> Orthopraxi suggests to me that the god really doesn't give a shit - he's
in
> it for the worship brownie points (however they reckon those things on the
> God plane). That's certainly one interpretation.
Orthopraxis is a big word for a simple idea, and is perhaps best viewed as a way of putting into perspective the western/christian fetishism about 'belief' that tends to pervasively colour our thinking about religion generally.
It's simply a way of saying that what you *do* is more important than what you *believe*: so that not killing people or exercising compassion or going along to worship services is considered more important than whether you believe, say, that the Son has the same essence as the Father, or what version of neoPlatonism you use to decribe the nature of the Trinity. Many of the world's great religious systems and almost all of the tribal ones are orthopractic and heterodox.
Orthodoxy is generally a symptom of strongly-centralised systems (my initial impulse to to type 'belief systems' is another demonstration of how pervasive is the western orthodoxic prejudice) either where religion and the state are intertwined or in cults and sects with strong centralised leadership.
Like any conceptual tool, both labels (orthopraxis and orthodoxy) cover a vast range of different behaviours and beliefs. Just as I'd expect say, a Heortling tribe or Lunar temple to have a variety of different cultural, social and psychological emphases among their worshippers.
I find describing shamanic practice as ortho-anything misleading: shamanism is essentially an artefact of human cognition (or in Glorantha, an artefact of human cognition of the spirit world) and so can be bundled into almost *any* cultural package.
John
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