the British, Russian or Portuguese armies into the USA army only based on their similarities. We cannot say, like you said in a previous message ('Identifying Kahar as Orlanth or Balumbasta as Lodril would cause nobody problems'), that identifying the British army as the USA army causes nobody problems.  American generals will not accept British, Russian or Portuguese generals on an equal foot to them only because they all 'worship' war and are all generals.
I think that religions in Glorantha are closer to this: the Orlanth worshiper will recognize that Kahar is a storm god (like a general in an army recognizes that a foreign army is also in the war business), but he will not identify his god with the foreign god.

Sergio


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