It's a long piece, but i hope it's enjoyable anyway. I'd love to see some comments on it.
The following excerpts are from the book "Schools of thought" by Ardos of Many Tongues, written in 1619. This three-volume book was a gift to Lord Kortein Spearstrong of Bagnot, for his remarkable hospitality. Ardos was a gifted youth of the Vantaros tribe, and the lankoring he was apprenticed to sent him to Bildaros, the mhy of the scriptory in Alda Chur, so Ardos could drink his fill of knowledge. Ardos later left the scriptory and journeyed far and wide in search of knowledge.
>From the INTRODUCTION
- -.. Of all the weird and wonderful things i have learned during my
journeys, the thing that has come to amuse and fascinate me the most is the
fact that all sages i have met claim to seek knowledge and truth, yet not
two of them agree on the nature of truth and how to reach it. Seldom will a
sage believe another sage's teachings to be anywhere near the truth if it
contradicts their own understanding, and hardly ever will they admit that
they themselves could be wrong. I hope the following quote can go some way
as to explain why.
"You, my young, inquisitive apprentices, should do well to be warned by the fate of Molnar the Doubter, who saw the error of his ways and lamented his fate with these woeful words after Harvar Ironfist, our benefactor, rightfully outlawed him for riddling:
If you listen to one and only one sage, you shall learn the truth about the world. If you listen to two sages, you shall learn only contradiction and confusion. If you listen to a third sage in the hope that he will clear the sky of clouds, you shall learn only to distrust and doubt the words of sages.
The fire in your heart will grow cold, and never again will you be certain that anything you know is true. If you listen to many sages, you travel on the winding paths of a riddler, and you will find only new questions instead
of answers, only falsehoods and lies instead of truth. Listen only to one sage, or be cursed with scepsis and doubt, as i am.
So, pay other sages, like Waldmar of Jonstown, no heed, for their teachings will only sow seeds of disbelief and uncertainty into your hearts. Know then that the doubting heart will ever be a stranger to truth, for if your hearts cannot recognize what is true, you must assume that it is false. Hence, the doubter will know nothing but falsehoods and lies."
This i heard when i studied under Bildaros, the new sage of the scriptory of Alda Chur. Bildaros is not known for having any sense of subtlety, and wouldn't recognize irony if it slapped him in the face, so i find it amusing that by totally missing Molnar's thinly veiled point, Bildaros conveys Molnar's message.
SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT
- -.. I have come to the conclusion that most sages adhere to one of two
overarching verologies. One says that truth is immanent in the mundane
world and therefore possible to experience directly by anyone. The other
says that truth transcends the mundane world and therefore is unknowable by
mortals, except those who can transcend into the Light of Knowledge. It
seems that transcendentalism is predominantly found in Peloria, and
immanentism in Kethaela, though there are certainly adherents to either in
both places.
PURISM
Purism is arguably the most widespread school, and it is also the most
varied. Within the school there are many movements and sects, although all
of them adhere to transcendentalism.
Its basic tenets is that all things mundane are of temporal and changeable,
and thus illusory, nature, impure manifestations of their pure essences,
their eternal and unchanging, and thus true, nature. The soul of a mortal
being is eternal and unchanging and can transcend the mundane world and
know truth. But since the soul is kept impure by the mundaneity of its
mortal shell, it can only transcend after death, and death unfortunately
obliterates the conscious mind. Purists claim that a mortal mind can attain
true knowledge while alive by the purification of the soul, which allows it
to transcend without leaving the body.
To purify his soul, the sage must abstain from indulging in activities of
disorderly and illusory nature, and he must purge himself of impurities.
This purification is achieved in many different ways, most often through
rigid discipline, ascesis and abstinency, though many sects do not agree on
what constitutes indulgence, and what activities are of disorderly and
illusory nature. The degree to which a few schools take their purifying
verges on the rabid, especially the tarshite Oseldics.
Members of the Oseldic sect spend most of their time mortifying their flesh in isolated contemplation, and the rest of the time they live under ridiculously harsh and detailed rules, may eat only eggs and drink only rainwater and are forbidden to speak to anyone who has not taken the first vow of the sect. Extreme as they may be, they can draw tremendous power from their vows. I once debated with an Oseldic sage in Bagnot and the logic and clarity of his arguments was truly astounding and left me speechless.
