Would you believe this is the *fourth* time I've sent this off? All those myths about Gift Carriers of the Sending Gods are coming back to haunt me.
Try #4.
[I first posted this article 'bout ten days ago: I have since been away. It bounced or simply got eaten by Porchango. I'm reposting today in the hope that some of us might remember last week).
At the risk of kissing the trickster (never be afraid to, but always be aware you're doing it), Nils' posting on Arkati secret societies seemed to me to state a fundamental truth about nearly *ALL* Gloranthan cults:
>I'd say the Arkati sects/secret societies/whatever _claim_
How wonderful that in Glorantha, narrow and unneccessarily-binding notions of truth and history are always subordinate to the demands of a community for ritual and mythic sustenance. It works here and now, therefore it is true! The Orlanthi suspicion of written records is entirely justified: the act of recording the past defiles and distorts it: they understand that (like the Godtime) history is not *in the past* but an active, semi-permeable layer that surrounds and interacts with everyday life.
Likewise the cults. Tradition and continuity are flexible and adaptive. Lines of continuity typically depend on just a few scattered and isolated individuals, and are easily disrupted. Certainly in my part of the world (the Quivini lands of Sartar and the Far Place) there is no central institution with the power and military clout to suppress variations in belief, even if the thought occurred to them. (Just look at the difference between the basic Ernalda myths among the Sartarite tribes). In fact, it's probably best to ditch all our Western, Christian notions of ORTHODOXY (same belief) and acknowledge that in many regions of Glorantha, ORTHOPRAXIS (same behaviour) is the *only* measure of an active religious life.
Various people have different game and genre stances on literacy and its frequency. I don't think literacy alters my argument: Look at the changes in Christian doctrine, its heresies and schisms, over the last five hundred years. Myth operates as a cognitive filter between a person and their environment in way that is much more basic than printed materials: it is essentially the *attitude* one brings to a question.
Myths change constantly. Gods and heroes are supplanted or become conflated: all Vinga heroes become Vinga, all heroes of Orlanth Dragonfriend become Argrath. Regional changes in cultic practice are probably measurable over the space of one or two generations (or one or two chief priests). Certain ancestral spirits may pass from favour if they begin interfering in current cult practice.
It's a wondrous, mythic, memic dance. Orlanth is a meme, the Red Godess is a meme, and their sibling rivalry for control of the Middle Air shakes half a continent to pieces. The struggle will radically change them both and all who worship them.
Same as it ever was. :)
John
(if you read this, take an Illumination check)
==
"Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity."
Flaubert. "Madam Bovary".
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DO YOU YAHOO!?
End of The Glorantha Digest V6 #476
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