> I think most Heortling warriors worship Humakt before they go into
> battle (indeed, King of Dragon Pass gives you this option on a
> slightly different scale). But they aren't initiates of Humakt. They
> could be, of course, but they simply aren't devoted to that level.
That actually is the correct scale to think on, or thereabouts at least. Sacrificial worship is just-about-necessarily a collective endeavour. I don't think you get a meaningful amount of 'personal' magic unless you're at least an initiate, which implies a degree of emulatory/devotional worship, too.
But anyway, I brought up Humakt only by way of a reductio ad absurdum analogy of the very argument being trundled out about Uralda. Humakt is an extreme example of what is in cultural terms, a male role. But the actual initiatory requirements are pretty much gender neutral (though self-selection may not be).
> In both cases, the worship is more effective if there's a god-talker
> of the relevant god involved, so there's still a niche.
I was rather dancing around the issue of what and where the 'niche' might be, magically speaking, since whatever I say on the topic will doubtless be made nonsense of by Greg's next flip-flop on worshippers vs. initiates vs. devotees among the Heortlings, and/or whatever TR has to propound on the topic. But my basic point is pretty simple: I'm not even remotely convinced that such a niche is anything like as gender-exclusive as you claim, for Uralda initiates.
> >It may be that gender-prescriptiveness isn't actually at all
> >symmetrical after all, and that there are many (sub)cults that
> >proscribe men, but few that proscribe women.
>
> I think this is likely the case. It may reflect the merging of two
> pantheons (an egalitarian Storm religion and a gender-divided Earth
> religion).
Nimble rationale, but I suspect this appearance has a lot more to do with RW psycho-sociology.
> >I'd put Vinga ("women don't fight") at the very low end of the
> >spectrum, and Nandan ("men don't give birth") at the highest end
>
> This doesn't seem like a symmetric spectrum, in that women can fight
> without resorting to magic.
As I said, I'm not sure how symmetric the spectrum really is. Those, however are just two points on it, specifically chosen as being illustratively extreme, so you wouldn't expect them to be symmetrical...
> Vinga's opposite would be a hypothetical
> god of male weavers (we know that the loom is Ernalda's regalia).
That sounds about right; or a god of cooking, sewing, or star-marking, to go to the rare trouble of looking up G:G Bk3. As you say, the 'hypothetical' status of such suggests that none as as well-known or popular (or notorious?) as Vinga.
Powered by hypermail