Flagellation and mortification are less common, though widespread, purificatory practices. It is said that the lunar sages in Pavis 'whipped some sense into the sages of the library,' meaning that they introduced flagellation there. The most outrageous mortificatory purists i've heard about voluntarily let disease spirits afflict them. Hopefully that sect will soon die out. Mutilation is a rare occurrence, and i know of but a few sects that practice it. Members of one really weird pelorian sect blind themselves in order to attain pure sight, as they say, or at least those do who still have their tongues. In an esrolian sect masculinity is seen as an impurity, and castration is thus mandatory for the male members.
Taboos and miasmic pollution are relatively common. Alda Chur New School, led by Bildaros, hold that various activities, like touching a member of the opposite sex or speaking to farmers, makes the sage unclean and unfit to perform sagely activities until he has ritually cleansed himself of his miasma. The Old Schoolers were harmless crypticists (vide infra), but Harvar Ironfist outlawed them all as riddlers and put Bildaros in charge of the scriptory.
Illusionism
In recent years i have encountered what i call illusionism, a very
fascinating puristic anti-movement. Members of this movement are obviously
barking mad, since they claim that there is only void and chaos beyond the
illusory nature of the mundane world, and that the quest for truth is
futile. They further claim that the illusion was created by the gods to
protect existence itself from chaos, which is why the illusion must be
maintained and kept a secret, lest chaos devour existence itself. They say
that this is why the gods destroyed the god learners, who almost ripped the
illusion apart with their experiments.
Immolationism
Followers of this otherwise puristic esrolian sect believe that true
knowledge can never be attained by mortals, and that the purpose of
purification is to shield the mind from being obliterated after death. The
sufficiently purified mind will then follow the soul intact to the tower of
ivory to hear the truth from the lips of the mhy itself and serve its word
forever.
The members of this sect prepare themselves by experimenting with
discorporation and extreme mortification until they feel sufficiently
prepared. Then they ritually kill themselves by immolation to prevent
resurrection.
PRIMOLTICISM
In some ways the pelorian school of primolticism can be seen as an
anti-puristic movement, since it shares the verology of purism but
practices the antithesis of purism.
Primolticist sages, like some hard-line purists, claim that anything of mundane origin including knowledge of the mundane world, is dangerous, because of its illusory nature which can only lead away from truth and never to it. But unlike purists, primolticists read no books, nor do they write any, and instead occupy themselves only with pure logic and abstract philosophy in an effort to attain the primolt, Lhankor's aetheric, transmundane source of truth. They say that the soul is the only essence of mortals that originated from primolt. The soul cannot become impure, nor can the irredeemably mundane flesh, lusts and urges of mortals ever be purified. Therefore, they say, it would be illogical to practice any form of abstinency, and so they indulgence in every imaginable form of excess or debauchery the temple can afford.
The Blind Seers
A pelorian movement within the school claim that the sun is a primoltic
fragment, which is why mortals, bound to the mundane world, cannot gaze
upon it without blinding themselves. But when the impurities of the mundane
sight of mortals have been wholly burnt away, the transmundane sight of the
soul will see the primoltic essence of the sun. It is quite surreal to see
these fat, blind sages, draped in precious silk, fed and caressed by slave
girls and slave boys, sit in the temple atrium and stare at the sun,
debating logic with each other all the while.
CRYPTICISM
Crypticism can reportedly be found with immanent verology, but all of the
crypticists i have encountered have adhered to transcendentalism, a few of
them purificatory. Crypticism isn't really a school, but a doctrine used by
schools.
Crypticism hold that truth can be harmful for people who are not prepared
to receive it. Thus the truth must be cloaked in allegory, metaphor,
paradox and riddle so it won't shatter the mind of the person receiving the
answer. The cryptics say those mortals who can contemplate the often
incomprehensible enigmas within their texts and see through them are
capable of learning the truth, and are worthy of becoming students. A
cynical sage i once met said that cryptics talk as if they were geased to
never lie and to never tell the truth.
The cryptics claim that the way to truth is a confusing labyrinth made up
of paradox and riddles. One cryptic i spoke with said that there are
precisely 111 labyrinths which must be passed in the precise order for the
soul to transcend.
