Excellent Lady of the Wild stuff from Madam X.
Loved it so much, that I went and 'got' John Hughes' post in GD 446 from majordomo.
Also excellent !
Can anyone tell me which GD Darvall's original post originally appeared in BTW ?
I'll make a few comments on both posts,
'cos the LotW is a goddess that I'm curious about.
> >>I wrote this stuff in order to give my hunter's a more wilderness centred
> >>approach to their lives.
Good. But the hunter, like a shaman, is part of two worlds.
The few devotees of the LotW enter into the wilderness and forsake the society of men, and their own humanity. Completely.
They become Beasts.
> >Our experiences help to ground it of course. Talk all you like about
> >surrendering to mystical oneness and the nobility of solitude,
I don't know about oneness.
When I hiked, I felt a sense of tranquility.
An easy emptiness.
A forgetfulness.
> >but also remember the cold and damp that gets in your bones and just
> >won't go away, the insect bites, the way it *feels* to sleep on the ground,
If you do it for long enough; the cold and damp go away, the insects
stop
biting you, and you learn where and how to sleep (and it feels better
than
a feather bed, unless it rains too hard ... ).
> >Did I mention the way your companions all start to smell? And the longing
> >for decent toilet paper?
>
> This is very much where I'm coming from. Although after 4 weeks you
> can't smell your companions. Other people are a different matter.
When I hiked for eight weeks, I found that the smell of the city left
me,
and since then, I've never quite been able to ignore it as I used to.
Hell, I feel like I'm permanently choking.
In the wilderness you start to prefer natural smells to civilised
ones.
Also, your sense of smell improves.
No, I could *definitely* smell my companions !!
> >I stumbled a little over the proper name 'Tara' for the Lady of the Wild,
>
> I tend to ignore the RW origion of names in G.
But that *isn't* her only name.
She only even *has* a name in non-Odaylan / non-LotW myths, anyway. (cottars attempting to civilise her) (and failing)
She doesn't have a singular representation, or a single name, even
among the Heortlings. From a strictly theistic POV, she isn't a
goddess,
but a certain kind of mythic figure that is centered around a
loosely remembered quasi-Hsunchen All-/Animal- Mother.
The God Learners never *quite* managed to fit the LotW into their neat little schemes. She can't be tied down.
Some of the Heortlings call her Kero Fin, if you don't like 'Tara'.
> >> As mother /protector/
> >>hunter of all wild creatures she both provides the hunters' prey & preys
> >>apon them. The act of hunting brings a mortal into her domain more surely
> >>than any other.
>
> >So cult membership is part active worship and part surrender to a reality
> >too big to be ordered or controlled. And part cold opportunism.
>
> Bloody ay.
Yes.
Remember that old thing about 1 in 100 animals being endowed with intelleigence ? I believe that most of the LotW's devotees will be intelligent wild beasts. Probably the carniverous ones.
> >> Unlike the various domestic activities, herding, berrying
> >>etc, hunting is always part spirit quest & so hunters attract more of her
> >>attention. The various rituals involved with hunting are as often as not
> >>aimed at Tara with her son interceding on the part of the hunters.
You obviously refer to Odayla, but I gather that Orlanth is the son of Umath and the LotW, according to some myths (obviously not Heortling ones). Is Orlanth ever a Hunter god in your opinion ? (Umath obviously was)
> >>Any meeting with Tara is a mystical
> >>event, although Taran mystics have low life expectancies.
I don't think that they are Mystics keyword-wise.
But : am I wrong ? I could definitely see a case for them having
physical
powers similar to those of physical mysticism. But maybe not. Hmmmm
- -..
Julian Lord
> > ... a flying arrow, a crashing wave, night old ice,
> >a coiled snake, a bride's bed talk, a broken sword,
> >the play of bears, a king's son.
>
> From quiet homes & first beginnings
> Out to the undiscovered ends
> There's nothing worth the wear of winning
> But laughter & the love of friends.
If, evil one, you have come
from a forest demon's lair
from hideouts of pine
from lodges of fir
that is where I banish you-
to the forest demon's lair
the lodges of fir
the hideouts of pine
that you may stay there
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