> > You couldn't simply, by an act of
> > will, change your friendly neighbourhood (?) Humakt temple to have
> > such-and-such magic or practice, just because "Humakt" worship along
> > such lines exists elsewhere (much less, because it seemed nifty at the
> > time). Rather it's in significant part conditioned by a whole set of
> > cultural and religious norms, set of knowledge, etc. You could perhaps
> > in principle change it, by a Sufficiently Large HeroQuest (TM), but
> > in general it would be no small matter.
> Well, yes. But Humakt doesn't care about that stuff.
Which 'Humakt' are we speaking of? The Sartarite Humakt, as he's experienced by his wprshippers in both a social and a personal manner very definitely does care about such things.
By pre-supposing a 'broader Humakt', and then attributing different properties or 'attitudes' to him than the manifest ones, you're essentially trying to construct a 'higher truth', at variance with the (as it were) 'level 3' truth. This is, I'll grant, an entertaining mental exercise at times, but from the point of view of playing the Gloranthans who might hold such beliefs, isn't too useful. Handy in the God Learner RPG, I'd assume, though...
(I know Greg makes such statements also, but one should also bear in mind what he has to say about 'applying mythic truths at the correct level'.)
> This means that it is
> perfectly possible to have a Humakt temple where you can't tell the
> members from Zorak Zoran without a score card, but that's OK.
If you're prepared to stipulate that "In a sense, Humakt and Zorak Zoran are manifestations of the same power", then in precisely that sense, I'll agree with you. In the more usual sense, I don't believe this is so.
> To use a different place as a non-canon example, a Carmanian Humkti is
> rather unlikely to have the same cultural baggage as a Sartar Humakti.
Well, of course. But they're going to be magically and cultic different as well, so it's misleading to imply the "baggage" in some way doesn't matter. (In fact since the "Carmanian Humakt" is such a sketchy figure, it's not clear where such comparisons get us.)
I agree that both work, and both are obviously forms of death worship. But that's not to say that they're worshipping precisely the 'same thing', nor that any other such method would be equally good. There's a danger here that if one paints oneself into an overly small "Objectivist" corner, one is faced with some alarmingly Subjectivist conclusions: some parts of the way I worship Humakt are conditioned by Objective Reality, but the rest are not, and so whatever I decide to make up on the spot is equally 'true' as Sartarite or Carmanian religious tradition on such matters?
A less problematic approach is to distinguish between the transcendent entity, "Humakt the Great God", as it were, or perhaps more handily, simply Death, are regard the 'different Humakts' as aspects, maifestations, whatever, varying to a greater or lesser degree from each other, though nonetheless all perfectly real. That's if one wishes to wory about the Objective Truth Thang as such at all.
Cheers,
Alex.
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