Of all the sages i have encountered, i believe that cryptics are the most
likely of all sages to become illuminated, and it is said that their
methods of solving logical paradoxes is akin to riddling.
CARNALISM
Carnalism is an immanent school found predominantly in Kethaela, but it is
known elsewhere. Though the school has an immanent verology it often
incorporates the concept of miasmic pollution found among the purificatory
schools of Peloria, as exemplified by Alda Chur New School.
Carnalists claim that true knowledge can only be gained through rapture of discovery and immersion in experience, which is the incarnation of knowledge, and that logic and reason create only illusions of the imagination and intangible untruths. They say that if a sage do not experience a thing, and experience it in all ways possible, he can never know the truth about that thing. If a sage has no personal experience, no incarnated knowledge, of a thing, then he can have no true knowledge of it.
They hold that a sage should listen to the knowledge of other sages to compare with his own knowledge on that subject. But if a sage trusts the knowledge of others to be true, he invites illusion to lead him astray.
In my experience, carnalists are the sages most likely to travel extensively and do personal investigations and research. They are also the most likely to perform strange experiments and suffer the consequences. I know of a carnalist from Jonstown who got himself killed three times investigating mostali disorder kegs, and i have heard of a carnalist in Furthest who is known as Ottabrian of Many Colours after his experiments with alchemical ointments.
REVELATIONISM
Even though it is a transcendent school, revelationism has much in common
with carnalism, in that both believe that true knowledge can only come from
personal experience.
Revelationists hold that truth cannot be taught or learned, but only personally experienced in transcendent revelations. Such revelations are called 'moments of light'. When the moment of light is past, the soul descends again into the mundane. Since the transcendent cannot be described by the mundane, the truth revealed to the sage will become a memory, a shadow of truth, describable only in simile and parable.
The moments of light always come unbidden to the sage, never when expected or wanted. They do tend come more often if the revelationist prepares himself with the proper rituals, reminiscent of purification. Some revelationist do practice purification to the hilt, but those are far from the norm.
The revelationists often do not teach what they have learned, though they
often try to teach the ignorant the ways to experience these moments of
light, to open the inner eye to the visions and revelations of the Light of
Knowledge.
Some sages have argued that the revelationists really search for the
perfect light of Nysalor, others argue that it is really the lies of Gbaji.
They may be right, for not a few revelationists are illuminated.
TAXONOMISM
Taxonomism is a quite popular school of thought, usually with an immanent
verology, though i have encountered purificatory taxonomists in Kethaela
and Tarsh. Taxonomists believe that when everything is known, named and
recorded, and thus given its proper place in the order of things, truth can
be completely revealed and chaos will cease to exist, for if chaos is given
its proper place in the order of things it will no longer be chaotic.
They observe, categorize and name everything, and they compile everything in lists of lore, arranged typologically. Which, unsuprisingly enough, leads to ceaseless argument about what should have what name and how it should be categorized. Taxonomists are probably the most well-travelled of all truthseekers, apart from the carnalists. In their neverending quest to name all of existence they have travelled to most of the worlds and places of Glorantha.
One famous taxonomist was Baldrus, the black reader of Nochet, who took upon himself the task of documenting all known forms of chaos. For by placing order upon the shifting nature of chaos, it would cease to be chaotic. Followers of his doctrine are usually found in scriptories close to chaos-infested hellholes.
Theonomenists
The theonomenists are members of a taxonomic movement that originated in
Seshnela many years ago. They are obsessed with finding the name of the
creator god by recording and analyzing the name of every divinity that ever
existed anywhere in Glorantha. Reportedly they have over 75 000 names in
their theonomicon.
MHYSTICISM
Mhysticism isn't a school per se, but a doctrine, and fragments of it
pervade almost every school of thought i have encountered. From what i have
gathered, mhystics claim that everything was once a transcendent
singularity, which became an immanent plurality by a process of systematic
emanation. Mhysticism is the study and knowledge of that systematic
emanation and its correspondences and consequences.
I've heard it said that mhysticism was invented by the god learners to contain their secrets, but after the world changed, it no longer contains any secrets to know, only mysteries to contemplate. But the mhystics i have debated with have shown proof of frightening powers of divination and interpretation of omens, so their correspondences must contain some modicum of truth.
End of The Glorantha Digest V6 #306
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