>This strikes me as so bogus as to merit the theatre-deployment of the
>word 'totally'. Only humans have 6 or 7 soul parts, divinities being
>totally different? Yelm obviously being a human, then.
Yelm had that many parts, Takenegi is not Yelm, he is an individual and I believe has more "parts" than 7 because he has more than one cultural role as a leader. He also has the continous part of himself that is singular and specific to the son of the moon. The other parts are added by role and position.
>If you're going to adopt a straight face and tell me that according to
>Dara Happan and Lunar belief the Red Emperor _doesn't_ have seven soul
>parts, then I'm going to seriously emphasise with, if not formally
>join, the 'Bugger the (official) Lunar Empire for a game of soldiers,
>then' camp.
DHs believe the Emperor has seven soul parts, the Lunars believe he has 7 soul parts, though different to the DHs and other people in the Empire give him varying soul parts based upon their cultural belief. However, he was Takenegi before these roles were adopted and his soul was not "born of woman" but of the Goddess and a complex ritual. He was not born a DH, we do not see lots of Takenegis running around. He is not part of a race, or a people. He is singular. There is noone like him in the Empire or anywhere else.
Me:
> No, but that body was destroyed by Sheng and rebuilt but after his raid on
> the moon, he had to create a new form, which I think is what slowed him
down
> after the raid. He was crippled for some time. Perhaps his body was given
> to him by a willing noble and this started a tradition of this kind of
thing,
> but I mentioned this before on the digest and the response was that it was
> similar to the Pharoah and was a big yawn. So that's out.
Alex:
>So what are you saying his body is formed of, then?
I don't know, that is why I am debating this, so that that kind of thing may be determined.
>Myself I think it's ('just') a gestalt,
You seem to think I'm spounting definitive answers that are "true" but I'm not. I am open to argument, that is why I am bothering to post this, even when I have flu so bad I can barely see.
>which pretty much holds true for the rest of
>him, too. Nothing like the Pharoah, nothing much like the exact mechanic
>of LoM, totally consistent in fact and spirit with everything Greg has
>ever written on the topic, and still compatible with an pretty arbitrary
>amount of confusion when he reappears. (And with total clarity, also.)
>I don't much care if it's Correct at this point, but with all due modesty
>it seems streets ahead of the competing ideas as regards actually
>fitting the world.
Not arguing with your point, but as an interpretation, but this is the point I feel people keep missing about this debate. The LoM interpretation is just that, an interpretation. The RE in tales is just that too. My opinion right now are simply spins on what I've read and what Greg has said. However, this debate is going on because I want input from the thinkers on this list. Now if you want to start with interpretation, I'm hooped to begin with as this is subjective.
I tried to present the info we have on the Emperor in FS and was hoping someone could come up with some facts that I'd missed that wasn't interpretive, but were fact. Once all the facts were confirmed and we all agreed that they were true, then I was hoping we could build a cogent and consensus view of the Emperor. As I said lets break it and start from the basics. The basics is the info we have from Greg. All my stuff, all the tales stuff and all the LoM stuff is based on that. Before I put anything to print I want to get a broad range of ideas.
By stating I think the Emperor is singular, I have seen other POV, they are fine and in many cases I agree with them, but I think it is a good methodology to start with the assumption that all the POV we've expressed are interpretations of limited data. Once we've all agreed on that, then I think we can move foward and analyse each point.
> Philipus Arabus, Julian the Apostate etc etc. They were all extant before
> they attemted to be Emperor. They had a past. Whereas all we have is that
> Takenegi "appeared" in those places. The literal interpretation is that he
> wasn't there before, then he was.
>That's right, that would be the literal interpretation. If Glorantha
>was full of nothing but 'literal interpretations' at this level, I
>doubt I'd play there, and I'll bet you any money that _Greg_ wouldn't...
We are talking about building a solid system for the Emperors succession. If we all leap in at point one with interpretations, then how can we agree on a concensus?
> > [MOB comment]
> I disagree with this, if only at this stage, because I'm unclear as to what
a
> Lunar initiate is, at least in your estimation..
>You're not sure what he mewnt, but you'll disagree in any case? Sort
>of sums up this whole debate.
How can I agree with something if I don't know what he means by it? Bloody hell! I am TRYING to work this through.
> He is alien to humanity, like other demigods such as Lord
> Death on a Horse.
>Not the most reassuring comparison in the whole wide world... The RE
>is clearly
Alex, how do you know? This is subjective too. You keep coming into this debate with preconceptions of what the RE is. I think I've built a strong case that we really have only very limited and ambiguous facts to work with and as a resutl everything we've built out of FS is interpretive. Therefore it is subjective, therefore it is opinion and therefore is not necessarily the truth. Yes, you can quote passages to me that prove your point, but I could do the same back, which gets us nowhere closer to the truth.
>a far more rounded individual than LDoaH, so regardless
>of the Credo-isms, I don't see him being alien in any meaningful
>sense,
This is your opinion, Greg has some writings from way back that show him as very alien indeed. If I have that data and you don't is my opinion any more correct than yours?
>but rather fully able to partake of the full range of 'human'
>experience. (And then some.)
Agreed! But he is still _beyond_ a human in his desires and capacities _IMO_, which is not based on anything other than my interpretation of some very ambiguous facts.
What am I discovering about this debate? Mainly, we don't have enough info to come up with a solid broad church view of how the Emperor works. Everything we've thought of to date is subjective, based on too little info to be fact. I say we go back to Greg and get the answers to these questions. I think it is a good thing that I have found out I needed to ask those questions, as I didn't before the debate. Thanks all.
Martin Laurie
End of The Glorantha Digest V7 #598
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