> The Greek myth that we have isn't quite myth: it's myth that has been
> standardised, stretched and pounded into the neat conceptualisations and
> storylines called 'literature', and subjected to two or three thousand years
> of misinterpretation and rationalisation, as well as the occasional spot-on
> insight. Greek myth borrows heavily from "the east face of Helicon"
> (Western Asia), and the link between Greek myth and ritual (which is
> a central element to in complete anthropological understanding) is now
> almost completely absent.
I don't agree with that last statement. The myths that we have from ancient Greece do provide us with a considerable amount of information about ancient Greek religious practices. For example, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (the one with all the stuff about the Rape of Persephone and Demeter's doings at Eleusis) offers a lot of information about the Greek rituals surrounding marriage and funerals and the Eleusinian mysteries. We can't reconstruct everything, but we can get a long way.
> That metamorphoses and transformations seem such a central idea in no small
> way because of the magnificent work of Ovid, whose effect on the western
> mind can't be undervalued. If you go to say Hesiod, or Appollodorus, the
> theme is much less central.
Granted. That doesn't make the stories irrelevant. It's hard to know where Ovid's getting all these stories, but he's probably not just making them up wholesale. For a good example, we don't really know that much about Snorri Sturleson's sources either, but they're usually taken as a moderately reliable source, and they're also being used by fans of Glorantha as inspiration. I think that Greek myth is just as useful, in part because there are more of them and because they're often a little more accessable and detailed. Obviously, the Orlanthi are modeled on more Celtic/Norse/Anglo-Saxon societies, but of these societies, we know virtually nothing about the rituals and myths of the pagan Anglo-Saxons, and most of what we know about the Norse and the Celtic rituals and myths is filtered through the problematic lenses of early medieval Christian authors on the one hand and modern Neo-pagans on the other. It's hard to know what kinds of myths we can construct off of these models. The Graeco-Roman model, for all its flaws, has the significant virtue of being produced by the peoples who originally told those stories.
>> 2) In Greek literature, the overwhelming sin is hubris, excessive
>> Is there an equivalent sin that the Orlanthi always have to guard
>> against? Cowardice, perhaps?
Myth is a form of oral literature. Once it gets written down, it usually ossifies, but that doesn't invalidate it. It raises questions of authorship and provenance, but so does oral literature in its own way. And again, the parallel with Snorri Sturleson is effective here. He's also writing down myths and shaping them, just like Ovid. The whole notion of a (Icelandic or Orlanthi) saga is just another form of written down myth. And I think that Orlanthi culture is literate enough for written literature to exist. After all, one of their chief gods has temples that are essentially modern libraries.
> I would nominate Irresponsibility. And obstinate stupidity that fails to
> learn from mistakes or take responsibility for fixing them. And
> the misuse of freedom.
>
> I'd also mention kinstrife as the shadow power that can't be wrestled with,
> the mythic problem that not even Orlanth and Chalanna Arroy cannot properly
> solve or heal except to lessen its pain. (also Harmast Saga).
Hmmm. I can grant you that all of these sins are major issues for the Orlanthi, but I guess what I'm thinking of with the Greek parallel is a foundational sin. In Greek myth and drama and what not, hubris is the singlemost common failing. By itself it is sometimes the cause of great sufferin, but more often, hubris provokes a mortal to commit other sins. For example, in Greek tragedy, hubris often provokes kings to defy the gods, ignore all sorts of signs and portents, ignore advice for other people, try to act independently of social norms, and so on. In the Bacchae, for example, Pentheus' hubris leads him to scorn Dionysus, ignore the warnings of a prophet, ignore the clear signs of divine action around him, resist his own irrational side, and be impatient and angry. The end result is that Dionysus easily humiliates him, drives him insane, and leads him off to be butchered by his own mother. Pentheus' crime is rejecting Dionysus, but the thing that causes that crime is hubris.
Several people have suggest irresponsibility as a 'worst sin', and that makes some sense. Legends about Orlanthi heroes, then, ought to feature this idea prominently.
I believe we can and perhaps even
> should try and explicitly list some of the key themes for both the
> Solar/Lunar and Orlanthi streams. All the better for to understand and
> create 'authentic' heroquests.
`
You have hit the nail right on the proverbial head here. I'm not just trying to split hairs here. I'm looking for models for inspiritation (and hoping to raise a few standards along the way, perhaps). Thanks for all those who've contributed to this discussion.
Andrew E. Larsen
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