This is a circular argument - basically you're saying that "God is on the side with the bigger battalions". By this logic the winners are always right, and not just becuase they wrote the history books. The problem is that at any point in time there are different winners and thus different ideas of rights. Thus for a long period of time the Dragonfriends were "right". The EWF was destroyed by the actions of the dragons, inhuman king and dragonewts - rather an odd way for Orlanth to go about restoring his orthodoxy...
Even in the 1600's you have the Aeolians, Ralians, Pent's West King Wind, Prax's little brother, etc. All different ways of worshipping Orlanth. Which is "right" and why hasn't Orlanth stomped out any of the wrong ones.
It is all very well to argue from the point of view of the combatants to say their enemies are apostate, but the Gloranthan corpus does not support this on the level we're discussing.
> As you say, to have storm powers is a thing; to have Orlanth's storm power
> is another. A war between the followers of two storm gods or two storm
> powers is not an intra-religious war.
But who says that the losers didn't have Orlanth's storm powers - only the winners. I think we can take their assertions about that with rather a large grain of salt. On the other hand the EWF were quite happily worshiping Orlanth and were being fought against by other Orlanthi.
> To a certain extent, yes. I think that the question of illumination must be
> thought in a different way. Being illuminated means that you're tainted by
> chaos.
Whoa there! In none of the published sources is this statment supported. Illumination =/= chaos. Rashoran was a celestial court deity - he existed even before the entry of Chaos into the world. Yelm is illuminated - I'd be hard pressed to find a less "chaotic" deity.
> << but some of these succesful movements were radically different than
> their predecessors, and on has to wonder why Yelm didn't make his wishes
> known a bit sooner. >>
>
> The key point here is time. Gods are out of time. Time is an allien concept
> to them. The order of events is unimportant from a god's POV (of course
> it's fundamental from the worshipers POV), what matters is the holistic (in
> time and space terms) that the god keeps his worship and mythical
> significance.
So we are to envision the god as a hypercard stack? Essentially all interpretations are simultaneously true and false?
>
> << For instance, in the First Age, the DH Emporer was a god, and
> worshipped as such, but after the events of Nysalor's life it was decided
> that
> he was just a man, after all, albeit one with important religious
> functions. This
> seems to me a pretty fundamental change, and not just an alteration in
> style
> of worship. I think if Yelm didn't want people to worship the DH Emporer as
> a
> god, he could have said so in Khordavu's reign, if not earlier. >>
>
> Only men perceive the change, since this a time-ordained change. At a
> divine level, the DH Emperor is both a man an a god and has the proper
> worship where it must happen.
I don't think this makes sense. They are two contradictory positions, one or the other must hold, each might be true sequentially but not both at the same time.
I won't address your earlier response to me as that discussion has very little Gloranthan content and you essentially agreed with my origional argument.
Regarding Orlanth and Rufelza, Simon Phipp's post put it excellently.
Yours,
Yak
- --
Dave Pearton
pearton_at_u.washington.edu
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Down he sank in a chair-ran his hands through his hair- +
And chanted in mimsiest tones +
Words whose utter inanity proved his insanity, +
While he rattled a couple of bones. +
+
"The Hunting of the Snark" Lewis Carroll +
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
------------------------------
End of The Glorantha Digest V6 #270
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