Re: Parloth

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_cs.ucc.ie>
Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2000 00:06:29 GMT


I've been catching up on this Peter/Nils discussion, and most thought- provoking it is. I don't want to put words into either party's mouth, but perhaps the nub of the matter is related to the following:

Vithelan cosmology identifies three mythic errors by the sons (or grandsons, I forget) of Vith: the dudes in the north, who sacrifice to the gods, the westerners, who use logic, and the southerners, who use animist rites. (Exactly correspondly to the four modes of God Learner though, of course, with the Vithelans themselves being the mystics.) This establishes as a pretty elemental fact that theism is a bum steer. So, my question is, do the Vithelans distinguish, either in a technical or in a moral sense, between their own worship of the Parloth (and the Parondpara, come to that), and this erroneous practice? Do they see it as basically the same, but consider their own practices to be mitigated in some fashion? (i.e., ideally we'd all be mystics, but at least we're not as bad as the hard-core theists!)

Technically the question isn't particular to theism, as there are also animists and sorcerors in the EI, but I'm assuming those are both less numerous, and less integrated into 'mainstream' Vithelan myth, so sacrificial practices do seem the most 'problematic', in that sense.

Cheers,
Alex.


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