Re: Identifying Gods

From: TTrotsky_at_aol.com
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1998 17:34:24 EDT


Segio:

<< Yet in Glorantha I suppose (notice that this is a conditional statement) that there should be a clear frontier between non-religious and religious wars. Followers of a given god (say, Orlanth) can fight each other in a nonreligious  war. They can even
 call on their common god to arbitrate the war (a little like the judgement of god and ordails (don't know the exact English word) of medieval Europe). But I suppose that, say, Orlanth would not allow a religious war among orlanthi. It simply makes no sense. [snip] In Glorantha I assume the god would solve the conflict before it turned into war by signaling clearly which side had his aproval.>>

     I think there's pretty strong evidence that gods aren't capable of this. The Invisible God certainly isn't, since the various Malkioni sects are often quite hostile to each other. I'm sure that if the Borists, for instance, were present in large enough numbers to make it practical, many other Malkioni would quite happily engage in Holy War against them. Yet the Invisible God hasn't zapped the Borists, despite the fact that they are clearly blasphemous heretics from the POV of his other worshippers.

     To give a more clearly theist example, take the Arrolians. They worship the Red Goddess, yet have clear doctrinal differences with the mainstream Lunars, which resulted in them being kicked out of the Empire. Why didn't the Red Goddess simply point out to them that they weren't worshipping her correctly - or that they were and the Empire ought to change its ideas, whichever was the case?

     That heresy exists and can be succesful, and that cults can change over the course of their history (as outlined for Yelm in FS) would seem to imply that gods have rather less influence over their worshippers than most of the latter might suppose. If they don't intervene for one side or the other in the case of religious schisms and heresies, I don't really see why they would (or even could) if that schism grew to the point of religious war.  

 << [Dave P]: The lunars are certainly not inclusive of Orlanth either.  

 False. They would certainly be happy to include Orlanth within the pattern of their religions, like they did with Yelm. The only nagging problem is that Orlanth doesn't want to be included. Examples: Tarsh, Sartar, Pavis. Lunars accept Orlanthi that don't antagonize blatantly the lunar way.>>

     Or even cooperate with it willingly, as most of the inhabitants of Sylila and the Provinces do. Admittedly, it might be arguable whether these people actually are Orlanthi (from the Sartarite POV), but they have a similar culture and, IIRC, many gods in common - possibly even Orlanth himself in some relatively subordinate position.

Forward the glorious Red Army!

    Trotsky  


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