To the first question: A god, as we will demonstrate in detail in later lectures, is a "bit of specifically real reality". That is, a god is an archetypal expression made manifest. It is not necessarily a "being" in the sense that would refer to true beings like ourselves, although it can certainly put on the *semblance* of beinghood. Furthermore, some gods were formerly beings who identified too closely with an archetype, and thereby had their identity consumed by it. This lecture, and the next three, will illustrate this, with examples of all known types of gods, in greater detail.
To the second question: Of all the savages, the dragonewts appear to come closest, in their primitive folk-tales, to the reality that we have experimentally determined. Therefore, we will use their terminology to some extent. However, as you already know, having completed the lecture series on the power of statements, you must always maintain RuneQuest Sight when utilizing such terminology. The dragonewts, as you may have already heard, claim the existence of "Ouroboros", which they, of course, portray as a dragon. This Ouroboros can also be call "is/is-not". From Ouroboros came the World Dragon, which can also be called "is". From that point on, however, even the dragonewts descend into ancestral supersticiery.
Our own research into the matter shows that first is the god Ouroboros, who is everything that is and is not, everything that can be and cannot be. From Ouroboros devolved (and that devolution will be addressed later in the lecture series) "Is" and "Is-Not". "Is" can be seen as World as God. "Is-Not" can be seen as "Chaos as God". Their relationship with each other is central to our understanding of reality. The second half of the lecture series will be devoted to them.
What's that? How do the Gods' Age stories fit into this? I could simply say "they don't", but that would hardly be fair of me. I'm jumping ahead, but I'll give a brief summary--but remember that this is a lot more complex, and we'll get into it in more detail later.
"Is" devolved into various important factors that make up the world, including the physical planes, gross matter, elements, and what we call the "Primal Pair". This "Primal Pair" are actually the first entities that most savages could be capable of recognizing as "Gods". We usually refer to the Primal Pair as "The Emperor" and "The Rebel". All gods (with a few important exceptions that most savages are compltely unaware of--but we'll get into that later) in the Gods' Age are either facets and/or admixtures of these two.
Some time during this stage of self-interaction between Emperor and Rebel, some facets of Rebel managed to reunite Is and Is-not, the fusion produced a third Primal, which we can call "Chaos" or "Is-not in the world".
>From that point on, all gods are some manifestation of Emperor, Rebel,
and Chaos.
But what about the Invisible God, you might ask? That got your hands to drop. Even our own ancestors possessed imperfect knowledge. While our ancestors retained some memory of Ouroboros and Is, it was bound by superstition and primitive mythology. The Invisible God is the supersticious mask that our ancestors place over the unitary truth. Yes, I'm sure that many of you faithfully engage in worship services, and these are maintained for the emotional comfort of the masses, but the truth of the Invisible God is actually far more glorious than you had thought.
End of The Glorantha Digest V6 #281
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