[speculates on the Abiding Book]
>Some time in the early 600s there arose a group of idealistic young
>people from a particularly conservative/fundamentalist background who
>were prepared to think radically about how to spread their version of
>Malkionism.
It arose much earlier, the date of c.500 is given in the Glorantha boxed set Timeline. Furthermore the "conservative/fundamentalist background" is unnecessary. S. Lieb had the idea that the God Learners accorded women a much greater role in society, for example, than modern Malkioni. That they did so is seen as an error which partly caused their downfall, which is why most Malkioni today have a dislike of uppity women.
>They distilled out the "best" ideas from existing
>Malkioni writings (i.e. threw out anything they disagreed with),
>integrated ideas from the Arkati, simplified the complex and, where
>there were gaps, wrote entirely new doctrine.
They did distill but they did not throw out "anything they disagreed with". Instead they had as their starting materials many different doctrines, some of which were widely divergent. They subjected _all_ these doctrines to a truth contest (c.f. Wyrms Footprints) and discarded those that failed.
They did not integrate ideas from the Arkati as that came much later with the overthrow of the Dark Empire (c.740).
As for the writing of new doctrine, this they did not do. What was discovered in c.500 was a means of unifying their consciousness with God. People could question one so united and receive startingly accurate answers. The God Learners depended upon these oracles for corrections and for giving infallible answers for gaps in their doctrines. If two oracles gave conflicting answers then the truth contest was resorted to. The Abiding Book was the end result of a long process of reconciling the oracular wisdoms of Jrustela.
A fair proportion of these oracles were women, which is why the God Learners were so liberal in that respect. The rite is still used today although under heavily restricted circumstances IMO.
>And they were
>not above inserting some particularly self-serving sections about the
>Secret Keepers and Paternal Keepers to justify their own positions in
>the new order that they were attempting to build.
I disagree. These had been part of Malkioni corpus since the Dawn. How could they not be true?
>Finally they developed a magical ritual to "announce" their
>revelation.
Would you have such cynicism at the core of every gloranthan religion? If not, then why tar the God Learners with such a brush?
> So, at a carefully stage-managed event
>(possibly an existing religious ceremony) on Kaltan's day 646, the
>hand appeared and wrote the final version of The Abiding Book.
And it was really _God_ that moved the Pen to Write.
>And this cynicism encouraged the world destroying
>mythical manipulation that led to the downfall of the GLs and the MSE.
The flaw of the God Learners was far more subtle. The first Oracle probably had something extremely important to tell them, but they bombarded him with so many questions on other matters that they never found out. Their ignorance of this led to a tiny flaw in their otherwise perfect cosmology that ultimately destroyed them.
>After this disaster the remaining Malkioni, who were mostly cut off
>from all but their closest neighbours, were forced to think carefully
>about their religion. The disasters were blamed either on the
>Brithini, the GLs or a combination of both.
The careful thinking is a bit of a myth as most reformations do not arise until a long time after the destruction of the God Learners. In the immediate aftermath, they were too hardpressed to survive to wonder about what was wrong with their theology.
>It is a proof of the coherence
>of The Abiding Book that, when the Closing was lifted, the various
>major Malkioni sects that emerged were so similar.
The Loskalmi and the Rokari are definitely _not_ similar.
Powered by hypermail